In an eerie coincidence, less than 2 weeks after the debut of our sister blog - firebutchdavis.blogspot.com - Carolina announced that they were indeed firing coach Butch Davis.
The headline at www.tarheelblue.com was a little understated - Carolina Football Makes Coaching Change - but the bottom line is Carolina finally fired Butch Davis. In doing so, Carolina came to it's senses and fired the coach who tarnished the standard set by Dean Smith and heaped more embarrassment on the University than any other coach in the last 50 years.
Chancellor Holden Thorp got it right when he said today "What started as a purely athletic issue has begun to chip away at this University's reputation ... I have lost confidence in our ability to come through this without harming the way people think of this institution. Our academic integrity is paramount and we must work diligently to protect it. The only way to move forward and put this behind us is to make a change."
I've said this before, but will restate that I don't think Butch Davis ever understood what Carolina means. He did not work for the athletic department, he worked for THE university.
Finally, his 'clueless defense' may have been the last straw for Thorp and Athletic Director Dick Baddour.
You could probably get away with that defense if it was one player or one instance. But there were multiple and repeated problems associated with Davis' football program:
The headline at www.tarheelblue.com was a little understated - Carolina Football Makes Coaching Change - but the bottom line is Carolina finally fired Butch Davis. In doing so, Carolina came to it's senses and fired the coach who tarnished the standard set by Dean Smith and heaped more embarrassment on the University than any other coach in the last 50 years.
Chancellor Holden Thorp got it right when he said today "What started as a purely athletic issue has begun to chip away at this University's reputation ... I have lost confidence in our ability to come through this without harming the way people think of this institution. Our academic integrity is paramount and we must work diligently to protect it. The only way to move forward and put this behind us is to make a change."
I've said this before, but will restate that I don't think Butch Davis ever understood what Carolina means. He did not work for the athletic department, he worked for THE university.
Finally, his 'clueless defense' may have been the last straw for Thorp and Athletic Director Dick Baddour.
You could probably get away with that defense if it was one player or one instance. But there were multiple and repeated problems associated with Davis' football program:
- FOURTEEN players were suspended for academic fraud - or six more players than wins - fraud that was uncovered while the University investigated illegal contacts between players and agents;
- One summer after at least 3 players take an illegal, agent-funded trip to attend a party thrown by an ex-player, the same thing happens again for the second summer in a row;
- In the wake of an academic scandal that resulted in players getting suspended, you follow that up with one of your players getting caught by NC State fans plagiarizing a term paper;
- In the wake of the academic and player-agent scandals, you follow THAT up with players racking up tens of thousands of parking ticket. On top of that, a tutor is charged with paying some of the parking tickets.
You simply can not overlook a list that long. It was more than cluelessness, it was incompetence. Davis was in charge and therefore responsible. Maybe he thought he was back at Miami, or at Ohio State or USC or Auburn or South Carolina or wherever.
But you can not be that sloppy and irresponsible at Dean Smith's school. Carolina has higher and better standards than that. Davis never understood that responsibility, and he was finally fired today.
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