Davis Bringing Carolina Back
In November 2006, the nation's top defensive recruit, lineman Marvin Austin from Washington D.C.'s Ballou High School, had narrowed his collegiate choices to USC, Florida State, Illinois and Tennessee. North Carolina was not on the list.
"I wasn't real big on North Carolina football," Austin says. "Just the style of play, I wasn't interested at all."
Then on Nov. 13, former Miami Hurricanes and Cleveland Browns head coach Butch Davis was introduced as the new leader of Tar Heel football. Within 48 hours, he was in the coach's offices at Austin's Ballou high school, selling him on a new brand of North Carolina football.
When national signing day rolled around less than three months later, Austin dawned a University of North Carolina hat, highlighting what CSTV's Tom Lemming ranked as the nation's No. 18 class.
"That's impressive, because usually with a coaching change, you don't finish in the top 30," Lemming said. "You've got to have the recruiting coaches [to get the class in that time frame]. Butch Davis has always been one of the top recruiting head coaches in the country, from his days at Miami."
Austin's signing grabbed the biggest headlines along with Syracuse, N.Y. quarterback Mike Paulus, but receivers Greg Little and Dwight Jones Jr., and running back Ryan Houston were all high school All-Americans from North Carolina. That kind of homegrown talent is one of the reasons why Davis took the Carolina job in the first place.
"North Carolina is one of the fastest growing states in the nation," Davis said. "There are something like 60 people a day moving to the Raleigh area. It reminds me of the Georgia area in the `90s. Of course, the major difference is, there you have just Georgia and Georgia Tech. Here we have a whole lot more competition."
Competition not only from in-state rivals N.C. State, Wake Forest and to a lesser extent Duke and East Carolina, but nationally from the top programs like USC, Texas and Notre Dame. The Longhorns had received a verbal commitment from Zack Pianalto, and Little said he was going to play for the Irish.
But as the football saying goes, `Don't stop until you hear the whistle blow.'
Every coach now knows that until the signed letter arrives in February, recruiting is still open, a trend Davis says is far from new.
"I can remember at Miami even 10 to 15 years ago, you would have kids telling you no up until two weeks before signing day," Davis said. "Back in the days of unlimited visits, I'd be sitting outside a home the night before signing day with one of our commits and there would be five schools who had come to visit who this kid had already said he's not going to play for."
When Davis was hired on Nov. 13, one of his most important recruiting calls may have been to Nebraska coach Bill Callahan. Husker assistant John Blake, who played for Davis in high school in Arkansas and served as head coach at Oklahoma, has built a reputation as one of the nation's top recruiters. With Callahan's permission, Davis lured Blake to North Carolina for his whirlwind recruiting tour with immediate success.
"Coach Blake sealed the deal," Austin said. "When he came on a visit, he was just like part of the family. He came over to my grandma's house with all my family, and we just had so much fun."
Of course, one of the main reasons Austin agreed to join a team that was 3-9 last year is the chance at immediate playing time, which he saw Saturday night in the Tar Heels' 37-14 win over James Madison. Two other true freshmen, Pianalto and linebacker Bruce Carter, could be in the staring lineup this Saturday when the Heels face East Carolina.
Davis's stated goal of changing the culture around Carolina football from afterthought to pride with Tar Heel Nation has made great strides in less than a year. The buzz around Chapel Hill recalls the era when Mack Brown led North Carolina to back-to-back 10-win seasons in 1996 and 1997. But recruiting success and buzz mean little if success on the football field doesn't soon follow.
The Tar Heels face a tough East Carolina team who narrowly lost at ninth-ranked Virginia Tech Saturday. The Pirates allowed only 33 rushing yards on the road. At home, a ferocious Dowdy-Ficklin Stadium sell-out crowd hungers for a chance to knock the Tar Heels off their perch.
A win against East Carolina would put the Tar Heels at 2-0 for the first time since the 2000 season. An optimistic coach accustomed to success, Davis isn't likely to celebrate a pair of wins at the beginning of the season, but it would be another step in the rebuilding of Carolina football that began the moment Butch Davis was hired 10 months ago.
[More at www.cstv.com]
