CHAPEL HILL Everett Withers got off to a great start as North Carolina's interim coach Saturday, his team putting aside more than a year of perpetual distraction to romp to a 42-10 win against James Madison. Withers did just about everything right, at least until the game was over.

His decision to give fired coach Butch Davis a game ball looms as an enormous indiscretion. At a time when Withers is supposed to be moving the program forward, he managed to call attention to the Tar Heels' sullied past instead of their new future.

The last thing Chancellor Holden Thorp needs, less than two months after controversially firing Davis for collective embarrassment to the university, is his new interim coach honoring his predecessor on the very day the program was supposed to be moving in a new, less embarrassing direction.

The players who talked about winning the game for Davis can be excused. They cannot be expected to understand the university politics involved. They are loyal to the man who recruited them, not the chancellor who fired that man.

Withers, though, should know better - or at least, he should. Any head coach has to have a better grasp of how to stay on the good side of his bosses. Asked on Monday about his decision to honor Davis, Withers chuckled.

"That was more me," Withers said. "That was more my decision. Coach Davis is a friend of mine. That's how I felt, and that's why it was done."

Such loyalty is commendable, but misplaced friendship got North Carolina's football program in this mess - whether it was Davis hiring his old buddy John Blake, Jennifer Wiley getting too cozy with the team or players taking gifts from old teammates and new friends, who just happened to work for agents.

The next coach of the program is going to have to make a clean break from the Davis regime. That's why the old coach was fired when he was fired: to put a stop to the embarrassment he had created and start moving forward, in a different direction.

Given everything that has transpired the past two months, a public gesture honoring Davis struck a sour note. And since that sort of collective obliviousness contributed to getting Davis fired, not to mention the resignation of a department chair, seeing it continue from the football program has to rankle Thorp. Attempts to reach the chancellor Monday were unsuccessful.

Withers could have lined up behind the chancellor, and he wouldn't have to hand him a game ball to do it. Silence would have sufficed.

Instead, by singling out Davis, he lined up behind the ex-coach and the disgruntled boosters who apparently harbored Davis in their luxury suites Saturday. If Withers wants to be the next head coach, he might have picked the wrong friends.

North Carolina has left Davis behind and is moving on. Withers needs to get on board with that philosophy.