If you read my column, you know I am not an astute and knowledgeable fan of soccer.

But to spend 45 minutes over breakfast with Charlotte soccer coach Jeremy Gunn is to want to launch a corner kick, head a ball into a goal, pick up a yellow card or even a red card.

Gunn's passion for his team, sport, school, adopted city, music, cricket, Leeds United, the NCAA's student-athlete system, hard work and tea with milk and sugar fills Starbucks on East Boulevard. Every other conversation in the room, and there are at least 25, is nothing but white noise.

Gunn, 40, makes tea sound like a reward.

At about noon today, he and his team will get another when they leave for Hoover, Ala., and soccer's College Cup. They'll play Creighton Friday and, if they win, play the North Carolina-UCLA winner Sunday.

The achievement is tremendous. Like basketball and football, soccer has storied programs, and Charlotte has not been one of them.

Gunn, however, insists the 49ers played some of the best soccer in the country in 2010.

"But you have to have a certain resolve to win games against the great teams," he says over oatmeal that was warm when he ordered but will soon turn cold. "There's more steel to the team this year."

Take a break and eat if you want, I suggest.

Dark, lean and usually smiling, Gunn is accustomed to cold oatmeal. He starts talking and there's just so much to say.

"Certain programs win national championships and go to final fours," Gunn says. "You think that's what happens to other programs, the so-called special programs that have an aura about them. We had that tipping point where you realize the teams you've long been looking up at, you finally look at square in the eye."

Third-seed Connecticut, which the 49ers upset on the road Sunday, was one of them.

Gunn grew up in Harrogate, in North Yorkshire, England. When California State-Bakersfield offered him a soccer scholarship, he jumped.

"When you grow up in England, with the miserable weather and the dark cold winter days, the thought of sunshine and palm trees is a big lure, you know," Gunn says.

He also played for England's 17-and-under national cricket team, and was led to believe cricket was enormously popular in Bakersfield. He brought two bags to the U.S. - one with clothes and one with cricket gear. He used the cricket gear once. He wore it to a Halloween party.

After college Gunn worked as an assistant coach at his alma mater and played soccer professionally. Before Charlotte hired him late in 2006, he coached Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colo. The Skyhawks played for the NCAA Division II national championship three times and won it in 2005.

So Gunn is accustomed to winning. Other Charlotte coaches who experienced similar success in men's golf and men's and women's basketball left for more prestigious jobs.

Will you?

"That's not really a discussion right now," he says. "There's always interest and there's always talk. I'm very happy doing the job in Charlotte and I get very well looked after here."

Gunn adds: "One of the reasons I came here is that Charlotte is a very young city and a very young university. Everything is in front of us. Also, it's a great place to live. You can really enjoy the culture and the environment."

Although the 49ers made soccer's College Cup in 1996, they were down and seemingly out when Gunn was hired. He sold faith. We can be one of the best programs in the country, he said. He believed. Did they believe in him?

"When the players graduate, we know they'll be good soccer players," Gunn says between bites of frosty oatmeal. "More important is that whatever they do in life they do to the best of their ability. No dipping your toe in the water. If you fail trying, that's OK. It's better to fail going for it than to be very cautious and never really put yourself out there."

The 49ers are out there, in Hoover, with an opportunity to win a national championship.

Are you worried that the College Cup will deal something for which you're not prepared, such as the absence of tea?

"We take some of our English tea bags with us," Gunn says. "And in today's society, there's always a Starbucks around the corner."