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North Carolina doesn't have a football game today, but Tar Heels coach Butch Davis can go ahead and add a very important intangible victory to his record. More correctly, to his resume. That's because November officially has arrived, and there's still as much interest among Carolina fans in the football team as the approaching basketball season.
Although coaching predecessor John Bunting, and Carl Torbush before Bunting, had a couple of decent seasons, Carolina football has not enjoyed such a prominent standing on campus since Mack Brown left for Texas in 1997.
Brown didn't make a big issue of it for public consumption, but the overwhelming basketball shadow at Carolina drove him nutty in late season. With good reason, too. Brown had double-digit win seasons in 1993, '96 and '97, plus a 9-3 record in '92, only to see his teams greeted by a lot of empty seats in Kenan Stadium during the final few weeks of each season.
Bunting, a huge basketball fan, repeatedly talked about "changing the culture" -- coachspeak for keeping Carolina fans interested in football during late October and November.
Before Brown, there was Dick Crum, who won big early during his Chapel Hill stint. Crum once said that Carolina, in football, wanted to be Oklahoma on Saturday but an Ivy League school Sunday through Friday. But under Dean Smith, that's essentially what Carolina basketball was -- the competitive equal of any team in the nation on the court and in the classroom.
Compared with Brown, Crum wasn't as jealous of basketball, but he never understood the disconnect within the fan base.
But even at Carolina, the absence of success can make the heart fonder for football, and that's the energy Davis has been able to tap. Assuming the weather isn't completely miserable, which it was last week against Boston College, the Tar Heels will find an awaiting full house for next Saturday's game against Georgia Tech. It's a lock that there will be a sellout for the game against visiting N.C. State on Nov. 22, and there's a good chance Tar Heels fans will score their fair share of tickets for the Nov. 29 game at Duke.
Down the road -- assuming Davis sticks around -- who knows? Historically, Carolina fans have had a tendency to grow passive about football once a certain level of limited success has been achieved. The school hasn't won an ACC championship since 1980, Crum's third season.
That syndrome could return if Davis' teams get into an 8-4 overall, 5-3 ACC rut. But at least in the first week of November in 2008, the baby-blue folks still have a football buzz on, and that's taking into account that hoops star Tyler Hansbrough is injured and the football team is coming off a bye week.
So take a bow, Butch. In less than two years, you've got Carolina fans exactly where you want 'em.
