Timing of Davis' firing leads to more questions

By Joe Ovies

First Carl Torbush. Then Torbush again, which was followed by John Bunting mid-season and now Butch Davis just weeks before the start of the college football season. North Carolina isn't the smoothest when it comes to relationship break-ups.

It has been over a year since the NCAA first stepped foot in Chapel Hill. The public support for Davis from athletics director Dick Baddour and chancellor Holden Thorp never wavered. The head coach of the Tar Heels openly discussed the support during high profile appearances at the Triangle Pigskin Preview and ACC Football Kickoff.

Now, just 48 hours after doing countless interviews in Pinehurst, Davis is toast? North Carolina has managed to torch back-to-back seasons and the NCAA has yet to hand down sanctions from their investigation. The timing of Davis' firing couldn't be worse.

Make no mistake -- Davis was the heart of the problem for North Carolina. While his name never appeared in the NCAA Notice of Allegations, a series of decisions under his watch had direct and indirect ramifications. Davis gambled with the hiring of John Blake. He failed to see any potential issues of retaining a former academic tutor North Carolina thought was too close to the players. And as many programs are discovering, Davis not applying high-profile compliance measures for high-profile athletes such as Marvin Austin ultimately created a chain reaction of events that brings us to the events of today.

However, the time to fire Davis was last season. North Carolina chose to openly support him instead. If university officials wanted to revisit their decision, the proper time would be at the end up this upcoming season. By then the Committee of Infractions would be in the books and North Carolina would have a better idea of where the NCAA stood in terms of punishment. More importantly, it allows for the currently players who had nothing to do with last year's mess to have a proper season.

“To restore confidence in the University of North Carolina and our football program, it’s time to make a change,” said Thorp. “What started as a purely athletic issue has begun to chip away at this university’s reputation."

Let's be real here -- that ship sailed months ago. So making a change now doesn't make much sense. 

It would be foolish to think Michael McAdoo's plagiarized paper going viral thanks to Pack Pride didn't add more damage to the academic reputation of North Carolina. After stating they would get to the bottom of the issue with a thorough investigation, this paper managed to go unnoticed and Thorp was clowned. But doesn't that have more to do with an academic department and its system? Last time I checked, Davis wasn't the person out of the country while teacher's assistants failed to notice McAdoo's lifted work. Davis was not in charge of providing proper evidence of academic fraud to the North Carolina Honor Court. 

That's why I believe Thorp was again influenced by the invisible hand of the Board of Trustees. With a new collection of members starting July 1st, the game changed.

Thorp said he made the decision to fire Davis with the full support of the Board, but it is important to note that he does not need their support to make such a decision. Perhaps Thorp was in a position where the previous Board of Trustees supported Davis and would have made life difficult for the chancellor had he pulled the trigger and this new session opened the window. Perhaps the new Board of Trustees would have made his life difficult had he not fired Davis.

Thorp found himself trying to deal with a Tar Heel version of the Kobayashi Maru, where he would ultimately get hammered by the academic wonks or the football evangelists. He ended up on the side of academia, but this no win situation still ends up fracturing the university.

The football fans are steamed. Current and former players are angry. And they should be. Not because Davis was fired, but by the inept way in which it was handled. Because of that, the divide between "football people" and "non-football people" got wider overnight. That will do more damage to North Carolina's program than any NCAA sanction.