CSNbbs

I just wanna get a little feel for what y'all think about Bunting. Here are my thoughts:

Positives

He's a good guy, and a good ambassador for the university. For the most part, he runs a clean ship and keeps his players off the police blotter (the occasional Michael Gilmore will pop up, but you can't really do anything about that). He graduates his players.

On that football side of things, he's proven that he can win with the right mix of talent and experience. He has a ton of contacts in the NFL that will vouch for him (Dick Vermeil being one of them). He improved drastically in recruiting from year one to year two, doing so in a year we went 3-9.

Negatives

Unfortunately, he hasn't proven that he can handle being a college head coach yet. His defenses (and overall teams) have regressed under his tenure. He continues to stick by Dave Huxtable as DC, when Hux's only track record at DC is the terrible defenses he coordinated at GT and UNC. He's also said some confusing things to the media that hasn't helped his cause.

That said, there's really no simple solution to this mess. One could say that firing Bunting is the best solution, but then we will have fired two consecutive coaches after only 3 years. And what if folks aren't lining up at our door to be the next head coach here? Do we hire another unproven coach, or do we hire a mediocre college coach just to say that we've hired one with past experience?

If Bunting is retained, we run the risk of having another lame-duck coach just like Torbush's last year. Recruiting could suffer and the results on the field could get worse. Other coaches and/or media will bash him, and that will certainly make it tough to get the ship turned around.

To make matters more confusing, these "Spurrier to UNC" rumors keep floating around. Personally, I don't know if that's wishful thinking by some UNC fans, or if Spurrier is trying to make it be known that he's interested in the job. I would tend to think the former, but you never know.

It's a tough, tough dilemma. I like Bunting, and I hope he can turn things around for us. What do the rest of you think?

-JD

i don't know jd, i haven't followed football as much lately(probably because they haven't given me much to follow...)

i think if the rumors about spurrier are true(but i can't imagine that they would be), we need to make a move on it. sorry bunting, but opportunities like this don't come around very often...

That picture of Spurrier standing in front of that 41-0 scoreboard impressed you too huh?

Face it, Carolina is not a "football school". You guys get lucky about every decade and can field a team that can be ranked in the top 10 sometime during a season. I wish we could have that much luck at Duke.

There are very few schools ( especially ACC) that consistently have great football teams just like there are very few that consistently have great basketball teams. you see the same names in the polls year after year. I can't think of anyone who does both in this day and age.

Bunting will graduate players, he'll have some really good teams "with the right mix of talent and experience". But those teams won't come as often as you and Woody would like. I think Bunting is a first class coach who needs a little more time and you don't have to worry about him jumping ship anytime some coaching job comes open in a better market.

But as Spanky told Buckwheat "if you're gonna wish, you might as well wish big".

doh

I'll make this short and sweet:

1) Bunting is a great guy.
2) Bunting is a poor coach.
3) We should get Spurrier if possible, but count on Dick Baddour to mess this up any way it goes down because he is the source of all the problems.