The Tar Heels' trip to Miami provided an opportunity to visit with former colleagues of Butch Davis's and players under him during his 11 years at the University of Miami as an assistant coach and head coach. Following are some of the comments excerpted from this week's Extra Points column, found at Tarheelblue.com.
Pete Garcia, administrative assistant to Davis at Miami and Cleveland * "Athletic compliance is the part that scares me most. It only takes one person to really damage the program and damage young lives, which is the worst part of it. I'm sure Butch is more dismayed than anyone that these problems have occurred on his watch. He is a strong believer in doing things the right way. And I know that, as he did here, he will also do everything humanly possible to eliminate those problems." Betty Amos, UM graduate and member of the Board of Trustees * "Butch was 100 percent the solution, not the problem. I've never known a more qualified coach who's done a better job with a team, and Miami's mistake was not doing everything in the world to get him back [after he left the Cleveland Browns of the NFL]." Milton Wallace, UM graduate and member of the President's Council * "To a man, guys would run through a brick wall if Butch said, 'Hey, this is what we're going to do to be successful in life, on the field, in the classroom.' We trusted him. We did not want to let him down in any way. During our time you never saw a whole lot of guys getting in trouble. He poured into us the idea of, 'Make sure you make good choices. Don't be selfish. Don't think about yourself first, think about the other 84 guys in the room you're going to let down.'" Andre King, wide receiver at UM and Cleveland * "I'm not sure everyone up there understands what you have in Butch Davis and the principles he stands for. Everyone needs to take a big, deep sigh and say, 'Okay, this happened, we will put structures in place that will correct it, that will hopefully prevent it from happening again.' You do that realizing that you are dealing with human beings who make poor choices from time to time, and there are barracudas and sharks out there trying to take advantage of them." David Scott, former UM recruiting coordinator and associate AD |