Honestly a pretty brutal stretch to be inside KFC man. That must have been an emotional roller coaster.
From the outside it really looked like the team and coaching staff were majorly checked out during the Withers year, especially at the end. I was at the game @ NC State (13-0 loss where Renner was running for his life all game) and remember watching that miserable bowl game. But in looking back at it I was reminded that we also almost beat a really good VT team on the road in mid-November. What was it like being on the inside that season?
Oh man, it was a really wild time.
I was actually in the KFC on the day that Coach Davis was fired. Will never forget it. It was about a week or so before the players were to report for training camp, so the only folks in the building that day were a handful of support staffers. It was pretty quiet. Earlier that day I had seen Chancellor Thorp's car parked outside in the spaces that were reserved 24/7 for either the head coach, the chancellor, or the athletic director. Thought it was odd because I had never seen him at the KFC before. And then on two different occasions throughout the day I saw Mr. Baddour's car parked out there. And he was almost never at the KFC. So it was definitely odd, but all of us support staff were busy in training camp prep mode so we didn't really think too much about it. But then sometime mid-afternoon, and I'll never forget this, I was waiting for the elevator to take some coaches' gear up to the fourth floor coaches offices, and quite literally as I was getting onto the elevator, as soon as the doors opened, Coach Davis's wife, Tammy, burst out of the elevator and was crying really hard. I put two and two together pretty quickly about what had just happened. Needless to say, I did not deliver the gear that afternoon.
After Coach Davis was fired, they didn't announce who the interim head coach would be for, I believe, a couple of days. So everyone and everything was in limbo. I know that Coach Shoop, Coach Withers, and Coach Pittman all thought that they would be named interim HC. Obviously they went with Coach Withers, which made sense considering that the defense was the strength of the team (hard to believe in this day and age that that was ever true of Carolina football, but it certainly was then). I think there was a fair amount of tension between Coach Shoop and Coach Withers. I was on the headset for every game that season and you would not believe how many arguments there were about play calls, situational stuff, going for it on 4th vs. punting. It was chaotic at times.
To the team's and staff's credit, I thought that we had a pretty darn good start to the season, all things considered. We had a pretty uneventful training camp- I think people were still in stunned shock about Coach Davis's dismissal, but everyone in the building knew that we had a ton of talent on both sides of the ball and could/should still be really good. We started 5-1 with wins over Savon Huggins/Rutgers, Teddy Bridgewater/Louisville, and absolutely kicked the shit out of Ruffin McNeil/ECU in Greenville. That was a pretty fun first 6 weeks of the season. Each Sunday after a win, we'd have our "Victory Meal" with steak, lobster, Maggiano's catering, ice cream sundae bar, etc. It was fun.
Then the wheels fell off before the Miami game.
We were 5-1 going into that game, but the Thursday before the game was when Coach Withers was informed by Chancellor Thorp that he wasn't getting the head coaching job permanently. Up to that point, I know that Withers and pretty much the entire staff assumed that they were going to be retained. I was actually in the staff conference room on the fourth floor when Withers informed the staff that they were all going to be fired at the end of the season. It was not a pretty scene. That was the inflection point of the season, because up to that point, there was actually some pretty impressive team and staff cohesion despite the adversity of having lost Coach Davis. And at 5-1 (1-1 ACC) we all felt like we had a legit shot at the ACC title game. But from that point forward, it was a complete 180. We fell behind Miami 27-0 halfway through the second quarter, and there was a ton of fighting, bickering, etc. on the sideline, in the coaches' booth, on the headset, etc.
The next week we played at Clemson and there was an actual physical confrontation in the halftime locker room. We were down, I believe, either a FG or a TD at half, but still in the game. After that, though, we came out and gave up 35 consecutive points on 5 consecutive possessions and got absolutely steamrolled. Our only two wins after that were at home against Wake and Duke. The game at NC State was probably the low point. We just got our asses kicked from the very opening snap, and the entire stadium was having a field day taunting us- and their fans are quite literally right on top of the visitor sideline. Longest 3 hours of my life, probably.
I remember at the team banquet at the end of the regular season was when they announced that we were going to be going to the Independence Bowl in Shreveport. I kid you not, not one single person cheered or was excited. It was like a funeral. In hindsight, I wish that UNC would have self-imposed a bowl ban during that 2011 season because the next year, my senior year, was when we won the Coastal but were banned from postseason play by the NCAA. That trip to Shreveport was pure misery. I truly cannot believe that they have a bowl game there. We stayed at some casino hotel across from some strip clubs- you can imagine. I remember seeing most of the coaches in the casino at 1-2 AM on the morning of the game.....that kicked off at noon. Needless to say, we got our asses kicked. The only person in the entire stadium who wanted to be there was Allen Mogridge- he may as well have been the head coach during that game because he was the only one doing anything at all on the sideline. After the game, Coach Withers didn't even come into the locker room to address the team- he just left.
