When The Right Way is Wrong

THIS COLUMN WAS FIRST POSTED IN OCTOBER 2006… in the middle of John Bunting’s swan song season I ran across it while rummaging thru 1,700+ archived columns. I enjoyed rereading it. I figure maybe you will too. Again…. all these incredibly insightful observations are NINE Freakin’ Years Old…. Scary, huh! ….. ENJOY!

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OCTOBER 2006: … BE WARNED: This will be the first column EVER written or read by anyone that include references to John Bunting, Jack Nicholson, Dickie Baddour, your wife’s virginity, Rusty Clark and Lawrence Taylor…. If that has not whetted your appetite you need to cut back on the Dexatrim. A week that saw peeing Wuffies and 1,752 people say “John Bunting sure is a mighty FINE FELLOW … lets hang him RIGHT NOW”…

Before I forget it. On BobLee’s list of Stuff I hope to achieve before I die I checked off #87 this week – Be savaged on a fan forum at the same time David Glenn is savaged in the same forum. Our “Find A Religious Kid” column got one loonie-toon so mad his post was just a series of those cuss-signs %$^*&%$#@%&^. Two threads away some “fuzzy cheeks” were arguing over whether Dave Glenn was an idiot or a moron or a troll. Dave and I celebrated with a High Five at Hi5

John Bunting may/may not have an extended career as Head Coach at UNC but he apparently has a back-up option as a canonized saint. Actually he was a (New Orleans) “Saint” right before he “came home” to Chapel Hill six years ago. John’s canonization is pretty much assured based on all the laudatory … “He sure does bleed blue and is a very passionate fine fellow with charisma and did we say he bleeds blue … now lets gut-shoot him … and, of course, Dickie too…” It reminds me of folks coming to a hanging in the Old West and turning it into a covered dish supper. Its only been 4 Games … by game 8-9 “the ‘real fan’ mob” will be baying at the moon and biting the heads off live bats.

If you think it’s fun NOW … watch what will happen IF Dickie is forced to fire John. The hardcore Bunting-haters will immediately step aside and let the “John was such a good guy” folks rip Dickie into shreds. Its exactly what happened after Matt Mess.

Whenever there is “blood in the water” as there certainly is now … a lot of “passerby fans” get curious about what’s happening and start surfing for info. That leads them to “the lair of the howler monkeys – the boards” and an encounter with 12-15 quite impassioned irate humanoids each posting 25 posts every day saying the exact same thing they said in their 25 posts the day before … and the day before that … and the day before that.

The Guinness weird record-keepers say the record for posting the exact same “mad as hell and gonna do something about it but don’t know what” posts is 63 days. It is held by two Manchester United soccer fans named Pete and RePete.

It’s all the usual yadda yadda …… John Bunting bleeds blue but fire his dumb ass RIGHT NOW …… Dickie Baddour is soooo evil that in a list of the Top Ten Most Evil ADs in the past 40 years he is the Top Nine …… a cabal of football-hating “Fat Cats” is calling all the shots from a Winnebago parked in the Bell Tower Lot with a walkie talkie linked to Deano in the basement of his Dome. …. (SuperSecret Info … there “might” be a buncha young deep pocketed “Fat Cats” planning a coup on Mo and the Elder Cats. Could be!)

My favorite is the naïve passerby fan who drops in to tell everyone how “that darn Dickie Baddour sure did mess up the Torbush-Beamer-Doherty situations”. Apparently he’s the only one who knows that story and feels compelled to tell everyone all the details. Don’t confuse him with his cousin who reminds us “THEY EVEN HUNG DEAN IN EFFIGY” ….. Really ???

Speaking of mythical events. Our old friend Caulton Tudor threw cold water on the “Mark Richt was too religious” myth this week. That is #8 in the standard list of “Dickie’s Most Heinous War Crimes”. It never happened of course, and Larry Miller never made monkey love to Yvette Mimeaux either.

I teased you up above about “your wife’s virginity” … I’m getting to that part.

Whatever fate awaits Blue Bleedin’ John … the future of UNC Football cannot move forward until UNC Admins and UNC Fans (“real real fans” PLUS the loonies) admit to what they REALLY mean by “the right way”. “The Right Way” is often referred to as “The Carolina Way” implying no one else could possibly do anything “the right way” but UNC … which hired both James Moeser and Dickie Baddour among it’s list of “did it the right way” things !?!????

“But we do it the right way” is the standard excuse whenever Carolina gets massacred by 40+ points. You know … “yeah, we got our butts kicked really badly but thats because we “do it the right way”.

It’s time to fess up TruBlues….you want to win lots more games than we are currently winning? To do so you just need to “think” we are doing it “the right way”. You just don’t want to read about “the wrong way” the same time all your Wuff associates read about it.

If a Carolina FB coach WINS it won’t matter HOW he does it. The UNC fan base will steadfastly proclaim it’s “the right way” because, well because, thats how we must have done it … silly rabbit!.

That brings us to your wife’s virginity….. Let’s assume for the sake of a humor column that on your honeymoon night you discovered a certain virginal covering was, well, no longer in place. Now, you could risk breaking the mood by demanding a full disclosure of the circumstances … OR … you could simply assume it was all that horseback riding she did at summer camp when she was eleven. Go with the “horseback riding at summer camp” and your odds of connubial bliss are greatly enhanced.

It’s no different when trying to field a competitive Div 1-A football program. Let John Bunting, or whoever, do “what he needs to do” to field a competitive team … and you can sit smugly in your barca-lounger thinking about that handsome riding instructor your wife talks about from her days at summer camp. YIKES!

It worked for Dean for 35 years. St. Dean convinced the Tar HeelNation that JR Reid really could read. Nakthar really was a solid citizen … and all his BBers were Eagle Scout BBers … THEY WEREN”T … but as long as you thought they were it was quite fine … Remember my mother thinking all Carolina basketballers were “Rusty Clark” … tall, white, scholars, and future doctors. Mom died before Rasheed and Rashad came along … good thing huh.

(REMINDER: This column was written NINE Years Ago …. October 2006.)

To quote Jack Nicholson in “A Few Good Men” … “THE TRUTH … You can’t handle the truth.” Give UNC’s FB coach, whoever he is, the same pass Dean was given. Wink, wink, nod, nod …

Dean proved that plausible deniability is just fine with Carolina fans. Put anything you need to in the sausage, Coach … just don’t tell us.

John Bunting made two critical mistakes six years ago that he has never fully recovered from.

#1 – He gave himself way too much credit for knowing how to select and manage a staff of his peers. “Someone” should have given Bill Dooley $10,000 and set him up as a “consultant” in a small out-of-the-way office in Kenan. Dooley could have used his golden rolodex to hire “the right kind of guys” for John. We would not have become a half-way house for a mini-van full of ECU guys about to be canned.

#2 – John took “the right (Carolina) way” crap waaaay too literally. No one can win playing a competitive schedule in “big time college football” without a core of overly aggressive thugs and sociopaths. People “in their right minds” do not engage in the sport of football, and achieve success in it. Now … TELL the arrogant pompous alums whatever they need to be told, likewise the faculty squirrels … but push come to shove … you will GET pushed and shoved without “the right kind of FOOTBALL players”. The Lawrence Taylors of the world don’t much care about Honor Codes and libraries and such. Never have … never will.

But But But BobLee…. schools like Notre Dame and Michigan and… and …. and like Notre Dame and Michigan win “doing it the right way”…. don’t they ??? (FWIW…. ND and Michigan have each had THREE FB coaches since this column was written in 2006)

Me … I truly don’t care. I’m on record as being OK if UNC was in a “Southern Ivy League” with Vandy, Wake, Duke, Navy, Citadel, VMI, Furman and St. Pauls(!!) . We could go 6-2 in that group most years. But if we must stay in Little Johnny $wofford’s New ACC we better redefine “the right way” because the way we’re doing it now has EVERYONE quite unhappy.

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Could the folks over in West Raleigh have possibly had a more extreme week. On the really warm fuzzy side there was Katherine Evans’ fine column on Daniel and their family. (NOTE: one CaroLoon idgit credited her wonderful piece to “a fine Journalism School at UNC … yeah right!! … the article stressed the Evans’ family’s strong Christian faith. A likely topic from a brain-washed UNC journalist – NOT!).

On the really warm liquid side … there was the internationally reported “students peeing in Carter-Finley” situation. Yet another crackerjack bureaucratic bungle by NCSU’s notorious Whack-A-Mole Admins. They created a quite stoopid situation whereby students could not leave their section for any reason or they would not be allowed back in. Whats a fella with a full bladder supposed to do? …. We hear Tom Stafford is locking all Carter-Finley restrooms for the FSU game as part of his unique “punish the not guilty” approach to problem solving. ….. Hey, maybe “D&J Mortgage” can give away free empty plastic bottles for use “as needed”.

Memo To NCSU Bureaucrats … 120 Div 1-A schools have policies for handling student “general admission” logistics. Call 3-4 and see how they handle it … you freakin’ numbnutz! …. Jeeezzzzzz!

It was heartwarming to us that 36 readers wrote in asking if Terrell Owens’ “publicist” was our favorite Ho #2 … Kim The Embezzler. Terrell’s “publicist” did indeed favor our favorite Bunny Hole terpsichorean. But, alas, Kimmie is still under “house arrest” for violating one or more of her many parole conditions. When we contacted Kim, she said “T.O. might or might not have been depressed”. She wasn’t sure but for $20 and a Heath bar she would claim he played Howard on the Bob Newhart Show.

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Las Vegas oddsmakers have it 8-5 that the first inevitable “Butch Davis has bought a lot in Governors Club” post will occur by October 15. Maybe he will just buy Steve Spurrier’s or Urban Meyer’s or Rick Majerus’.

Gotta luv Frank Beamer. Frank announced this week he will no longer punish his miscreants with “the dawn patrol” but rather by “docking their pay”. Surely some Hoo fan did backflips with that one.

After today, it’s “Schools In Virginia” – 86 … Duke – 0. Duke has officially slipped to 13^th in the ACC behind “open date”. VCU doesn’t even have a FB team but our pal Phineus Teague would like to send his Rugby Club down to play Ted Roof’s boys. Even Sid’s alma mater, St Paul’s, is saying “us too?”