This week’s College Football Corner should be changed and called the College Football Coroner. It’s been the Death of Big Four ACC Football with Wake Forest watching Duke, NC State, and North Carolina burn to the ground. The ACC coaches are lining up to see who will be the first to bite the bullet and be shot down and then be out of the league in a hurry.
Where do we start out this week? If you had to start a list of the HotSeat front runners we could put these guys on the sheet in mid-September.
#1 Ted Roof(Duke)
#2 Larry Coker(Miami)
#3 Chuck Amato(NC State)
#4 John Bunting(North Carolina)
#5 Al Groh(Virginia)
If the season ended today all of the above would be gone. How can you keep these men when all of their programs are going backwards quickly. Roof could well be headed for 0-11. Coach Coker is guilty by association. Larry Coker is coaching at a school where you have to win or you’re GONE. Being in the same state with Florida and Florida State equals suicide. Coker may as well go ahead and turn in his notice. He’s in a can’t win situation. Do anything but 11-1 or 10-2 and your team, in this case the Miami Hurricanes will not measure up, and they are not on the verge of going 11-1 this season.
Say goodbye to Roof and Coker and make room in the Getaway Car for Chuck Amato and John Bunting. NC State is now 1-2 and with 3 huge games coming up(Boston College, Florida State, and Wake Forest). Chuck Amato has announced that Daniel Evans will get the call to start at QB this Saturday night and not all Pack fans are sure that this will turn things around. Will Evans make a difference? His dad Johnny Evans was the MAN at QB back in the 70’s but Johnny was also a strong Punter and Johnny was a pretty tough kid out of High Point over off English Street near Culler’s Store where you have to be tough to see the sun come up or you might just end up in a Pine Box at Cumby’s Funeral Home. Johnny Evans proved he could do the job but to me his boy Daniel looks weak. Kinda like he was a Momma’s Boy. This Evans kid has to be TOUGH. The Pack and their coach Chuck Amato are on the Ropes and 5-7 is now looking to be the best case scenario and 5-7 might become a stretch if Chuck can’t get his Wolfs focused soon. I’d rather have a bunch of kids that were Tough instead of Smart. The Smart kids can end up getting killed, but the TOUGH kids will survive and avoid Cumby’s Funeral Home.
John Bunting got through last week but now he faces trips to Clemson and to Miami. The Heels will be a lot like the Pack and 5-7 would be looking good to Bunting and his his staff today. The Heels could still finish at 2-10 and we will know more after the next two games and we will see how many trucks we need to send over from Cumby’s when the Heels get back to town next Saturday night. In their 45-42 win over Furman last week the Heels had offense agaisnt the I-AA Paladins but the Furman team kept on coming back on the Heels. There’s a big difference between FURMAN AND CLEMSON, although they both are from South Carolina, the Heels will find the team that just beat Florida State is much tougher than the Purple Paladins of Furman. Cam Sexton and Ronnie McGill got the Heels in gear but coach John Bunting is still on the HotSeat and wait till the Clemson runs down the hill and touches Frank Howard’s Rock, the Heels will be calling for Steve Spurrier to come to Chapel Hill and save the day.
Al Groh better have his bags packed up at Virginia after losing to Western Michigan 17-10. Virginia barely got past Wyoming in week #1, 13-12 in OT, and now the Cavs are not the Wahoos any more. There’s nothing to Wahoo about. Virginia and coach Groh are going in Reverse. This will be Groh’s last season in the city that Thomas Jefferson built. Groh may be in as bad a shape as Larry Coker down at Miami. The Cavalier fans got used to winnig with George Welsch. George took the Wahoos to bowl games and they could beat Virginia Tech. The Cavs are heading in the wrong direction. Groh will be gone and all of his coaches will be history too.
Locally Greensboro College got their first “W” of the year with the Pride’s 39-36 OT victory over Maryville, Tenn. The Pride got 338 yards through the air from QB’s Rankins and Bacon, with Bacon conecting for 2 TD tosses and Rod Herbin a local boy out of Smith HS ran for a couple of touchdowns including the game-winner for GC. Elon got 3 TD passes and one TD run from Ragsdale HS grad Wes Pope to beat Presbyterian 28-0.
Guilford got 502 passing yards and 5 TD’s from QB Josh Vogelbach but couldn’t overcome Averett up in Danville, Virginia falling 54-34 on the road. The A&T Aggies also found it tough going on the road up at Hampton Va., dropping to 0-2 after a 48-14 loss to the Pirates. ECU and WCU both found the victory column with the Catamounts easing past Eastern Kentucky 20-17 on a late field goal and ECU had a great second half winning over Memphis 35-20.
In Boone, the Mountaineers made easy work of Mars Hill stomping the Loins 41-0 and Appalachian has re-gained control of the Southern Conference and all of I-AA football. David Jackson a Northeast Guilford grad does the play-by-play for the Apps and his dad Randy Jackson is the sideline reporter.
I like the looks of that North Carolina job. I’ll be up your way the 1st week of December. Any good places to stay in Chapel Hill? What’s the rates at the Governor’s Inn these days? Me and Mike Easley go way back. Look forward to seeing all you HEELS. PS, I’m sure John Bunting will be hunting for a job by then. See ya in December. Coach Butch Davis