Lenox Rawlings: Fedora's tasks include unifying fan base

Larry Fedora met his football public in a bar Friday afternoon.

This was no lunch-pail crowd squeezing a little high life out of lunch break. A melting pot of North Carolina donors, fundraisers, bureaucrats, coaches, ex-players and curious fans answered the open invitation by attending Fedora's introductory news conference.

This was no down-the-alley juke joint just off Franklin Street but a private establishment located in the latest Kenan Stadium addition, a 3,000-seat end-zone complex marketed as the Blue Zone.

The Concourse Club bar runs almost from sideline to sideline, with watering stations, beer taps, recessed lights, clusters of pastel-blue sofas and more TV screens than available scholarships.

However you measure rooms, this one's gigantic. A fellow estimated that it must hold at least 2,000 people, since that looked like the number of empty seats whenever TV cameras panned the Blue Zone during the 7-5 season.

Fedora — a Texas cow salesman with a Southern Miss résumé and no-huddle pedigree, a Mack Brown friend who sounds a lot like Mack Brown, only louder — vows to fill those seats with a one-back offense that averaged 38 points this year and with warlike aggression.

"Let's talk a little bit about the things that I know will get you excited," Fedora said. "Let's talk about the Xs and Os. Gen. George S. Patton said this: 'Instead of waiting to see what might develop, attack constantly, vigorously and viciously. Never let up. Never stop. Always attack.' We will always be attacking."

Fedora transmitted high energy and high expectations, trying to establish an upbeat tone for his scheduled seven-year run (the common five-year contract plus two extra years, reflecting Carolina's self-imposed penalties in advance of the eventual NCAA decree).

New athletics director Bubba Cunningham hired Fedora, who will make $1.7 million each year, plus $400,000 as a one-time windfall in January with other raises and bonuses down the line — about double his current income.

When chancellor Holden Thorp fired Butch Davis last summer, Carolina chose to pay a $2.7 million buyout for a clean break instead of invoking the termination-for-cause clauses and fighting over the settlement.

"A lot of schools wanted to hire Larry," Thorp said, "so I think Mr. Cunningham did a good job negotiating a good, competitive contract. Obviously it's less than we're paying coach Davis, so I think it's a deal that makes good sense for the Department of Athletics."

Any deal that puts nine alleged major violations and the taint of academic fraud in the rear-view mirror will work wonders for a university that hasn't been hit with severe probation in 50 years.

Cunningham alluded to "18 months of turmoil" and "this turbulent time" as an episode Fedora can overcome. "We feel Larry Fedora is the coach who can unify our fan base and move us successfully into the future," Cunningham said.

Thorp, target of the angriest Davis supporters, calls his fresh faces home-run hires. "I think people seeing that we're serious about continuing to succeed, that we're serious enough to get these two guys, that we were able to attract them here — I think that goes a lot of the way," Thorp said. "That's not to say there aren't people who are upset with me or with the way things went down, but we'll continue to earn that back."

Fedora promises to hit unfamiliar recruiting ground with his feet and tongue churning right after Southern Miss' Hawaii Bowl on Christmas Eve. He insists that he can outwork rival recruiters.

"I go back to my dad," Fedora said. "When I turned 13, he decided it was time for me to work and got me a job for a bricklayer. Every summer in the state of Texas, I worked construction jobs — and hated every bit of 'em all. My friends were riding their bikes along, going to the swimming pool. But, like I said, I learned a tremendous work ethic from my dad, and no job's too small."

In Fedora's expanding world view, no job's too large, either.