UNC’s A.D. News: What Does It Mean?
A most interesting move
UNC announced a transition from A.D. Bubba Cunningham to NASCAR executive Steve Newmark on Wednedsay and it’s interesting on any number of levels.
First, it makes sense because the entire nature of collegiate sports has changed. Cunningham has done a reasonable job at UNC, but he’s 63, and massive change is not easy at any point in a career.
Newmark will take over next summer while Cunningham will transition into a senior adviser, which you could probably reasonably translate as being kicked upstairs.
That leads us to the second probable reason why UNC made the move: Cunningham hasn’t exactly killed it with his most important hires.
Larry Fedora didn’t exactly kill it in Chapel Hill and his replacement, Mack Brown, was a retread. He did well at UNC from 1988-1997 but his second time through wasn’t nearly as rewarding, particularly at the end when things just fell apart.
After hiring an elderly retread, we thought Cunningham would go younger, but he again went with the social security hire, taking on NFL legend Bill Belichick. His relationship with Jordon Hudson has overshadowed his move to UNC to an extent and also underscored the fact that there is a 49-year age gap between them, which sort of makes people focus on Belichick being 73. He’s inherently a short-timer.
We don’t know if the criticism of how Cunningham handled the Selection Committee contributed, or the criticism of UNC getting in when virtually no one expected them too, which also earned Cunningham a significant bonus.
Finally, there’s Hubert Davis, who has tried to replace Roy Williams and, to be kind, has not done it so well. He could certainly turn it around but so far, has he?
Davis really needs a solid season and has put together a very weak schedule, with non-conference games against the likes of Central Arkansas, Radford, NCCU, Navey, St. Bonaventure, Georgetown, USC Upstate, ETSU and ECU (on the bright side, UNC will also play Kansas, Michgian State, Kentucky and Ohio State, though the Kentucky game is mandated by the ACC/SEC Challenge).
He has not been consistently excellent, and fans are getting restless which will get eventually round on the A.D., no matter who is in the office when they do.
UNC is smart to get ahead of the whole college-sports-is-changing-too-fast business, but it wouldn’t surprise us if they looked at the problems with Davis and Belichick and just thought...maybe Bubba shouldn’t make any more hires.
It’s just a hop, skip and jump from there to turn him into an adviser.
In fairness to Cunningham, Williams more or less forced him to hire Davis and he probably had little to no idea about Hudson.
Doe UNC still hold him in esteem?
Probably. But will they let him make another significant hire?
Given his awful track record...probably not.
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