I can see this is going to be a long road, though all this flurry could be because we are early in the process. I can only hope it slows down because I will have a lot of troube keeping pace otherwise. Here is what have at the end of the second day.
Turns out I was probably right about Butch Davis. Caulton Tudor took it upon himself to contact Davis at his home in Ohio and Davis spoke about returning to coaching in general terms not mentioning UNC specifically:
"For me to say anything at all would be extremely premature. All I’m willing to say is that North Carolina’s a great job in my opinion," Davis said. "I’m just saying in the most general sense, I want to get back in coaching, and that could be either the college level or the NFL."
That seems to be a little scaled back from the earlier statement to the Charlotte Observer. I think he is just playing the PR game and he is correct in pointing out it is still early in the process. If UNC learned anything from the NC State basketball search they will deal with Davis right away and get a definitive, out of the public eye indication of his intentions so the search does not get bogged down with an embarassing courtship and rejection.
As for the process itself, Dick Baddour has indicated he will not use a formal search committee to find a new coach. And in response to that news, a good portion of the UNC fanbase threw up in their mouth a little:
"Hiring at this level is a lot about being able to maintain a level of confidence, so not having a large formal committee is helpful in the sense that you decrease the opportunity for speculation and word getting out — and thereby discouraging qualified applicants," Baddour said. "It's worthwhile to have the knowledge and experience and expertise of others, but you can get that without a formal committee."
I honestly think the N&O printed that headline just to scare UNC fans to the death. Actually what Baddour says here makes sense. A large formalized committee has certain pitfalls, the most prominent being the leaking of information to the media. Those kinds of leaks, which I pointed out earlier in reference to the Fayeteville Observer's "source" can have a detrimental impact on a search of this nature. It should also be noted that even the presence of a committee would not necessarily take decision out of Baddour's hands unless James Moeser or Erskine Bowles dictated it would be that way. If my understanding of the hierarchy at UNC is correct Baddour is still the AD and it is still his hire to make. One can only hope he does a lot of listening to very knowledgeable people and makes a decision based on that information not on his own.