By: Joe Bray

TarHeelBlue: You inherited a 2-9 Sacred Heart team in 2000 and as head coach led the Pioneers to a 21-1 record over the next two seasons, including a perfect 11-0 record last year that led to the NCAA Division I-AA Mid-Major national title. What plan did you follow to achieve that turnaround?

Coach Fleming: "Your first chance as a head coach is kind of like flying by the seat of your pants. It involves taking a lot of experience as an assistant, taking away from each place you've worked what you liked and leaving behind what you didn't like. When I took over the job I'd been coaching for fifteen years.

"You take what you've learned organizationally, motivationally, X's and O's and then you see if your philosophy is going to work.

"My plan was simply to go to the kids and tell them we're not here to rebuild, we're going to take what we've got here and we're going to win now. There was a lot of positive reinforcement.

"'Winning is a matter of will' is the approach I took in that first meeting. I told them we're going to control the things that we can control, then I laid those things out to them.

"I told them we were going to out work people, we were going to pay a price to earn the privilege of playing the great game of football in the fall.

"When I took the job it was during winter conditioning and just before spring practice. I told the team they would be going through a structured program that would allow each of them to become the best football player they could become. I emphasized to them that my focus was on winning immediately.

"I also made sure that my assistants shared my philosophy and my passion for the game. My philosophy is to coach them hard and get them to play hard for sixty minutes. You have to be able to run the football, play great defense and have great special teams. I made sure my coaches gave my players everything they needed to become the best players they could be.

"We worked on every possible scenario in practice, so that when a situation came up in a game, we would have already played it through in our minds."

TarHeelBlue: What was your primary focus those first few weeks?

Coach Fleming: "We took a short-term, day-by-day focus to things. We wanted to be disciplined enough to attack each segment of the team's development on a daily basis during practice, then on a play-by-play basis during a game. The kids really bought into it.

"I went out and looked for young, hungry assistants who were anxious to coach great kids. We immediately started working with the guys who were already in the program while addressing our personnel needs.

"We signed a junior college quarterback, which was a critical need. We had a scholarship basketball player (DeVeren Johnson), who approached me about playing football. I told him to finish basketball, to play as hard as he could, and if he did that, come back and talk to me.

"I told him that if he did that, then made every practice in the spring, I would consider giving him an opportunity in the fall. He did all I asked of him and ended up signing with the Dallas Cowboys as a seventh-round pick. That's pretty good out of Sacred Heart University.

"I told recruits that if you come here, we'll coach you hard, we'll coach you well, and we'll put you in a position to win games.

"I think there was a good connection between me and my guys, and the momentum just started to build. The guys were hungry to win, and we had some good team leaders. They were tired of losing, so they did everything we asked them to do."

TarHeelBlue: What was your approach to strength and conditioning?

Coach Fleming: "I took my approach to strength and conditioning from Jeff Connors' program, a program which I've believed in since my East Carolina days. Coach Connors works on both the body and the mind. They bought into it, and they worked as hard as the kids at ECU did. They worked as hard as the kids at Carolina work.

"From the first game on, it was a continually evolving thing. That first year we went 10-1, and it was really interesting from a coaching perspective to watch a team go from not knowing how to win to learning to how to win, then expecting to win again and again, then be absolutely devastated by losing a game.

"That evolvement was wild. It was quite a thing to witness in seven short months. They are a special group of kids."

TarHeelBlue: Does your head coaching experience give you a little more insight into the challenges facing Coach Bunting?

Coach Fleming: "No question about it.

"Head coach is a position that, until you sit in that chair, you don't realize how exhausting it can become. Most assistants defer a final decision to the head man. I remember sitting there some times thinking, 'I don't have to be involved in every thing.' I need to know about it, but I don't have to make every decision. Some times it can get very tiring.

"In my situation at Sacred Heart, I was dealing with very young guys as assistant coaches, so I had to go ahead and handle many of the issues that came up. At North Carolina, the difference is you've got a lot of guys here with a lot of experiences, guys who've been in a lot of games in a lot of different situations."

TarHeelBlue: How well does your defensive philosophy mesh with those of Coach Bunting and Coach Huxtable?

Coach Fleming: "Perfectly.

"The things that are shared whole-heartedly are: you've go to love to play the game; you've got to be physical; and you've got to play hard. Those three things are all agreed upon.

"I don't think any of us will say we're gurus, that we can out scheme everybody, but the one thing we'll do is get people to play hard. The heart and soul aspect of the game is something we all share.

"That had a lot to do with my decision to come here. I believe in everything John Bunting stands for. He's a tough, hard-nosed guy that loves kids. That's a critical combination to me. He cares for those kids that play for him. I've been around too many coaches that don't.

"When you've got that combination and you give it time to get the right guys in the program, success is going to be inevitable."

TarHeelBlue: You mentioned how hard Coach Bunting works. Does his energy flow down to the assistants and on to the players?

Coach Fleming: "Sure it does. There's a saying that the speed of the leader determines the rate of the pack.

"No matter how you cut it, when you're the head football coach, that team takes your personality. If they take Bunting's personality, then I think they're going to be a pretty good football team.

"When I looked at taking the job, a determining factor was seeing him take an 0-3 team last year and bow it up. That's not the sign of a guy that hits the panic button. It's the sign of a guy that says 'OK guys, we've got Florida State this week, let's get the job done. Let's go win one.'

"You face a lot of adversity when you're 0-3. I know Gunter (Brewer) really well. I talked to him last year at that time, and it was down in the dumps time. Coach Bunting did a great job holding that team together.

"He loves the game, he respects the game, he wants to see the game honored and respected in the way it's played. He's a tough guy, and he's got a lot of love in his heart for the people who are associated with the program. He also has a great love in his heart for the University of North Carolina.

"It's his heartbeat that makes the whole thing go."

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Part II, Wednesday, July 17: Coach Fleming takes a look at each of his defensive backs, then talks about communicating with today's players, plus his special teams role.

Part III, Friday, July 19: Coach Fleming discusses the differences between the cornerback and safety positions, the "quarterback" of the secondary, staff chemistry, recruiting and more.