By Adam Lucas

Adam Lucas: What interested you about the University of North Carolina?

Butch Davis: There are several things that really caught my attention. For a long time coaching at other places, I looked at it as a sleeping giant. I thought that it was an outstanding institution. It has great academic credibility that is extraordinarily important when you're in the homes and you're selling, recruiting, and talking to young student-athletes about coming to school. It's unparalleled. It also has incredible facilities, tremendous access to athletes in the state, and you just always felt like it was a great place to live and to raise a family. So Carolina was an extraordinarily exciting opportunity.

AL: What are your goals for this program both in the conference and nationally?

BD: The first thing you do is not to set a timeline. I've been a part of the Super Bowl championship teams with the Dallas Cowboys and been a part of building the Miami program and seeing what a national championship program is like. You tell the student-athletes it's a process. There's a lot of things that have to get put in place. First and foremost is getting and attracting a great assistant coaching staff. I want a group of guys who come in who are passionate, love Carolina, love the student-athletes. And then getting to know the current players and teaching them the things they're going to need to turn this into a winning program.

AL: When you were in the process of gathering information about Carolina, with whom did you speak to provide you with some background info on Carolina?

BD: I've got a huge network of people. When you're in the football business for 32 years, you know an awful lot of coaches. You know players that played at Carolina; you know people that have played against Carolina. I reached out to some conference commissioners about what it's like to be the head coach at the University of North Carolina. I've talked to some coaches who have coached against Carolina, and almost every single person was extraordinarily positive about it. They thought it was a great opportunity. When you talk to people about Carolina, the thing that really jumps out at you is everybody talks about what terrific potential it has and the possibilities that exist to have a first-class, successful program.

AL: What are the hallmarks of a great, first-class program?

BD: Certainly consistency is one of them. You want to win, (and) you want to win with consistency. You want to graduate your student-athletes; I think that's extraordinarily important. You want to build a family environment. Once the players graduate and they leave and they go on--hopefully some to NFL careers, others into successful business ventures--I want them all to love coming back here. Once they're a North Carolina Tar Heel, they're a part of the program, not only while they're here, but for many, many years after and that they'll be welcomed back. We'll love seeing them in the springtime; we'll love seeing them on the sidelines. We want them to be our best ambassadors to help us continue to build on the tradition of Carolina football.

AL: Since you were named the head coach, what has your information-gathering process been like? What kinds of things have you been doing to get familiar with the conference and everything else?

BD: I've spent the majority of the time since being named the head coach getting familiar with recruiting, reading as many of the publications, networking, calling other college coaches, finding out about specific athletes in the North Carolina area. The No. 1 priority of every single recruiting class is to try to get absolutely every single kid you can get on your football team to be from North Carolina. The other thing I've tried to do is spend time assessing the current staff, look at their backgrounds and finding out a little bit more about them. I've done the same thing with some of the support people--finding out about the strength and conditioning, the trainer, people like that--because the more you know about the people who are involved in Carolina football, then you can start moving forward and start making decisions about what direction we want to go.

AL: Coming in during an important recruiting period with a few months here, what will you do first recruiting-wise?

BD: Certainly the very first thing is to reach out to all of the athletes who have already committed to the University of North Carolina, to talk to them. That's been one of the frustrating things is to have been named as the next head coach, but yet because of NCAA restrictions, not being able to call or write and to get to know them. I absolutely can't wait to sit in their homes, talk to them, talk to their parents, and let them get to know me. I want to get on the road and start to build those relationships with high school coaches throughout the state of North Carolina. I will get to know all the student-athletes who are committed as well as the ones currently already on the football team.

The rest of this interview is available exclusively in the next issue of Tar Heel Monthly.

AL: What selling points does North Carolina have for a high school recruit?

BD: The sky is the limit for Carolina. I think any student-athlete would love the opportunity to play here. It has a great academic reputation and that is extraordinarily important. Parents want their children to come to school, play football and graduate. Certainly the facilities are as fine as any university in the United States. The weather is outstanding. We are going to have a coaching staff that these players are going to absolutely love to play for. They will be people who care about them as individuals. They'll care about them as much in the classroom as they do in the practice field and in the stadium.

AL: You've been away from the recruiting game for five or six years. How much has it changed, and what will you do to make sure you're familiar with all those changes?

BD: I have my 13-year-old son working on my text messaging, because that's probably really the only different thing that coaches rely on today. He's a master at it, and if I can get to be half as good as he is, that will be just fine. Football players are football players, when you go out and recruit, you're looking for guys who absolutely love the game. There are certainly recruiting hotbeds, and one of the things that is so attractive about this job is there are outstanding high school football players in the state of North Carolina. You don't have to go 500-1,000 miles. You don't have to go coast-to-coast. We can find many great players in our own backyard, and that's certainly where we're going to start.

Adam Lucas's third book on Carolina basketball, The Best Game Ever, chronicles the 1957 national championship season and is available now. His previous books include Going Home Again, focusing on Roy Williams's return to Carolina, and Led By Their Dreams, a collaboration with Steve Kirschner and Matt Bowers on the 2005 championship team.