Butch Davis is in need of a miracle against LSU today in Atlanta and dangerously close to the same predicament on the job front.
With Friday's announcement by North Carolina that as many as 13 players will be withheld from participation in the opening game, the potential downside of a shameful summer for the school escalated immeasurably for Davis.
At the outset of his fourth season, Davis neither has won big nor adequately supervised the program.
There's no viable argument to the contrary after Fiasco Friday.
The guy has an 11-13 ACC record in what has been one of the weakest leagues in the country during the last few seasons. He's 20-18 overall, 0-3 against N.C. State and has lost two straight bowl games to so-so foes at Charlotte in front of what amounted to home-field audiences.
Add to that the now obvious fact that some of North Carolina's best players either can't comprehend or just don't care about the rules of eligibility, and Davis should consider himself fortunate that school and UNC System administrators didn't tell him to skip the trip to Atlanta, too.
Asked Friday if Davis' job was in jeopardy, athletic director Dick Baddour said: "No."
Why not?
"I think he's a strong leader. I think he's doing a tremendous job with the program, and we have to address these issues, and we will."
But for $2 million annually - plus a ton more than that figure in combined salaries for Davis' assistants and vast support staff - the school has every right to expect a better job performance.
When North Carolina forked over a fortune to lure Davis to replace John Bunting, the school's leaders figured they were getting a coach who would lead the Tar Heels into the top 10 rankings and do it without severely damaging their image as an upstanding athletic citizen.
So much for that school of thought.
After three years, the program has been average at best on the field, and now the NCAA and the school are investigating wrongdoing.
For Davis to wriggle free of this jam, he'd better win nine or 10 games and win 'em by playing skinny math majors with calculators in their shirt pockets, if that's what it takes.
Normally, players wind up shouldering most of the pressure during inflammatory seasons of this nature. But for the remainder of 2010 at Carolina, the pressure will be squarely on Davis and his staff, as it should be.
A bad record and more bad news in the probes will be the one-two knockout combination that signals another coaching change.
If it comes to that, Davis won't easily resurrect his career, although he may not need to financially. But the program wouldn't recover very quickly, either.
Even a big upset win tonight won't remove the stain of what has happened, nor will it make the remainder of the season any less nerve-racking.
Staff writer Robbi Pickeral contributed to this report.
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