Zook firing omen for Bunting

So you didn't watch any college football this past weekend.

You decide that this coming Saturday is your chance to catch up.

Armed with remote in hand, you flip on Saturday's matchup between Florida and Georgia.

Seeing Coach Ron Zook on the Gator sideline fits into the college football world you skipped out on last week. And there's no reason it shouldn't.

Except that he's no longer Florida's head coach.

Zook was fired Monday, effective at season's end.

He will coach his last four regular season games at Florida as a lame duck.

It's an ugly situation - one that was brought on by a lack of success on the field and negative incidents off of it.

That very combination has North Carolina coach John Bunting floundering in his fourth year at the helm.

Comparing Bunting's situation with Zook's shows that the UNC coach soon could be scheduling more time at the golf course than the football field.

In 2002, Zook took over an upper-echelon Florida team from Steve Spurrier. He finished 8-5 and lost in the Outback Bowl each year.

Fine years for most programs, but Gator fans expect national titles, not bowl losses.

In 2001, Bunting took over a mediocre team from Carl Torbush, overcame a slow start and won the Peach Bowl. He has since failed to meet even the tempered expectations of UNC fans.

Zook's major off-field theatrics came in September, when he was asked to resolve a dispute between several football players and fraternity members of Pi Kappa Phi. Zook's attempt to defuse the situation involved threatening the fraternity members.

For UNC, the drama started when punter David Wooldridge was charged with stealing several hundred dollars' worth of memory drives from Wal-Mart earlier this season. And in the week following UNC's thrilling victory against N.C. State on Oct. 9, three Tar Heels were cited for marijuana possession and indefinitely suspended from the team.

One could argue that the players, not the coach, were at fault - but all four were Bunting recruits. The coach ultimately is accountable for the actions of his players.

With both coaches on shaky ground, Zook was the first to fall.

This past Saturday, the Gators lost to Mississippi State, 38-31.

That seems reasonable until you realize that the Bulldogs had lost six consecutive games and were the worst team in the SEC, dropping games to noted football powerhouses like Vanderbilt and Maine.

Saturday's game gave Florida Director of Athletics Jeremy Foley the final imperative he needed to make a change.

Many Tar Heel football fans thought last year's season-ending loss to Duke signaled the end of the John Bunting era. But Bunting received another chance from Director of Athletics Dick Baddour, creating rampant speculation regarding the coach's job security.

After seven games, UNC has proven itself inconsistent. There's no way of knowing whether Saturday's game against No. 4 Miami will feature a valiant losing effort by the Tar Heels or fans who are forced to entertain themselves by guessing when the Hurricanes will blow by the half-century mark.

The hot water Bunting finds himself in is simmering, and it's not going to take much for it to boil over.

Bunting better be ready for the Duke game Nov. 20 - it might just be his Mississippi State.

Contact Ben Couch at bcouch@email.unc.edu.