Ron Rivera, the new coach of Charlotte’s Panthers, is confusing to me. I’ve heard that he doesn’t interview well for jobs and that’s why he hasn’t gotten a head coaching job until now. By all accounts, he did well at his press conference and by all accounts, former players like him and see him as a great motivator.

He supposedly didn’t get along with Bears coach Lovie Smith. In fact, there were reports that the two had to be separated from a physical altercation. Rivera, despite many Bears fans preferring him over Smith, got the ax in Chicago a few years ago.

Rivera is certainly a solid defensive coach but, as Redskins fans know, Jim Zorn was a solid offensive coach too. It doesn’t always translate to being a good head coach.

Rivera may turn out to be a solid pick but many Panther fans (after four straight defensive-minded coaches hired as the head man) understandably would have liked a higher-profile, offensive-minded guy like Harbaugh (who wasn’t considered).

Perhaps Rivera can put together a good staff to get the offense moving again. (Names floating around for offensive coordinator are Rob Chudzinski, Marc Trestman and Ron Turner.)

While I would like to see Russ Grimm get a head coaching job somewhere, insiders speak highly of Rivera and he’ll have a young team to mold. It doesn’t take as long to turn NFL teams around anymore so anything is possible. And, remember, the Panthers have the first pick.

In just the second ACC contest of the year, North Carolina is facing one of only two teams predicted to finish ahead of the Tar Heels in Chapel Hill Thursday night.

Virginia Tech, picked by ACC writers to finish second in the league to Duke, has won six games in row including a 71-59 ACC win over Florida State Saturday. All-ACC selection Malcolm Delaney is leading the way offensively and Jeff Allen is the leading defender and rebounder.

Carolina stands at 11-4 including an ugly win in Virginia Saturday.

“Our losses were against good teams but we just didn’t play as well as we needed to play,” UNC coach Roy Williams said during a teleconference Monday. “I think now the guys are understanding that we gotta step up and play. We’re going to get everybody’s best shot Nobody is going to roll over just because we’re North Carolina.”

Williams said he was proud of the tenacity it took of coming from 11 down against the Cavaliers when things weren’t going well for them.

“Just because we haven’t played well the last six minutes doesnt mean we can’t play well the next six minutes,” Williams said, adding that coaches try to get the players to focus on the next play. “I told them at halftime (of the Virginia game) ‘that’s about as bad as we can play.’ I told them at the 10 minute mark ‘we’ve been awful but we’re still here and have a chance.’ That’s been important to our team and will continue to be important.”

Now that the ACC season has begun, don’t expect NC State coach Sidney Lowe to change the way he’s playing his point guards. He says both are getting better and settling in.

Many observers had expected freshman Ryan Harrow to have replaced senior starter Javier Gonzalez by now but it hasn’t happened even though Harrow is averaging about two more minutes a game than Gonzalez.

“It’s going to take both of those guys to play well for us,” Lowe said. “They have to be ready to go and provide some direction on the floor and keep the push going. I’m very pleased with both of them right now.”

Harrow has 52 assists compared to Gonzalez’ 32 assists and is averaging 11 points a game compared to 5 points a game for Gonzalez. Still, Gonzalez has started every game.

Perhaps some senior leadership and the sense of paying dues plays into that decision. Lowe says that Gonzalez is pushing the ball up the floor better of late so, unless Lowe is playing possum, don’t expect Harrow to start anytime soon.

The State team left early today to avoid weather on its trip to Chestnut Hill to play Boston College Tuesday at 9 p.m.

The TV announcers kept talking about what a good game the UNC at Virginia game was. And I normally like lower scoring, fewer possession games. But this was not a good game.

It was a good 62-56 win for the Tar Heels, who rallied from 11 down in the second half to win a road game to start the ACC season. But this was not a good game.

This was a game that was tied with 2:56 to go and was a one-point game with 38 seconds to go. But this was not a good game.

Neither team shot very well. And while it was close at the end, the game didn’t really seem close throughout. Carolina had a big lead early and Virginia had a big lead in the second half.

The 12-minute stretch during the middle of the game when Carolina scored just two points was like watching paint dry. Despite the futility, the Cavaliers came out of the 12 minutes with only an eight-point lead.

The game did show that Carolina can hit free throws – especially with John Henson on the bench as the Heels canned 14 of their last 16 from the line.

And the game did show that this Carolina team, when it gets behind, is tougher than last year’s team. This team is willing to grind it out and keep playing its game until something breaks for them.

For more on the Virginia game, please click here.

With a little time on their hands during break, the North Carolina Tar Heel players have been pulling pranks on one another.

One of the latest comes at the hands of the subs who come in at the end of games to mop up to a chorus of “shoot, shoot” from the Carolina students living out their George Plimpton-like dreams. The victim was John Henson whose car was covered with 2400 sticky notes. Click here for video.

The players – Daniel Bolick, Stewart Cooper, DJ Johnston, Patrick Crouch and David Dupont – have dubbed themselves “Blue Steel.” Henson thought the culprits were Larry Drew and Justin Watts who had earlier been the victims of pranks themselves.

A retaliation attack of cotton balls, baby powder and Saran Wrap was made on Johnston’s car today.

Players and coaches alike seem to have enjoyed the hijinks and say that this team has good chemistry. The Tar Heels take on Virginia to open the ACC season at noon
Saturday.

Just nine months ago the feds closed an 18-month case against the Orange County Schools for supposedly shortchanging girls athletic teams. The U.S. Office for Civil Rights investigated gender equity in the district’s athletics programs and found the complaint to be groundless. Again, it took a year and a half for them to investigate and find the complaint groundless.

Now the feds are coming after the Wake County Schools based on an accusation from the National Women’s Law Center that Wake and 11 other school systems across the country have failed to provide high school girls with equal opportunities as boys to play interscholastic sports.

Title IX was a commendable venture when it started in 1972. There were few opportunities for girl athletes. Now that there are lots of opportunities, radical feminist groups like the National Women’s Law Center are unnecessarily politicizing Title IX and pushing it to the extremes.

What they and the feds don’t want to admit is that men and women are different. While women outnumber men about 60 percent to 40 percent in society, men care more about athletics in general than women. They watch sports more and they play sports more. They have more interest in sports and they are generally better at sports than women. Take the best male athlete and the best female athlete in any sport and compare.

Colleges are especially hurt by Title IX today. Many more women are attending universities today than they did in 1972. So, the percentage of women’s teams have had to increase yet men remain more interested in athletics than women. Over a 15-year period in the ’90s and ‘2000s, something like 6,000 opportunities for women were added while something like 20,000 opportunities for men were lost.

Schools are forced to field women’s teams at the expense of men’s teams because of overzealous social engineering. Benefitting a handful of female students at the expense of a bunch of male students doesn’t seem fair to me. And Title IX was meant to be about fairness, wasn’t it?

Fielding women’s teams where there is no wide interest of potential players or little interest of fans creates a financial burden on athletic budgets.

If a high school or college has 60 percent females, do they really need 60 percent of the athletic opportunites? If you take 100 women and 100 men and ask them about their interests, I bet more than 90 percent of the men would include sports in their first two or three interests whereas I bet the number of women including sports would be half that, especially when you are talking about playing sports. Yet females have to have more of the sports opportunities?

A 10-year-old case against the Tacoma, Wash. school district has been recently settled. Someone wasn’t happy that while the school district had 51 percent males, 57 percent of athletes in the district were males. Today, athletic participation by males is 50 percent. So, you would think that men and women are equally interested in sports. In order to placate the feds, girls’ teams are now fielded in water polo, wrestling and, get this, bowling. There are 12 girls’ athletic teams now and 10 boys’ athletic teams. Really? So, are girls now suddenly more interested in sports than boys?

I haven’t seen the big drumbeat for women’s wrestling but I guess if you dress ’em up like the ones on TV, you’ll at least have some male fans showing up to watch.

At my son’s preschool, not one teacher or administrator is male. I assume this is because of a disproportionate interest of females to have those jobs and not some plot against men. But maybe I should call the feds in for an 18-month investigation just to make sure.

University of North Carolina sophomore outfielder Brian Goodwin will transfer to Miami-Dade Community College for the 2011 season. The Rocky Mount native started all 60 games last year, batted .291 and was a Louisville Slugger Freshman All-America.

Goodwin had been suspended from the team this season due to academic reasons. By playing at a community college, he would be available for the pro baseball draft in June. He could also opt to transfer back to a four-year school after the spring semester. No word if either UNC or Goodwin would be interested in his return.