Monday, October 16, 2006

Deep in the heart of Texas

At a kickoff breakfast for the 2007 Emerging Issues Forum on creativity in higher education one day last week in Raleigh, the discussion briefly turned to the pressure on major universities to hire a winning football coach.
Former University of Texas Board of Regents Chairman Charles Miller was introduced as a man who once told a wealthy and powerful University of Texas fan that if he wanted to complain about the coach, he should call the coach, not Miller.
So when Miller got up to speak, he casually mentioned that Texas had come to North Carolina to hire a successful coach – an obvious reference to former UNC Chapel Hill Coach Mack Brown, now the Longhorns’ head coach.
Former Gov. Jim Hunt, chairman of the Emerging Issues Forum at N.C. State and a rabid Wolfpack fan (decked out in a bright red N.C. State tie), immediately sang out, “And we’re glad you got him.”
At the other end of the table from Hunt, UNC System President Erskine Bowles, an avid Tar Heels fan, sang right back, “Send him back!”

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