We curse the clock as we watch it grind along at a pace that pinches on our nerve endings during those days when little, if anything, goes to our liking.

We let our minds carry us into the future, one which there is no guarantee we will ever see. Nothing is promised, yet we often waste our most precious commodity getting ahead of ourselves.

Carolina football coach Butch Davis has said "never again" to such behavior.

More than a year ago, he underwent chemotherapy for cancer. Suddenly, he had discovered the value of time and the lack of any promise to any of us.

"Even the cancer deal has made me a much, much better coach," Davis said. "I have a greater appreciation for every day and the relationships. I treasure the moments I spend with my wife and my son, but I treasure the moments I go down and spend in the locker room and the weight room with the players. When you think you might not have that opportunity, you don't take any of them for granted."

Given this scenario, it's easy to understand the frustration he feels at the time wasted during his first season as the Tar Heels' coach.

There really was not much anyone could have done differently. A new coach and staff have no choice but to spend a certain amount of time learning the players.

"We went through a significant amount of time last year -- wasted time -- where we were experimenting with players, not just in the spring but during the season," Davis said. "We moved two running backs to corner. You want to talk about a baptism under fire, go from being the second- or third-team running back and about five plays a game to all of a sudden you're playing (cornerback) in front of 65,000 and you're playing all the time and had no spring practice and no training camp to perfect any kind of techniques. We did way too much of that."

A year's experience revealed much.

"I look back at that first spring practice and see how little we actually got accomplished," Davis said.

"We spent time trying to learn everybody's name. You go from one spring practice where you're trying to teach guys how to stand in the huddle. ... The second spring practice, you're almost into calculus compared to the first one.

"You're off and running. More than anything else, we knew more about our players. You were able to have a lot more productive off-season. You were able to tailor make things for guys," he said. "The whole off-season thing was so dramatically more productive than it was the first year."

Carolina's football team had a heavy dose of freshmen and red-shirt freshmen spread throughout the lineup last season, kids getting their first taste of football at the Div. I level. That was a legitimate excuse for winning only four of 12 games.

But, for those who have forgotten or were never there to see it, the season was far from a failure.

The Tar Heels played with a passion and a collective desire seen only periodically since the days Mack Brown coached Carolina. The fans appreciated the effort so much they gave the team a standing ovation after a loss. And UNC came tantalizingly close to winning enough games to play in a bowl.

The fans also stayed to the end of games and, for the most part, filled the stadium in all the home games.

If there were counters to wasted time last year, they were the attitude and manner in which the kids took instruction and did their best to execute what they had been taught.

Davis appreciates his first UNC team for that effort.

"One of the things I give the football players ... they bought in instantly," he said. "It didn't take very much persuasion from me or my coaching staff to get them to the idea that, if you want to be good, it's going to take a passionate commitment. You've got to want to be a football player and you've got to want to do things the right way."

From that standpoint, he said, his staff have been extraordinarily fortunate.

"Half the time, they didn't know what they were doing, but they played hard. They played fast. They tried to hit everything that moved," Davis said. "Hopefully, this year they will play smarter and faster, as well as just being better athletes."

No one honestly can say how this year's team will do as far as wins and loses, but this much can be said: Neither Davis nor his coaching staff or players will be wasting any time.