And I'll keep this world/

from draggin' me down

Gonna stand my ground, /

and I won't back down.

No, I wont back down."

Butch Davis and his University of North Carolina football team are hurting in a way many of the athletes may never have hurt before. Most of them come from winning traditions in high school, and losing 30-27 to Florida State on national television Thursday at Kenan Stadium was a shock to the system.

Just as this team has gotten over past mistakes and gotten better in the last month -- and it has -- these kids will eventually overcome this kick to the gut.

"We have to learn from it," senior defensive end E.J. Wilson said. "We had them down and should have just stepped on the jugular. I hope this changes the season for the better. I hope we watch the film and see what kind of defense and what kind of team we know we are."

Fans, media, sometimes even administrators, are impatient. They often fail to realize just how difficult it is to rectify 10 years of bad luck and mismanagement in a football program.

Mack Brown, who now has won a national championship at Texas (and may see his Longhorns play for another one in January,) went 2-20 his first two seasons at UNC. It took him about five years to recruit enough of the athletes required to compete at a high level on a consistent basis.

Bill Dooley had a similar experience before winning the ACC title.

Davis knows a good player when he sees one, and he is recruiting them in a relentless fashion.

Today, it may seem easy to dismiss this team as a failure, as lacking talent, but that would be short-sighted and simply wrong.

Did the defense blow it on Thursday against FSU? To some degree, yes.

But Seminole quarterback Christian Ponder and the FSU offense entered this game as some of the nation's best. Florida State's problems had been with defense, and Carolina exploited that effectively.

Twenty-seven points should have been enough to win, considering Carolina's powerful defense. Thursday night, it was not.

That means Carolina still has work to do.

The loss does not erase the fact that this team is now at least 50 percent better, in terms of quality athletes on the roster, than when Davis arrived in November 2006.

Needing to bounce back at Virginia Tech next Thursday night on national TV is not the ideal scenario, at least not to observers outside the UNC program.

But, if Davis is the man I believe him to be, this team will not back down. It may lose to Virginia Tech. It may lose to Duke. But it is not going to quit. It won't back down.

In two and one-half years, Davis' Tar Heels have played with great effort, if not always with the proper execution.

Few people want to hear about the injuries that could have decimated this team, about how the coaching staff has held it together and turned backups into functional players at a high level. That reconstructed offensive line moved Florida State off the ball.

Think about that for a minute.

Davis lost four starters on the offensive line before the season began. Yet the Tar Heels have not backed down. The offensive line that has taken so much abuse for learning on the job is responding.

Shaun Draughn is suddenly a different, effective running back.

Fans who love Tar Heel football are still hurting today.

That's OK. It just shows you care.

But the fans cannot back down, either.

Do you just give up when the unexpected in life knocks you down? Are you that rare person who has everything unfold just as planned, every day?

This column is not an excuse for Davis or an apology for fans. Neither is mine to give, nor do I feel they are necessary.

Here is why: Davis will not back down. UNC will build a powerful, winning football program the school and alumni will be proud to call theirs.

"Sometimes, a lot of things that you go through as a football team and a program, you can't script this," Davis said. "You have to go through these kind of things. ... As you are building a program, you build common experience. A lot of lessons you learn, they are bitter; they are painful; they are not fun to go through, but they are things you have to go through."

Davis says that he will keep his team headed in the proper direction, regardless of what any outside opinion is expressed in the media and on Internet message boards.

"You're always talking to your kids about realism," Davis said. "Fans, alumni, everybody deals in potential and expectations, all those kinds of things.

"Our kids are practicing hard. They're sick that we lost. They're going to look at the film and see that we were better than we were three weeks ago. As a coach, sometimes that is about all that you can ask. Is your team getting better? We improved offensively. We may have taken step back. We'll learn something from it, and we'll be a better football team because of it."