Larry Fedora is 40-25 in his tenure as the University of North Carolina’s head football coach, a solid record at a school mostly known for basketball.
Beyond his on-field success, though, he’s done a good job repairing the image of the program, which was mired in academic scandal when he took the position. Last week he added to his off-field good deeds when he gave a med student a lift to her graduation. But it was actually a lot more than that:
And so Fedora did what any high-profile college football head coach who also gives rides would do: He pulled over and asked Murphy if she’d like a lift to her graduation. Ordinarily, it might have been a suspicious sight: a bearded middle-aged man asking a young woman if she wanted to get in his car.
But Fedora looked familiar enough to Murphy and besides, Murphy said, “My dad recognized him instantly.”
And so they hopped in, Murphy and her father, for the short ride to graduation. Along the way Murphy said her father made some “dad jokes,” asking Fedora if he needed an extra assistant coach. Fedora, meanwhile, told them that he’d go back down the street and pick up the rest of the family, too.
But more hijinks ensued when Murphy realized she’d forgotten graduation tickets, and that more family members might need rides:
So Fedora drove back from Memorial Hall to pick up the rest of Murphy’s family, then drove to Murphy’s apartment for the tickets, and then back to the graduation site, ferrying his passengers with the aplomb of only the most skilled and patient of Uber drivers.
In all, Fedora gave rides to six people, just a guy doing a small good deed. They’d all been strangers before that morning. Now Murphy, who was in New York City on Monday scouting apartments for her residency in internal medicine, has a story to tell, another lasting memory from her graduation day.
Murphy posted the story on Instagram:
It’s nice to read about a head coach offering a ride like this, although there’s probably a chance that had it been one of his own players, it would have been in violation of some obscure NCAA rule. Moreover, it’s just nice to have what appears to be an honest-to-goodness feelgood story from the world of college football.
That it doesn’t involve football itself is probably not a coincidence.
