SEATTLE (AP) - Dick Baddour cautions that his situation at North Carolina was unique, a rare opportunity to snare a new college football coach at a time when most coaching candidates weren't the least bit willing to chat.

Because of that opportunity, Baddour, the Tar Heels' athletic director, now has a thriving football program ranked in The Associated Press Top 25. His school managed to avoid any missteps during the coaching change two years ago.

"We got a break that our No. 1 interest was available," Baddour said in a phone interview this week. "That's unusual. You're not going to find that."

Scott Woodward, Baddour's counterpart at Washington, would love to follow the tracks Baddour left when the Tar Heels hired Butch Davis at the conclusion of the 2006 season.

"If we had a savior come down I would definitely go down that route," Woodward said.

Woodward is in the beginning stages of a coaching search he hopes will end with the Huskies returning to respectability after foundering during the four-year tenure of Tyrone Willingham. The school announced on Oct. 27 that Willingham would be out as coach, effective the end of the season. The Huskies own a 10-game losing streak and the stigma of being the only winless team in the country.

North Carolina set what some believe should be the new standard for naming a college coach in November 2006 when it announced Davis would take over its struggling program, beginning in 2007. The Tar Heels fired John Bunting a month before their final game of the '06 season and picked Davis as his replacement a few weeks later. Davis was available - he was a television commentator for two seasons after he resigned as coach of the Cleveland Browns in 2004.

Bunting coached the remainder of that season. North Carolina formally introduced Davis as its new coach two days after its 3-9 season ended.

Baddour's staff was so prepared that UNC started selling season tickets the afternoon of the formal introduction. Fans were hit with video e-mail messages asking them to come out and support Davis' first season.

"He was able to hit the ground running and we were able to hit the ground running, saying 'This is our guy, he's working, he's on board,"' Baddour said.

That approach has worked out well. North Carolina is currently 6-2 and ranked 19th in the nation heading into Saturday's game against No. 22 Georgia Tech.

Important during the transition was Davis' ability to quickly pull together a staff and not fall behind in recruiting. He landed a talented class that was ranked among the top 15 in the country by some services.

"It was certainly important for me to get (the job) early, (rather) than to wait until mid-December or mid-January," Davis said this week.

A late hire hampered Washington the last time it faced this process in 2004, when Willingham was brought on in mid-December while the Huskies were coming off a 1-10 season. Recruiting lagged and the Huskies never recovered.

Woodward has said confidentiality is crucial in the search process, but he wouldn't hesitate to announce a new coach before the end of the season.

Baddour said talking with a college head coach at this stage of the season is nearly impossible.

With those conditions, perhaps the leading UW candidate would be Lane Kiffin, who's been unemployed since his messy split from the Oakland Raiders on Sept. 30.

Kiffin spent six years as an assistant in the Pac-10 with Southern California, the last two as the Trojans' offensive coordinator, before becoming the Raiders coach in January 2007. He expressed an interest in the Washington job to The Associated Press on the day it was announced that Willingham would not be returning in 2009.

"It's an organic list, things change," Woodward said of his coaching wish list. "There are no secrets. In this information age you know everyone, you know the world. ... It becomes fit and it becomes who wants to be here. That's the most important thing."