CHAPEL HILL – Even though Larry Fedora wasn’t in town Wednesday, North Carolina’s football staff didn’t miss a beat getting done what it normally would with the head coach on campus.

The sixth-year head coach joined men’s basketball coach Roy Williams, women’s basketball coach Sylvia Hatchell, athletic director Bubba Cunningham and other UNC officials and attorneys in Nashville meeting with the NCAA’s Committee On Infractions.

While Williams and Hatchell remained into Thursday, Fedora returned to Chapel Hill Wednesday night. However, he missed Wednesday, which at least was a pre-scheduled day off for the players.

“We had the mandatory one-day-off-a-week with the players, so it actually worked out pretty well,” defensive coordinator John Papuchis said after Friday morning’s practice. “So staff-wise, it was kind of business as usual. Offensively, they were meeting on certain things, defensively, we were meeting to go through the last days of fall camp and what we wanted to get done – our objectives – and we did some recruiting.”

The schedule was the schedule. Nothing was altered in Fedora’s absence.

“We did what we would normally do, whether I was here or not,” Fedora said.

Even with that said, simply breaking routine at a time when that normally doesn’t happen could have been a bit unsettling to the program, but it wasn’t.

“That wasn’t a major interruption in terms of what the staff was doing,” Papuchis said. “The players were off, anyway.”

As for Nashville, Fedora was jokingly asked if he enjoyed himself while there. His response was a bit more serious.

“There wasn’t much I enjoyed about it, to be honest with you,” he said. “I’d rather been here with my team.”