There was an emergency in the North Carolina football program in the summer 2009.
Deborah Crowder, architect of a
massive and long-lasting academic sham, was retiring. Before she left
the school, the Tar Heels needed her for one more round of bailouts.
As a member of the academic
support staff urgently emailed a director of football operations: "Ms.
Crowder is retiring at the end of July . . . if the guys papers are not
in . . . I would expect D's or C's at best. Most need better than that .
. . ALL WORK FROM THE AFAM DEPT. MUST BE DONE AND TURNED IN ON THE LAST
DAY OF CLASS."
View gallery
.(AP/Gerry Broome)
The players in question needed
A's and B's from Crowder in African and Afro-American Studies classes in
order to be eligible to play for the Tar Heels. And that's what she was
there to provide in exchange for little or no work – year after year,
player after player, for football and basketball and other sports as
well. Regular students also benefited from a scheme that disgraces a
once-proud university, but athletes flocked to her no-show classes in
disproportionate numbers.
That email was part of a 131-page report spearheaded by independent
investigator Kenneth Wainstein that was released by UNC on Wednesday.
The report laid bare North Carolina's abdication of academic integrity
in order to serve up easy grades that kept athletes eligible and on
track to graduate.
For years, as the revelations
accumulated and no fewer than six other reports were filed, North
Carolina refused to look honestly at itself and acknowledge what it saw.
Today, the school can squirm away
from the truth no more. Wainstein's report provided a devastating house
of mirrors for UNC to gaze into. The loud-and-proud claims to being a
special place, capable of both athletic and academic success without
cutting corners, are now hollow.
North Carolina spent many years operating like a
lowest-common-denominator football/basketball factory. Regardless of
whatever else comes from this thorough and painstaking investigation,
that label sticks.
The level of academic fraud
exposed is staggering: 3,100 students benefitted from the AFAM class
scam; of that number, more than 47 percent were athletes –
disproportionately high for the student population as a whole. And of
that 47 percent, more than half were football players. Men's basketball
made up 12 percent of the athlete population that was given gift grades.
The report finds it believable
that neither basketball coach Roy Williams nor then-football coach Butch
Davis knew the extent of the AFAM scam – specifically, that players
were getting gift grades. However, Davis was said to be present during a
2009 power-point presentation by academic support staff to the football
staff that included a slide saying that players had been enrolled in
classes which featured the following perks: "they didn't go to class;
didn't take notes, have to stay awake; they didn't have to meet with
professors; they didn't have to pay attention or necessarily engage with
the material." (Butch told investigators that he didn't recall seeing
that slide. If the current ESPN analyst ever works in college coaching
again, someone please shut down the university that hires him.)
Should a coach know what classes
his players are taking? I don't know. My son is a student-athlete at
Missouri and I'd bet his coaches know his major, but not his specific
course load. Then again, he's not an eligibility risk, nor is he vital
to a coach maintaining a seven-figure salary. The star football and
basketball players are.
But the deniability of Williams
and Davis is largely immaterial. Their programs thrived thanks to
athletes who couldn't or wouldn't do the work of most normal students.
If those Tar Heels who were winning national titles in basketball and
going to bowl games in football took anything educational away from
their time in Chapel Hill, chances are decent that it was an "A" in a
Swahili class that never met. That's something to be proud of.
As UNC wallows in the shame of
this scandal, the next question is whether Wainstein has given the NCAA
enough ammunition to aim and fire at the school.
The governing body of college
sports took its sweet time launching its own investigation of UNC, to
the frustration of many. For years, the stated reason for inaction was
that the academic benefits enjoyed by the athletes also was perfectly
available to the student body as a whole, and thus not a violation of
NCAA rules.
View gallery . North Carolina basketball coach Roy Williams talks to media during a press conference. (AP)
It's
true that more than 1,500 regular students did benefit from no-show
classes, per the report. But if nearly an equal number of athletes were
involved in flagrant academic fraud that resulted in a clear competitive
advantage – stars were eligible to play, and to beat the pants off
opposing teams – then this would seem to be a case where the NCAA should
intercede.
If the association's baroque and
bewildering rules manual prevents it, well, shame on the NCAA. It would
be one more example of why it is a failed investigative force.
We can wait and see what results
come from Indianapolis, but don't hold your breath in anticipation of a
deathblow for Carolina – especially Carolina basketball.
If anything, the school should react on its own to this report. Don't wait for the NCAA to step in, do something yourself.
Now that UNC knows the
independently reported facts, it can act. For years, its championship
basketball teams were populated by players who benefitted from academic
fraud – the 2005 national title team alone had 10 AFAM majors. If those
titles were won with players who wouldn't have been eligible without
sham grades, take down the banners yourself. Take the hardware out of
the trophy cases. Wear your shame.
For a school that long proclaimed to be a special place, that would be a start on restoring its integrity.
North Carolina basketball coach Roy Williams talks to media during a press conference. (AP)
No comments:
Post a Comment