http://www.cbssports.com/collegefootball/story/19794788/north-carolina-cheated-and-prospered-and-now-its-time-for-the-reckoning
http://www.thebiglead.com/index.php/2012/07/26/north-carolina-academic-scandal-why-did-basketball-players-stop-majoring-in-african-and-afro-american-studies-in-2009/
The free ride is over for North Carolina. It was good while it lasted -- but why it lasted so long, I can't say. It's astounding, how this academic scandal could go on for so many years and help so many UNC athletes without being stopped.
Where was North Carolina's leadership in all of this? Where was the UNC president, the athletics director, the coaches for football and -- yes -- basketball? Where were they?
Where was the NCAA?
Where was the media?
Where was I, for crying out loud?
Well, I know where I was: in disbelief that what seemed to be happening at North Carolina actually was happening. I've been hard on UNC athletics in recent years, challenging the school to fire Butch Davis among other things, but this was different. This was an indictment of UNC academics, and that didn't jibe with me, maybe because I didn't want it to jibe. We tend to believe what we want, and since my sister graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill and loved the school so much that she still lives nearby, I didn't want to believe this school -- her school -- could be so shameful.
But it is. The school's cover is blown. The free ride, as I said, is over.
And to North Carolina's shame on so many levels, the cover was blown by a fan at North Carolina State.
Think about that. UNC football -- and probably basketball -- is going down, and it'll go down in part because a member of the PackPride message board found a damaging transcript belonging to a former UNC athlete. Humiliating, and not just because the whistle was blown by a fan of N.C. State, a school many UNC graduates look down upon.
Humiliating also because it underscores just how ignorant North Carolina wanted to be. UNC officials didn't want to know what was happening, so they stuck their heads in the dirt -- and it just got worse. How bad?
Maybe the ugliest academic scandal in NCAA history.
This one is worse than what happened in 2007 at Florida State. I mean, it's not even close. Florida State had some numbers that looked bad -- 61 athletes from 10 different teams -- but this UNC scandal dwarfs it.
FSU had 61 tainted players, almost all from the same class.
North Carolina has at least 54 tainted classes.
How many athletes were given free grades from the Department of African and Afro-American Studies? We don't know. UNC never wanted to find out, but the school has no choice now. The school mustered a halfhearted search for the truth earlier this year when it found those 54 tainted classes, but its search went back only to 2007. Despite efforts from the Raleigh News & Observer that suggested otherwise, the school held firm that the academic fraud started in 2007.
Enter the N.C. State fan and the found transcript. It belonged to former UNC two-sport star Julius Peppers.
It was from 2001.
See what we have here? We have evidence not only of grades being given to athletes for at least a decade -- but also that UNC academic support staff steered athletes to those classes. This can't be dismissed as the rogue actions of a man named Julius Nyang'oro, the embattled former head of the Department of African and Afro-American Studies. If it was just him, well, that could be explained away to a certain extent. The school would be vulnerable to NCAA sanctions, but one man running amok? That's not horrible.
What actually happened at North Carolina?
This is horrible.
Academic advisers steering athletes to Nyang'oro's department. Athletes staying eligible by getting grades in some classes that didn't even exist. Athletes who played football and men's basketball.
Did the coaches know? Well, ask yourself this: Are we to believe that academic advisers were steering famous athletes to bogus classes behind the backs of the millionaire coaches who recruited, coached and needed those athletes to remain eligible?
Answers are coming, but already we know this: The scandal spanned the decade from 2001-11. Know what happened that decade? The UNC men's basketball team played in three Final Fours. It won national titles in 2005 and '09.
Did any players on those NCAA championship teams attend bogus classes? According to the News & Observer, almost 67 percent of the students in those 54 classes were athletes. Most played football, but the newspaper reported that UNC records showed "basketball players had also enrolled. In two of the classes, the sole enrollee was a basketball player."
See, this is so much worse than what happened at Florida State -- and Florida State vacated two seasons of saintly Bobby Bowden's victories, suffered scholarship restrictions and received four years of probation.
What happens to North Carolina? Well, that depends. First, the NCAA has to show it cares. Incredibly, to date, the NCAA has not. Trained NCAA investigators missed the very stuff that is seeping out now, including that transcript discovered by a single N.C. State fan. Remember, the NCAA already has investigated UNC for violations that included -- but were not limited to -- academic fraud. The NCAA poked around, found some stuff, but didn't find this.
The NCAA didn't find 54 bogus classes from 2007-11, or the unknown number of classes dating to 2001, filled mostly by UNC athletes. The NCAA hasn't uttered a peep in recent days about these new allegations, either. Neither has the school. Not Roy Williams. Not anybody. The biggest response has been the creation of a website attacking the Raleigh reporter who is all over this story, including the Julius Peppers revelations. The website was created by a man named Carl Carey. Julius Peppers' agent? A man named Carl Carey.
Could be a coincidence. Someone will find out, because what happened at North Carolina was bad -- real bad. Looking the other way worked for a while, but like I said, the free ride is over.
It's time for the NCAA to start digging. In the meantime, North Carolina should get a head start on some of its own chores.
For starters? There are some banners at the Smith Center that need to come down.
http://www.thebiglead.com/index.php/2012/07/26/north-carolina-academic-scandal-why-did-basketball-players-stop-majoring-in-african-and-afro-american-studies-in-2009/
North Carolina’s growing academic scandal involving athletes hasn’t yet embarrassed Roy Williams and the basketball program. But will it?
The school’s internal investigation into the academic scandal went back to 2007, and found that “Football and basketball players accounted for nearly four of every 10 students enrolled in 54 classes,” all within UNC’s Department of African and Afro-American studies. Football and basketball players make up less than 1 percent of the UNC undergraduate population.
The academic fraud led the NCAA to slap the football team with a bowl ban and scholarship reductions, and it is one of the primary reasons coach Butch Davis was fired.
What if the internal investigation stretched back further? And focused on the basketball team? The school would find that seven members of UNC’s title-winning team coached by Roy Williams in 2005 majored in African/Afro-American Studies. The Indy Star documented it in 2010:
That includes Sean May of the Sacramento Kings, the Bloomington prep star and son of former IU star Scott May. Sean May entered the NBA after three years in college, capped by an NCAA title in 2005. He graduated last summer.
May said he started as a double major with communications, but dropped it so he could graduate faster after leaving for the NBA.
Afro-American and African studies, May said, offered “more independent electives, independent study. I could take a lot of classes during the season. Communications, I had to be there in the actual classroom. We just made sure all the classes I had to take, I could take during the summer.”
Interesting quote from May, especially since he didn’t graduate until 2009, years after leaving Chapel Hill. For the conspiracy theorists: it appears May changed his major after coach Matt Doherty was fired and Roy Williams arrived.
But here’s really why Roy Williams might be faced with tough questions about his program and the academic scandal: Wayne Walden, his academic right hand man at Kansas and UNC.
Walden was with Roy Williams at Kansas. He was the basketball team’s academic adviser for 15 years. Then, when Williams left for UNC in 2003, Walden went with him and filled the same role – academic support for men’s basketball, overseeing scheduling, registration, structured study halls, tutorial services, etc. The two were close, obviously. Here’s what Williams said about Walden in the book “Going Home Again“:
According to UNC, Walden left his role as Associate Director of the Academic Support Program on June 26, 2009 – 14 months before the academic scandal was revealed. According to this wedding announcement, Walden got married June 28th, 2009, and left to start a new career.
Roy Williams got tearful while mentioning Walden’s departure, as you can see in this video.
According to UNC, Walden remained at the school during the summer, and his official departure date was Sept. 1, 2009. But according to UNC’s registrar webpage, Walden was listed here (Spring 2010), here (Fall 2010), here (Fall 2011) and here (Spring 2011) as the “responsible person” for the Men and Women’s Swimming and Diving teams, overseeing between 66-78 athletes.
I spoke briefly to Walden by phone this morning, and his response to being listed on the registrars as the “responsible person” for the swimming and diving teams was, “that’s not accurate.”
Walden, who is currently living in Texas, where he has been employed at a non-profit since 2010 according to his now-removed Linkedin profile, wouldn’t elaborate any further about advising the basketball team or the academic scandal. (I previously sent him an email seeking comment on the scandal, to which he replied, “I’m sorry to not have responded sooner. I do not believe it is appropriate for me to comment on your story.”)
There was another North Carolina administrative departure in the summer of 2009: Deb Crowder. As an administrator in the African and Afro-American Studies Department, she had “unusual access” according to the News & Observer, and her duties included “making sure records were kept, schedules followed and phones answered.”
Here’s what the Herald-Sun wrote about Crowder, who had worked at the school since 1979:
UNC’s report stated that Deborah Crowder was a long-term administrator for the department and she retired in September 2009. She declined requests for interviews, and because she was retired, the University could not compel her cooperation, UNC’s report said.
All key paperwork related to department course registrations and grade rolls flowed directly through the department administrator’s hands to the Office of the Registrar, the report said. Because she would not cooperate with UNC’s investigation, it could not be determined if she had any role in the irregularities.
Deb Crowder didn’t return a call seeking comment, but I spoke with a relative of hers, Dorothy Crowder (who was employed by UNC in a different capacity). Dorothy refused to talk about Deborah’s connection to the academic scandal, but did take a moment to rail against Dan Kane of the News & Observer, I imagine for this story, which ran in June.
So in 2009, a year before the scandal went public, the academic adviser to the basketball team – a team which had a history of players who majored in African and Afro-American Studies – left UNC, as did a longtime administrator in that department. Since the departures of Walden and Crowder, records obtained by the News & Observer (click here for the UNC academic info PDF) show a dramatic drop in athletes majoring in African and Afro-American Studies. We specifically looked at the basketball team’s numbers in that major from when Roy Williams took over in 2003-2004, and here are the numbers we found (African & Afro-American majors/players who had chosen a major):
2003-04 AA 5/13
2004-05 AA 7/13 <—- Won NCAA title.
2005-06 AA 3/11
2006-07 AA 3/15
2007-08 AA 2/12
2008-09 AA 1/16 <— Walden and Crowder left after this school year.
2009-10 AA 0/10
2010-11 AA 0/8
2011-12 AA 0/9
The school has redacted many details in the few documents they have made public (the News & Observer has been all over it), and many others are tied up in court.
