Meter madness in Chapel Hill

So many salacious stories being unearthed across college football these days.

Money, cars, tattoos, alcohol, weed and ... outstanding parking tickets!

Look, I'm all for transparency at state-funded institutions and open free media access and all that. And I'm not going to go all Jay Paterno and blame the media for the fall of Terrelle Pryor.

But something makes me uneasy about this breathless reporting of a bunch of parking tickets racked up by some North Carolina football players.

The Charlotte Observer devoted more than 800 words to the story. The Associated Press picked it up, and now it's everywhere from The New York Times to MSNBC.com.

I understand that this story came as a result of a lengthy court battle between media outlets and a school that fought the release of this information, citing student privacy laws. I realize the case can be made that this information is newsworthy given its place in the broader context of a football program facing serious NCAA scrutiny for various eye-opening misdeeds that are being exposed one after another (none of which Butch Davis knew anything about. Wink, wink.)

But I'm struggling to understand how the following revelation is a big deal:

A review of the records released Thursday shows that fewer than 12 football players tallied 395 parking violations from March 2007 through August 2010.

So there's that, and ... well, that's about it.

If these news outlets can find some evidence that these athletes were given preferential treatment in the dismissal of said tickets, or if the university uncovered some problems about the ownership of the vehicles these kids were driving, then we have a pretty big story on our hands.

Without that evidence, the only verifiable news is news that 12 football players accumulated a bunch of parking tickets.

Not going to name any names here, but a certain Tigerillustrated.com writer with the initials "L" and "W" once incurred one or two (or 50) parking tickets during his five years in college (redshirt year included). They didn't hunt you down and throw you in jail for failing to pay the outstanding fines, but they could (and did) make you pay up before allowing you to graduate.

Maybe UNC is lying and trying to cover up thousands of dollars' worth of fines forgiven of its football players. My guess is, these guys knew they weren't graduating anyway and knew they could park wherever they pleased with no real repercussions.

And I betcha most of us, if blessed with the same athletic ability and promise, would've done the same dang thing.

These kids are kings on college campuses, and we're supposed to be shocked when they walk around (and drive around) like they own the place?

Stop the presses.

LW

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