UNC and big-boy football

Playing big-boy football is about committing to big money for coaches and big money for facilities.

It can also mean looking the other way on some stuff like, say, an assistant head coach basically serving as an agent for future NFL draftees.

And in a phenomenon that is less publicized than the aforementioned forms of "commitment," it can mean devising an arrangement that can be exposed as academic fraud when placed under the microscope of higher education.

Try getting through this article without laughing. According to information released Monday, North Carolina football and basketball players comprised nearly 40 percent of the students enrolled in bogus classes taught by UNC's Department of African and Afro-American Studies.

Here are a few of the more amusing passages:

An internal probe released Friday produced evidence of unauthorized grade changes and little or no instruction by professors.

Forty-five of the classes listed the department’s chairman, Julius Nyang’oro, as the professor. Investigators could not determine instructors for the remaining nine.

University officials say they found no evidence that the suspect classes were part of a plan between Nyang’oro and the athletic department to create classes that student-athletes could pass so they could maintain their eligibility.

The News & Observer obtained the academic transcript of former football player Marvin Austin, who was kicked off the team after the NCAA probe found he had received improper financial benefits from a sports agent. Austin’s transcript showed he had been placed in an upper-level African studies class taught by Nyang’oro in summer 2007. At that point, Austin had yet to begin his first full semester as a freshman. Nyang’oro gave Austin a B-plus in the 400 level class. The university has been unable to explain how Austin ended up in the class. He could not be reached for comment. UNC’s investigation determined it was one of the suspect classes in which there was little evidence that the instructor did much if any teaching.

UNC officials said the only two people within the department who appear to have been responsible for the suspect classes are Nyang’oro and his administrative secretary, Deborah Crowder. Some professors interviewed for the probe said they did not authorize grade changes that students taking the classes had received and said their names had been forged on academic records.

This, folks, is some heavy stuff. It's particularly heavy at a place like Chapel Hill, which loves thinking of itself as above shadiness to this extent. Imagine how much the Heels would be laughing and looking down their noses at, say, Clemson or Virginia Tech if such improprieties occurred on those campuses.

Quite clearly, UNC is in major damage-control mode as it uses terms like "isolated situation" and tries to pin everything on a department chair and his administrative assistant -- neither of whom are commenting, by the way.

Call me cynical, but the university's position is about as believable as Butch Davis' position that he had no idea John Blake was funneling Tar Heel players to an agent, and no idea a tutor living under his own roof was writing papers for the Tar Heels' ... wait for it ... "student-athletes."

Larry Fedora might end up being a success in Chapel Hill, but his hiring over a bigger-name coach seemed to underscore the sentiment that North Carolina is running as fast as it can away from big-boy football, not toward it.

After they wipe away all the slime from this experience, they'll probably be perfectly content with great basketball and mediocre football.

LW