Chapter
Four
McAdoo’s
plagiarism; Butch Davis fired
In late May of 2011, with the release of its Notice of
Allegations from the NCAA only weeks away, UNC players continued to put
themselves in the negative spotlight of the news. According to an article by The Daily Tar Heel, the NCAA was back on
the school’s campus on May 18 to interview football player Quinton Coples. He had been seen in pictures of a post-NFL
draft party he attended in Washington, DC, and the NCAA had questions about
trip-related expenses. Coples had
previously shown up throughout Associate Head Coach John Blake’s phone records,
and often in close proximity to calls to or from individuals involved in
activities that were under scrutiny by the NCAA. Whether the collegiate association was ever
made aware of that phone information, however, is unknown. Most of that revealing data had been
previously exposed via the PackPride.com
website.
According to the Daily
Tar Heel article, the school had instituted an internal policy in 2010 that
dictated UNC football players to sign out before they left campus to go on
trips. Kevin Best, spokesman of the
football program at the time, declined to comment on the specifics of whether
or not Coples signed out when he attended the post-NFL draft party in
April. Washington, DC, was also the
location of two of Marvin Austin’s trips that drew the scrutiny of the
NCAA. Coples would ultimately avoid any
NCAA penalties. He would go on to be a
first round draft pick in 2012, going 16th overall to the New York
Jets. He signed a four-year contract
worth $8.8 million on May 17, 2012.
*
* *
On June 21, 2011, UNC received their Notice of
Allegations (NOA) from the NCAA. This
was essentially the list of transgressions that the NCAA was saying the
university had committed, and the school then had 90 days to respond to those
claims before penalties were handed down.
Within the NOA was outlined numerous “potential major violations,”
according to articles released by ESPN and the Associated Press. Those
included unethical conduct by a former assistant coach (John Blake) as well as
failure to adequately monitor the conduct of former and current players.
The NOA discussed the various players who had received
improper benefits, and also attached dollar values to those benefits. As mentioned in earlier chapters, the eventual
2013 revelations about Greg Little and Jennifer Wiley (Thompson) proved that
the NCAA only had a fraction of those figures correct. Wiley was also cited in the NOA for refusing
to cooperate with the investigation.
Another notable aspect was that the school was also penalized for
failing to monitor “social media activity” of the football team in 2010. Despite these clear explanations of the
school’s shortcomings, the lack of social media monitoring would ultimately
continue for the university, and would eventually spread to the basketball
program in the years to follow.
Chancellor Holden Thorp said in a statement, “I deeply
regret that Carolina is in this position.
We made mistakes, and we have to face that. … We will emerge with a stronger athletic
program, and we will restore confidence in Carolina football.” During
the timespan that marked the beginning of the scandal and the release of the
NOA, one of the supplementary figures – NFL agent Gary Wichard – died in March
2011 from complications due to diabetes and pancreatic cancer.
*
* *
During the first week of July 2011, football player
Michael McAdoo filed a lawsuit seeking an injunction to lift his permanent NCAA
ban which had been handed down the previous year. According to a sportsillustrated.cnn.com article, the association’s judicial
system found him guilty of infractions serious enough to warrant a permanent
ban, but McAdoo and his lawyers disagreed.
The lawsuit claimed that McAdoo was “improperly and unjustly declared
ineligible to play intercollegiate athletics by Defendant NCAA.” His attorney was Noah Huffstetler, who
received his undergraduate degree from UNC in 1973 and his law degree from the
institution in 1976.
The previous year’s NCAA investigation had found McAdoo
guilty of accepting $110 in improper benefits, and that he also committed three
instances of academic fraud related to parts of a paper actually being written
by tutor Jennifer Wiley. Evidence of the
academic fraud – which reportedly consisted of Wiley adding citations and
composing a works cited page – were not uncovered by the NCAA, but rather by
the university. The school’s Honor
Court, however, determined there was not enough evidence to charge McAdoo with
one of the three counts and found him not guilty of another, according to the
same sportsillustrated.cnn.com
article. According to the lawsuit, none
of this was taken into account by the NCAA prior to their ruling.
According to the university’s website, “The Undergraduate
Honor Court is comprised of Undergraduate students from all backgrounds and
majors. Court members represent the values and diversity that makes
Carolina special. The Court is charged with reviewing allegations of misconduct
to determine if the Honor Code was violated. If the Court determines a
violation has occurred, it will impose a disciplinary sanction consistent with
community values and University guidelines.”
At the time, many in the sports media realm felt McAdoo had a fairly strong
case for reinstatement. However, new evidence
would surface just days later that would change all of that – and ultimately
alter the landscape of UNC’s ongoing scandal as well.
*
* *
When Michael McAdoo’s attorney filed the suit, one
important addition was part of the proceedings: the research paper in question
was included as evidence. The Raleigh News and Observer posted the various
attached exhibits on its website, and members of the N.C. State website PackPride.com started to look through
them. This wasn’t the website’s first
foray into their rival’s scandal; as mentioned in the chapter’s opening
paragraph, members of its message board had earlier meticulously dissected the
phone records of John Blake, uncovering a number of trends and violations that
would later be recognized by sports writers as well as presumably the
NCAA. This time, members descended upon
the research paper and quickly made a startling discovery: the vast majority of
it was plagiarized, and often lifted word-for-word from various internet
sources. One section in particular came
from a book originally published in 1911, and included terms and expressions
that had been obsolete (when describing the paper’s topic) for years.
McAdoo’s suit instantly became more of a challenge, since
according to a sportsillustrated.cnn.com
article posted on July 8, 2011, the NCAA would likely view a plagiarized paper
much more seriously that simply having a tutor reformat the citations. Other problems on the university’s side were
also exposed. Namely, why didn’t the
paper’s original professor discover the plagiarism, considering that it only
took some rival fans using Google a few minutes to unearth it? Furthermore, why was the school’s Honor Court
unable to detect it? And finally,
Athletics Director Dick Baddour had also publicly supported McAdoo a few days
earlier, saying the paper was the student’s own work. This was obviously just an assumption by
Baddour, or else it was something he was told by other factions within the
university and he accepted as fact.
*
* *
A distinction that an organization never wants is having
the full attention of a newspaper’s investigative reporter, especially a
capable and talented one. With the
discovery of the McAdoo plagiarism, that is exactly what would begin to happen
in Chapel Hill. The Raleigh News and Observer’s Dan Kane began to focus his efforts on the story – not just on
McAdoo, but on the academic and athletic issues within the university as a
whole. A graduate of St. John Fisher
College in Rochester, New York, Kane had joined the N&O staff in 1997, and became a part of its prestigious
investigative team in April 2009. His
journalistic efforts had been recognized with several awards in the past.
In
a July 17, 2011, article, Kane reiterated that the professor and the Honor
Court missed the plagiarism, as did the involved factions of UNC’s athletics
department (academic support personnel, and even Dick Baddour). Kane also pointed out another party that
apparently missed it prior to McAdoo’s case going to trial: the NCAA. He went on to list another piece of
information about the blossoming case that at the time seemed like a simple
footnote, but would eventually lead to issues of monumental proportions. The professor who assigned the paper to
McAdoo was Julius Nyang’oro, who was also the chairman of UNC’s Department of
African and Afro-American Studies (AFAM).
He was out of the country at the time of Kane’s article and could not be
reached for comment. His name and
actions, however, would surface many more times in the future.
UNC history professor Jay Smith, who will be covered in
more detail in a later chapter, said at the time that he was not surprised the
school’s Honor Court missed McAdoo’s plagiarism. He had been arguing for two years that the
Honor Court system failed to get at the heart of the misconduct. Smith said he became a critic when he turned
in a student for plagiarizing a paper in 2009.
He said the Honor Court’s prosecutor did not provide the correct
evidence at the hearing, overlooking key information that Smith had clearly
provided. The experience convinced Smith
that students do not have the time or experience to handle complex misconduct
cases.
The comment Professor Smith made regarding students being
unprepared for that type of authority may be understandable. But how does that explain the professor
missing McAdoo’s offenses? And the
athletics department, and the athletics director? Smith went on to say in the News and Observer article that when an
athletics department relies on the Honor Court to determine facts crucial to a
key football player’s eligibility, that puts the university’s academic
integrity at great risk. Student
athletes on UNC’s basketball and football teams help the university collect
millions of dollars in television rights, ticket sales, and licensing fees,
creating pressure to keep athletes eligible.
The athletics department puts “UNC’s credibility on the line without
apparently doing the due diligence on the basic facts of the case,” he said,
“and I think that’s a very serious problem.”
To further highlight the point, Smith indicated that
earlier in 2011 he had surveyed members of the faculty about the Honor
Court. One surprising find was that many
faculty said they do not use the system, and reasons varied. Many felt that the court was being too
lenient on cheaters, and several key responses suggested preferential treatment
for student athletes by UNC officials or the Honor Court. One of the faculty responders wrote, “The
evidence of cheating could not have been more obvious, and the excuse given was
completely implausible. Also, this case
dealt with a student athlete, and I found the interventions from the athletics
department asking that the case not be brought before the honor court
unethical.”
A related effect of the McAdoo case was the attention
given to the PackPride.com site, and
a somewhat begrudged acceptance by the media of the effectiveness of some of
the site’s members. The site had made
other discoveries in the past, but not until the McAdoo plagiarism incident
were those findings prominently featured in the mainstream media. The poster at the heart of the McAdoo case
would actually be featured in an article on the respected Poynter website. He was quoted under a username, as his real
name was withheld in the article by request.
One of the main points of the feature was that important news was
initially broken on a fan internet site, and then only afterwards did expanding
media coverage of the event follow.
Unfortunately for UNC, this trend would repeat itself several times in
the future – with each successive story having a bigger and bigger impact.
Michael McAdoo’s case would eventually be dismissed, and
he remained ineligible to play collegiate sports. Many sports journalists felt those ultimate
decisions were in part due to the discovery of the plagiarism. Paul Sun, the attorney who represented the
NCAA in the suit, said that the association “correctly and fairly” applied its
rules in the case. McAdoo would
eventually be signed by the NFL’s Baltimore Ravens as an undrafted free agent
in August 2011. He tore his Achilles
tendon during the summer of 2012, which forced him to miss the entire NFL
season that year. He was released by the
Ravens a year later, and signed with Winnipeg of the Canadian Football League
in late 2013. McAdoo gave an interview
with the New York Times that was
published in 2013, and which will be covered in more detail in a later
chapter. Part of the topic dealt with
academic cheating and irregularities, and also the educational restrictions
that schools sometimes placed on athletes.
McAdoo was quoted as saying, “I would still like to get a college degree
someday, but not at the University of North Carolina. They just wasted my time.”
*
* *
On July 27, 2011, less than three weeks after the
discovery of McAdoo’s plagiarism, the university fired head football coach
Butch Davis. According to articles
released at the time by espn.com,
Davis had apparently survived the most dangerous days of the NCAA’s
investigation, as he had lead the previous year’s suspension-decimated team to
eight wins and a bowl victory. However,
the school’s administration would eventually alter its opinion, saying that the
turmoil caused by the investigation was doing too much damage to the
university’s reputation. In a direct
quote from Chancellor Holden Thorp, he said he had “lost confidence in (the school’s)
ability to come through this without harming the way people think of this
institution.” He continued by saying
that “our academic integrity is paramount, and we must work diligently to
protect it. The only way to move forward
and put this behind us is to make a change.”
With
football’s late-summer training camp just over a week away, the team now found
itself without a clear figurehead. After
his firing, Davis said “I can honestly say I leave with the full confidence
that I have done nothing wrong. I was
the head coach and I realize the responsibility that comes with that role. But I was not personally involved in, nor
aware of, any actions that prompted the NCAA investigation.”
Holden Thorp and Dick Baddour both spoke at a news
conference held on the following day.
Several questions were raised by reporters with regards to the payout
that Davis would receive. Chancellor
Thorp indicated that it would cost $2.7 million, at which time a reporter
pointed out that if it was determined Davis was fired “with cause” it would
potentially cost the school nothing, according to the contract that Davis
signed. Thorp replied, “I’ve reached the
conclusion that even though this is a terrible time, that the athletics program
will need to pay whatever it is that we need to pay to make the separation
happen.” In a quick follow-up question
regarding the wording of the contract, Thorp made clear that the school would
not be dismissing Davis “for cause.”
Roughly
ten minutes later and after a number of other questions and topics were posed,
attention was once again turned to the topic of Davis’s contract. A third reporter revived the line of
questioning with Thorp: “Chancellor, you
were talking about the reputation of the university. And given the budget crisis of the
university… you’re saying that you’re not going to fire (Davis) for cause. I have his contract right in front of
me. It says, ‘serious disrespect for the
integrity and ethics of the university’.
Given the crisis financially that you’re in, what would motivate you to
pay him to go away?” To which Thorp
responded, “As I said earlier, that is what has made this a difficult
decision. Any money that is paid to
Coach Davis will be from the athletics department, not general support funds
for the university. As I said, that is
the conclusion that we have come to with extensive consultation. With lots of folks.” Later dissection by the media of the
contract’s wording would indicate that the university could, in fact, have
fired Davis “with cause.” Why they did
not is unclear.
An
interesting subplot to the timing of Davis’s firing was that Thorp’s decision
came the day that a new university Board of Trustees chairman was elected. According to a sportsillustrated.cnn.com article published on July 28, 2011,
former Chairman Bob Winston had long been known as a Davis supporter. He had served as chairman since 2009, and
Winston and UNC administrators had shown their support of Davis numerous times
during that time span. On the day that
Wade Hargrove replaced Winston as chairman, however, the tone of the
discussions regarding Davis obviously changed while the trustees were meeting
in a closed session. The culminating
result was the ultimate firing of Davis.
An ongoing matter that had been discussed in the media
for weeks leading up to the firing had been the personal cell phone records of
Davis. Despite being issued a
university-supplied cell phone, Davis had made virtually zero calls on it
during his years with the school, instead opting to use his personal cell
phone. After the phone records of John
Blake showed a number of NCAA-related violations, the media had long been after
the records of Davis, as well. Even
though the phone records in question were for his personal cell, the fact that
Davis used it for university business seemingly made them public record. The matter had been contended by Davis, and
was at the time of his firing still in limbo.
At the news conference a reporter asked Thorp how the firing of Davis
would affect the pending release of his personal cell phone records which had
tentatively been scheduled to happen in the coming weeks. The question to Thorp was, “Are you still
planning on releasing the private cell phone records of Butch Davis? I know he was in the process of redacting
them.” To which Thorp replied, “That’s
up to Coach Davis”. As it would turn
out, once Davis was fired from the university then UNC absolved itself from the
equation. The records would go on to be
entangled in legal proceedings for more than a year.
At the same news conference discussing the firing of
Butch Davis, another big announcement was made.
It was revealed that Athletics Director Dick Baddour would be stepping
down as soon as a replacement could be found.
Baddour had been part of the Tar Heel “family” for 45 years, and had
held the position of athletics director for the past 14. Prior to that, he had been the senior
associate of UNC’s former athletics director, John Swofford. When Swofford left to become Commissioner of
the ACC (a title he still held during UNC’s scandal) in 1997, Baddour took over
as athletics director. With the firing
of Butch Davis and the announced retirement/resignation of Dick Baddour, and
adding to the previous resignation of John Blake, the number of jobs directly
affected by the scandal – which included firings, resignations, retirements,
and transfers within the university – now stood at three. That number would continue to rise.
*
* *
Reactions to the firing of Davis were mixed. Numerous former players took to the social
media airways in support of Davis, while select other individuals who were in
some way professionally or financially connected to the school supported Thorp
and his decision. According to an
article on wralsportsfan.com, Hannah
Gage, a member of the Board of Governors and a UNC graduate, said, “It wasn’t
an easy decision, but I believe it’s the right decision for the
university. The Chancellor made it clear
today that he’s not willing to compromise the university’s academic integrity
or its reputation.”
University President Tom Ross, a graduate of UNC’s School
of Law, supported Thorp’s decision. He
said, “This has been a difficult decision for the Chancellor, but I am pleased
that he made the decision only after receiving and studying all of the facts so
that he would both be fair to the individuals involved and look out for the
best interests of the University. He
believes deeply in academic integrity and understands that academic integrity
and a successful athletics program are both achievable simultaneously. For this to happen, he has now concluded that
a change in the football program is necessary.”
The comments by both Gage and Ross speak to high academic standards and
an uncompromising attitude by the school.
Those comments would be viewed under a different and more hypocritical
light in the near future, however, as much more serious academic issues would
arise – and UNC would ultimately not act with such an uncompromising and
fact-seeking attitude when basketball was involved in the allegations.
*
* *
Several weeks following the termination of Butch Davis,
one final troubling story related to him (other than the eventual release of
his phone records) would see the light of day.
In an online article by local ABC affiliate WTVD on August 17, 2011, it
was revealed that a UNC police officer had responded to an on-campus crash
involving several of the school’s football players. On May 29, 2011, Sergeant Shawn Smith was the
investigating officer of the accident in question. Smith had also been the assigned personal
officer to coach Butch Davis during home and away football games, according to
the news station.
The article said that football player Herman Davidson
crashed a vehicle that also included players Carl Gaskins, Jr., Dion Guy, and
Ebele Okakpu as passengers. The police
report indicated that Davidson had alcohol on his breath, but was not
impaired. The initial report said the
car was traveling the speed limit at the time of the crash. Nearly 16 hours later, however, the report
was changed to say the car was going 45 mph in a 25 mph zone. Davidson only received a citation for not
having a driver’s license. He was not
issued a speeding ticket, and none of the players were taken into custody. The crash caused $18,000 in damage to the car
Davidson was driving, which belonged to Okakpu’s father.
UNC said that Smith resigned on July 15, 2011, six weeks
after the crash. The school did not
indicate to WTVD if the crash led to his resignation. Smith denied a cover-up, but when asked about
his resignation he told the station’s I-Team it was a “self-inflicted wound”
and a “hard lesson learned.” The former
officer claimed on his Twitter page (@Tar_Heel_Smitty) to be “the BIGGEST Tar
Heel fan in existence!” He said, “I let
my love for UNC interfere with real life and I paid the price.” The athletics department told the station
that it was aware of the crash, and that the players had been disciplined by
then football coach Davis.
*
* *
The essential (and unanswered)
questions:
-- How did Michael
McAdoo’s professor miss the plagiarism?
How did the Honor Court and the school’s athletics director miss
it? Was it a case (amongst one or more
of those entities) of simply choosing to not notice/acknowledge it?
-- Based on faculty
survey responses, how long had UNC athletes possibly been receiving
preferential treatment in the school’s Honor Court system?
-- Why would the school
choose to pay fired head coach Butch Davis $2.7 million when apparently they
had the legal right to withhold that money?
What would be the advantage to “pay him to go away?” And was this decision in any way related to
the impending release of his personal cell phone records?
