Chapter
Six
Football
penalties
The final few months of 2011 were relatively quiet in
terms of new information on the scandal.
Julius Nyang’oro had resigned his chairman post in the AFAM department
and would eventually retire from the university. The school had made its appearance before the
NCAA regarding the infractions charged in the Notice of Allegations – a meeting
attended not only by Chancellor Holden Thorp and Director of Athletics Dick
Baddour, but also by John Swofford – who was not only the commissioner of the
ACC, but conveniently also a former UNC athletics director, athlete, and a
graduate of the school. Happening behind
the scenes, though, was the on-campus look into possible irregularities within
the Department of African and Afro-American Studies (AFAM). Those findings would be revealed at a later
date. The next major news, however,
would be the formal sanctions handed down by the NCAA against the school’s
football program.
*
* *
An article dated March 12, 2012, from the Raleigh News and Observer hit the highlights of
the NCAA’s sanctions. Many of them had
previously been covered in the original Notice of Allegations, with the
difference now being that penalties were attached. The wording of some of the infractions,
though, would be especially important regarding future activities by the
university and some of its players.
Essentially, the school would later commit similar infractions – but
would not be held to the same standards and penalties by the NCAA. The main difference would seemingly be the
sports that were affected. As has been
noted before, the school’s level of defense of its football issues versus
basketball issues would eventually be great indeed.
The football program was cited for allowing some of its
players to receive impermissible benefits in the forms of money, travel, and
other expenses – often provided by tutor
Jennifer Wiley, who at one time had worked personally for head coach
Butch Davis’s family. It would later be
shown through a series of Secretary of State indictments that not only did
agents also supply players with money, but that the dollar amounts the NCAA
stated in its 2012 sanctions were substantially below the actual transaction
levels.
Another major violation – and one that would appear to
drive all of the university’s stonewalling attempts in the future regarding
uncovering the truth of its academic improprieties – dealt with the
impermissible participation of athletes.
The formal sanctions stated that during the 2008-09 academic year and
the summer of 2009, three student athletes engaged in academic fraud. As a result, one of those athletes competed
while ineligible during the 2008 football season, another competed while
ineligible during the 2009 and 2010 football seasons, and the third competed
while ineligible during the 2008 and 2009 football seasons. The culminating result was that the football
program was forced to vacate 16 victories during that timeframe – as games
where ineligible players participated were retroactively forfeited. This is a well-known mantra of both the NCAA
and college sports in general. And it is
also presumably what would eventually lead the school to fight tooth and nail
over improprieties involving its basketball program. Much more on that matter will be discussed in
the upcoming chapters, but the implication is clear: If a basketball player
were ever deemed to have cheated academically, then the team would have to
forfeit any games/seasons in which that player participated – even one
involving the winning of a National Championship.
*
* *
Back to the March 2012 football sanctions: The program lost a handful of scholarships
spread out over the forthcoming three seasons, and was also banned from
postseason competition in 2012, which included any potential conference championship
game or bowl game. In a decision by the
school considered hypocritical by many, however, it chose to award its players
with “Division Champion” rings after the 2012 season, despite not being
eligible for the championship game due to its past violations. This decision was apparently justified by the
university because the team finished in a three-way tie for first in the
Coastal Division. The school also
proclaimed itself “Coast Division Champions” in a variety of advertising
mediums, including a prominent billboard in Charlotte. All of this in spite of the fact that Georgia
Tech officially won the division and played in the ACC championship game.
Another penalty from the NCAA dealt with compliance. The notes said that “the school must also
educate athletes, coaches and relevant school personnel on NCAA rules and
regulations.” This edict would fall on
at least a few deaf ears in the future, however, as the summer of 2013 would
find even more UNC athletes receiving benefits that were clearly impermissible
based on multiple NCAA regulations. One
final notation dealt with how the school would be monitored and treated moving
forward in terms of any potential new violations that might occur. The sanctions stated that the institution is on probation for three years.
This would seem to infer that if other infractions were to occur during the
three years to follow – in any sport – that stricter penalties would be
levied. Whether that ultimately ends up
being the case (stricter penalties being levied) remains to be seen, as other
infractions have undoubtedly been committed by the school and its players in
the aftermath of those announced March 2012 sanctions.
Following the announcement of the official violations and
penalties, a number of individuals associated with UNC (both past and present)
commented on the matter. Regarding a
potential appeal, Chancellor Holden Thorp said, “We decided it wouldn’t make
sense to appeal, given how long the appeal would take, given the (lack of)
success other schools have had with appeals.”
Former head coach Butch Davis maintained his innocence in the matter by
saying through a released statement, “As was stated by the Chancellor this
summer, and has been noted in this report, I was not named in any of these
allegations.” Former UNC Athletics
Director Dick Baddour took a more grandiose approach with his comments,
eliciting the very term that has been brought into question through the
university’s actions and events over the past two decades: “Well there’s still
a Carolina Way,” Baddour said. “The way
we did this investigation, it was my strong belief that it was the Carolina
Way. We set out four guiding principles
when we started. Number four was that we
would be better as a result of this.”
In a News and Observer
editorial released on that same date of March 12, 2012, staff writer Caulton
Tudor commented that the school was given a tough punishment, but that it could
have been worse. He noted that more
scholarships could have potentially been lost, and that ultimately only a
one-year bowl ban wasn’t too bad. An
important observation he also made was that, “Sixteen wins have been vacated,
but that sort of reprimand doesn’t carry much weight.” That is likely true, given that the football
team had never competed for a national championship during the affected
timeframe. But once again, the issue of
vacated victories would eventually become the centerpiece of the university’s
fierce struggle to keep public information hidden from the media. Because if the school was ever forced to
vacate victories in basketball via the spreading academic scandal, then past
national championships definitely would be in jeopardy. Tudor ended his piece by stating, “Perhaps
the most important retribution of all is the damage to UNC’s image and
reputation.”
An editorial by News
and Observer staff columnist Tom Sorensen appeared the following day, and
like Tudor’s closing remark it also made comments regarding the university’s
reputation. The article began by taking
the stance that UNC’s football program – and head coach Davis – deserved the
sanctions it received. Sorenson
insinuated that there was little discipline within Davis’s former program, as
he reiterated the multiple offenses that were by then well known: ineligible
players competing, the acceptance of illegal benefits, a tutor enabling players
to engage in academic fraud, and more.
As has been the case throughout the school’s three-plus year ordeal,
however, items were pointed out by an observer in an article that would later
be contradictory to how things ultimately have unfolded. Sorensen said the school “got one thing
right. The Tar Heels acknowledged their
misdeeds.” He went on to ask, “How many
times has an athlete, celebrity, politician or official been caught cheating
and compounded his or her mistake by lying about it?” The ultimate irony would be that the ongoing
investigation into the school’s Department of African and Afro-American Studies
would uncover misdeeds, and it would uncover cheating – yet when faced with a
different set of potential prospects and penalties, the school would do exactly as Sorensen described:
compound the mistake through various forms of obfuscation.
Sorensen took a final jab at the university’s historical
sense of entitlement by saying, “The NCAA did omit one penalty: The Tar Heels
forfeit the right to condescend. While
(other schools) were caught cheating, the Tar Heels avoided serious
scandal. As a result, their fans were
free to take shots at violators. And
they did. The lesser among those fans
will continue to. But they have no
credibility.”
*
* *
The essential (and unanswered)
questions:
-- Why would the school
choose to publicly flaunt a division championship, and also purchase
championship rings for the players on its football team, all while being banned
from post-season play – which included the ACC Championship Game?
-- Even after being
informed to do so by the NCAA, why would the school not take the (apparently
adequate) steps to “educate its athletes, coaches, and relevant school
personnel on NCAA rules and regulations?”
-- Considering that the
“institution” was placed on three-year’s probation, would the future violations
that would be uncovered in 2012 and 2013 lead to stricter NCAA penalties on the
school – due to UNC still being within its probationary period?