Chapter
Twenty-Two
NCAA
stays away; Nyang’oro indicted; Hairston dismissed
The final months of 2013 would contain a flurry of
articles spanning nearly every aspect of UNC’s multiple scandals. On September 27 the men’s basketball team
began preseason practice. Both P.J.
Hairston and Leslie McDonald were present, but word was circulating that if the
season had started that day, neither would be on the court. It remained to be seen if that would truly be
the case once the team played its opening game in six more weeks. Meanwhile, more news emerged on other fronts.
An October 7, 2013, article in the News and Observer provided an update on the AFAM department and the
students who had been affected by fraudulent classes. As of the article’s print date, only one
student had enrolled in a make-up course and only one alumnus had inquired about
the possibility, according to university officials. UNC spokeswoman Dee Reid said that 46 people
were at risk of not graduating unless they completed an extra course. Reid said she didn’t know what year of study
the 46 affected students were in or how many of them were athletes. The offer of free courses was part of an
arrangement the school made with SACS, the accrediting body of the
university. The academic degrees of 384
students and alumni were said to have been affected between 1997 and 2009, according
to UNC. Future data presented by the N&O, however, would show that the
numbers were likely much higher: as many as 4,200 students could have
ultimately been affected by taking fraudulent courses.
Of the 384 people officially identified, 80 were current
students and 304 were alumni. There was
no mandate for the alumni to return to campus to retake a class, however. The article said that because university
policy required that transcripts be sealed one year after graduation, there
would be no way to award credit or a grade for a new class. The university had said it would cover the
cost of the extra courses and textbooks with private funds. It remained unclear whether more students
would feel obligated to do the extra work for a problem that was essentially
caused by factions within the university itself.
*
* *
That same day a report came out stating that a longtime
UNC tutor had quit, and done so in the form of writing a letter to basketball
coach Roy Williams that was published in The
Daily Tar Heel. Jack Halperin’s
short message said: “Roy, after 23 years
as an academic tutor, and after going through the devastating football scandal,
I am resigning in protest of your disgraceful decision to allow P.J. Hairston
to remain on the team. If I were arrested
driving with no license, illegal drugs and a gun in a felon’s car, my
employment at this University would end immediately. Hairston’s DTH quote was, ‘I will play this
season.’ Since when does the criminal
decide his fate?”
*
* *
An article appeared on October 11, 2013, on insidehighered.com detailing a new
documentary film called “Schooled: The Price of College Sports”. It was based on the widely read Atlantic article “The Shame of College
Sports” by historian Taylor Branch.
Multiple people involved in varying aspects of college sports – both
past and present – spoke in the documentary.
Two of particular interest were UNC learning specialist Mary Willingham
and News and Observer reporter Dan
Kane.
“It’s the adults that are failing the students,”
Willingham said. She also recounted a
sobering conversation with a top UNC athletic official, the article
detailed. The official acknowledged that
investing millions to boost the school’s mid-level football team to the elite
level in the late-1990’s would mean recruiting academically unprepared
students. “I just felt like I was
drowning,” Willingham said of the “drastic drop” in athletes’ academic
preparation that followed. Some students
who had been recruited couldn’t even read, and she recalled three in particular
with whom she had to work on “letters and sounds.”
When the article (based on the corresponding documentary)
mentioned the fraudulent AFAM classes which displayed multiple signs of being a
vehicle to keep athletes eligible, it observed that the NCAA declined to
investigate UNC because athletes were not the sole beneficiaries of the
classes. “If the NCAA doesn’t want to
look at this,” Dan Kane said, “you could argue they just sent a message to
everyone across the county.” He was likely referring to a “blueprint”
that other schools could follow if they wanted to provide impermissible
academic assistance to their athletes without garnering unwanted attention from
the Athletic Association.
*
* *
UNC began its basketball season on November 8, 2013, and
both P.J. Hairston and Leslie McDonald sat out the contest. No official word was given for their absence
other than there being “eligibility concerns.”
There was another equally big story on that day as well. A News
and Observer article was released that stated the NCAA was unlikely to
punish the school for the widespread academic fraud in its AFAM
department.
Information had been discovered once again through public
records requests by the newspaper that had finally been filled. According to the N&O, newly released email correspondence revealed that the NCAA
still did not see the school’s athletic/academic fraud as a concern. Writer Dan Kane said that in late September,
Vince Ille, a UNC senior athletic official who had first been discussed in
Chapter Eleven of this book, asked the NCAA to confirm that it had no plans to
further investigate the fraud. “It is my
understanding that, based on the available information, no additional
investigation regarding these issues is being contemplated by the NCAA
enforcement staff, nor does the staff believe that any modification of the
infractions case that was complete on March 12, 2012 is necessary,” Ille
wrote. “Can you please confirm or
correct this assessment?” Less than an
hour later, Mike Zonder, the NCAA’s associate director for enforcement,
responded: “You are correct in your
assessment regarding the situation involving the AFAM department.”
Zonder and NCAA President Mark Emmert did not respond to
interview requests from the N&O. A spokeswoman for the NCAA, Emily James
Potter, said in a short statement that Zonder’s email was “correct.” Ille and other UNC officials also declined to
be interviewed. An ambiguity was where
Ille had initially gotten the impression that led to his email to Zonder: that
it has been his “understanding” that nothing additional would happen to the
university. One possibility for that
impression (which was hinted at in the article) could have come from Jackie
Thurnes, Ille’s former co-worker when he was at the University of Illinois. After working with Ille on that collegiate
campus, Thurnes would leave Illinois to become an enforcement official with the
NCAA.
Overall, the article’s effect on the watchful public was
one of stunned disbelief. Over a year
earlier in September of 2012, UNC officials had released a statement saying
that the NCAA had thus far found no evidence of violations. A vast amount of incriminating news had
emerged since then, however, detailing multiple connections between athletics
and the academic fraud. So it was no
surprise that onlookers were left dumbfounded by the NCAA’s continued
indifference to the events in Chapel Hill.
*
* *
It was detailed in an earlier chapter the vast amount of
money UNC had spent on outside public relations assistance – a known total in
the half-million dollar range. With that
in mind, an early-November employment announcement from the school made an
ironic bit of sense. A release from wral.com on November 11, 2013, said that
Joel Curran, a senior executive in a public relations agency and fittingly an
alumnus of UNC, had been named the school’s first vice chancellor for
communications and public affairs.
Curran was the managing director of the New York office for MSLGROUP,
described in part as the world’s fourth largest public relations and engagement
agency. The news release added that he
had worked at public relations agencies across the country. Some people in social media speculated that if
UNC felt the need to continue to spin stories and craft a certain message, they
might as well hire someone full-time to help with that task.
*
* *
On December 2, 2013, an Orange County grand jury indicted
former AFAM department chairman Julius Nyang’oro on a charge of obtaining
property by false pretense. More
importantly, his lawyer – Bill Thomas of Durham – said that his client intended
to fight the charge filed against him. “Dr.
Nyang’oro is presumed to be innocent under our law,” Thomas said. “There’s been one side of this story that has
been put forth in the press, but he’s going to have an opportunity to present
his side. We intend to present his case
in court. He is going to contest these
charges.” Those statements held some
large ramifications, as Nyang’oro could possibly divulge a massive amount of
as-yet-unreleased information about the AFAM scandal if put on the stand.
An article on December 3, 2013, by the News and Observer also had further
insight from Jim Woodall, the Orange County District Attorney. Woodall had indicated that a second
individual could face charges in the case, but he would only say that person
was not a current UNC employee.
Widespread speculation was that he was referring to Deborah Crowder, the
longtime AFAM department manager who had also been extremely close to factions
within the school’s men’s basketball program.
Crowder had retired in 2009.
*
* *
Yet another embarrassing episode would hit the school’s
basketball program a few days later. On
December 6, 2013, a former UNC player was found to have marijuana and drug
paraphernalia inside a house he had been renting from head basketball coach Roy
Williams. According to a follow-up
article from the News & Observer
on December 13, Will Graves was the former player in question. Police had found 4.4 grams of marijuana,
eight marijuana seeds, three blunts, and two “burnt marijuana blunts” inside
the rented house.
Steve Kirschner, a UNC athletics department spokesman,
said Graves had been renting the house from Williams while Graves took classes
at UNC during the fall semester. Graves
had played for the Tar Heels from 2007 through 2010, but had actually been
kicked off of the team by Williams for a violation of team rules. Despite that prior conflict, Graves had been
serving as a part-time video coordinator for the men’s basketball team at the
time of the drug discovery. Property tax
records showed that the house had an assessed value of over $600,000. In a separate article, Kirschner had told the
Associated Press that Williams had
allowed people to stay at the home periodically.
*
* *
On December 18, 2013, basketball player Leslie McDonald
was cleared by the NCAA to return to the team.
He had missed a total of nine games due to receiving impermissible
benefits. Among them had been the use of
cars associated with Haydn Thomas, the use of a custom mouth guard, and also an
iPhone. He was ordered to repay $1,783
to a charity of his choice before the end of the regular season.
Fellow player P.J. Hairston was not as fortunate. The school announced two days later that
Hairston would not return to the court that season, as the university had
decided against seeking his reinstatement from the NCAA. UNC Athletic Director Bubba Cunningham gave
more insight into the matter in a December 20, 2013, News and Observer article. “We’ve
all been hopeful the entire time that he would be able to play again,”
Cunningham said. “But by the time we
gathered all the information and worked with the NCAA, it just wasn’t
there.” Cunningham declined to detail
the exact monetary value of the impermissible benefits Hairston had
received.
When news began to spread that the school hadn’t even
asked the NCAA to look at Hairston’s situation, many in social media began to
speculate whether there was a deeper reason for that inaction by the
university. Some wondered if the purpose
was to keep from having to release information to the NCAA that might have
uncovered even more issues within the basketball program. Or, in Hairston’s specific case, might have
spanned back to prior seasons and forced the vacating of wins.
Hairston’s family released a statement in which it
criticized UNC’s decision not to seek reinstatement, the N&O article reported. “We
are displeased with the University of North Carolina’s decision not to submit
the necessary paperwork to the NCAA requesting to have P.J. reinstated,” the
statement read. “This process has been
long, and for (it) to end without having a final decision from the governing
body is a shame.”
The Associated
Press had earlier reported that Bill Thomas, a Durham lawyer representing
Haydn Thomas, said his client had met with school officials in early December
for “an in-depth interview… to clear up any misconceptions about the
relationship between Haydn Thomas and Mr. Hairston.” As an interesting and somewhat odd side note,
Bill Thomas was also the lawyer representing former AFAM chairman Julius
Nyang’oro in his grand jury case.
Not really mentioned by the media at that time, but still
an issue of great importance, was the school’s ongoing NCAA probation. Athletics Director Bubba Cunningham had made
the following statement in early 2013 when discussing the release of the Martin
report: “There’s no denying that we’ve
got major violations and we’re on probation.
We didn’t go to a bowl game, and we’re under the repeat violator clause
for the next five years.” The
infractions incurred by McDonald and Hairston would clearly appear to be a
violation of the school’s probation.
Once again, where was the NCAA?
*
* *
As December would near its end, an article appeared on
the website bleacherreport.com titled
“Inside Roy Williams’ Most Trying Season.”
It talked of the effects the various scandals had had on the 63-year-old
coach, with Williams saying, “I never in my life thought I’d have these kind of
things happen. It’s cast a light on our
program that I don’t like, and it’s cast a light on me that I don’t like at
all.”
Scott Williams, the coach’s son, actually had some very telling
comments in the article – some of which could have even been considered Freudian slips. “It’s not that Carolina’s record is
spotless,” the younger Williams said.
“No one’s record is spotless. But
in the past it was much easier to get things taken care of and not have
everything play out in such a public forum.”
*
* *
With 2013 drawing to a close, it had ultimately proven to
be another year of scandals surrounding the athletic/academic infrastructure of
UNC, and another year of the university’s leadership refusing to come clean and
show full transparency. Public records
and documents continued to be withheld from the media, which only prolonged the
likely eventual emergence of more damning information in the future. As it was, the tide would take a major turn
when the calendar rolled over to 2014.
Once relegated to the local North Carolina sports and academic scenes,
the story garnered national attention in a big way as the New Year began.
*
* *
The essential (and unanswered)
questions:
-- Even with a
prodigious amount of new and incriminating evidence that clearly suggested
widespread athletic/academic fraud, why was the scandal at UNC still not a
concern to the NCAA as 2013 came to an end?
-- Did UNC not seek
reinstatement for P.J. Hairston in an attempt to specifically avoid further
scrutiny from the NCAA – scrutiny which might have spilled over to other
players and/or earlier athletic seasons?
-- Considering the fact
that UNC was already on probation following its multiple infractions from
several years earlier, why didn’t the impermissible benefits received by McDonald
and Hairston trigger immediate repercussions from the NCAA?