Tarnished Heels -- Chapter Seven

Chapter Seven

Academic fraud; AFAM grade changes; Deborah Crowder

            In May of 2012 UNC released the report from a faculty-led internal investigation into the school’s Department of African and Afro-American Studies (AFAM).  According to a May 4, 2012, article by investigative reporter Dan Kane of the Raleigh News and Observer, evidence had been found of academic fraud involving more than 50 classes that ranged from no-show professors to unauthorized grade changes.  The report would give many details, but also seemingly leave just as many important questions unanswered. 

            According to Kane’s article, one of the no-show classes was a Swahili course taken by former football player Michael McAdoo.  That same course had earlier been at the center of the NCAA claims that McAdoo had received impermissible tutoring, which then led to the discovery of a paper being heavily plagiarized.  The vast majority of the suspect AFAM classes were found to have been taught by former department chairman Julius Nyang’oro.  Along with the release of the report, the university also said that Nyang’oro would be retiring effective July 1.  According to Nancy Davis, the Associate Vice Chancellor for University Relations, “Professor Nyang’oro offered to retire, and we agreed that was in the best interest of the department, the college and the university.”

            The report attempted to make it clear that there was no evidence that student athletes received more favorable treatment (via the suspect courses) than students who were not athletes.  In fact, this would become a common sentiment to be proclaimed by UNC leadership in the months and years to come, and was the school’s main argument that its athletic teams should not be punished due to the academic fraud: because non-athletes were part of the classes as well.  Possible insight into why non-athletes were in those classes would eventually be revealed, but not for over a year after the release of the May 2012 report.  As such, that information will be discussed in a later chapter.

            A direct line from Kane’s article stated, “The findings were so serious that the university consulted with the district attorney and the SBI about investigating forgery allegations, as some professors said their signatures were forged in documents certifying that they had taught some of the classes in question.  Professors also said they had not authorized grade changes for students that the department submitted to the registrar’s office.”

            An immediate set of questions would arise from the lines in the above paragraph.  The most obvious dealt with the grade changes.  For whom were they changed, and what were the new/old grades?  And what effects, if any, did it have on those students’ overall grade point averages?  If they were athletes, did the changes allow them to keep their eligibility in a particular sport?  More than a year and a half later, the school has still not revealed that information.

* * *

            According to the report, law enforcement officials declined to investigate because they did not think the forgeries rose to the level of criminal activity.  What was apparently not considered, however, was the fact that some of the forgeries dealt with classes that were “on record” with the school, and where students received grades.  They were part of the monetary framework of the university’s financial and bookkeeping structure.  Yet no one taught them – since the professors’ said signatures were forged.  Did anyone receive the pay for having taught those classes, even though no “teaching” took place?

            Jonathan Hartlyn and William L. Andrews were the two senior faculty administrators who conducted the investigation.  In a joint statement they said, “We are deeply disturbed by what we have learned in the course of our review.  Our review has exposed numerous violations of professional trust, affecting the relationship of faculty and students and the relationships among faculty colleagues in this department.  These violations have undermined the educational experience of a number of students, have the potential to generate unfounded doubt and mistrust toward the department and faculty, and could harm the academic reputation of the university.”

            Information that would become extremely important in the future was that the timeframe covered in the report only went back as far as the summer of 2007, and ended with the summer of 2011.  A reason for this was given in a later interview by Chancellor Holden Thorp, who said the course review did not go back before summer 2007 because the university wanted to obtain the most accurate records and recollections available.  Another possible explanation, though obviously never stated by the university, was that the summer of 2007 coincided with the first time the recruits of former football coach Butch Davis were on campus.  Furthermore, Davis was fired in late July of 2011, showing that his tenure at the school essentially mirrored the time period UNC chose to focus its AFAM report.  Many in the social media world would suggest, perhaps rightfully so, that the school was attempting to pin all of its academic troubles on the now-ended Davis regime and his football players

* * *

            Much more valuable insight was provided via the report and the aforementioned article by Dan Kane.  It showed that the AFAM department’s long-time administrator, Deborah Crowder, would have overseen much of the course scheduling and grade recording.  She retired in September 2009 and declined to be interviewed for the internal investigation.  The newspaper reported that she made $36,130 a year before retiring, but she could also not be reached for further comment by the newspaper.  Like the pattern that followed the initial mentioning of Nyang’oro’s name a year earlier, Crowder would also soon become a much more central figure in the academic scandal.

            One of the classes that was deemed a “no-show” course was the 400-level class where Marvin Austin received a B-plus during his first summer on campus.  Kane’s article noted that Nyang’oro had been unable to produce a syllabus for that class, “Bioethics in Afro-American Studies,” or the Swahili class that Michael McAdoo had taken.  That was another red flag, according to the school’s report, because documents provided by other professors teaching similar courses focused on reading and writing in Swahili, not writing papers about Swahili culture in English, as McAdoo had submitted. 

            More problems arose when Nyang’oro told the university investigators that he did not teach the aforementioned Swahili class, yet the plagiarized paper McAdoo submitted listed Nyang’oro’s name as the course professor.  The investigation found it was one of nine classes in which there was no evidence that any professor “actually supervised the course and graded the work, although grade rolls were signed and submitted.”  And as stated earlier, other professors who were listed on grade rolls for those classes said their names were forged on course documents.  McAdoo was one of 59 students taking those classes.  Yet again, an obvious question was left unasked and thus unanswered: who were the other students?  Were they athletes whose eligibility was somehow affected by the fake grades?

            The report also found a “strikingly high” percentage of cases in Nyang’oro’s classes in which temporary grades were converted to permanent ones.  Several other faculty members said they had not authorized grade changes for students.  It was not detailed in the report whether the newer, “permanent” grades were higher than the “temporary” ones, despite this being a seemingly obvious set of data to seek in order to uncover motive.  And once again, the issue of athletic eligibility was completely ignored by the report – despite the clear evidence of Marvin Austin and Michael McAdoo benefitting from taking the classes, McAdoo’s plagiarism withstanding.  As detailed when discussing Austin’s transcript in Chapter Five, a 2.0 grade point average was required to be in good academic standing at the school.  If temporary grades were later changed to permanent ones, and the ensuing result was that an athlete’s GPA was bumped above the 2.0 threshold, then clear intent would be established.  Again, none of that was addressed in the report.  Whether the investigators looked into the matter and then chose to not include it, based on what they possibly discovered, is unknown.

            Indeed, the report did not cast any blame on the athletics department.  However, information obtained by the News and Observer showed the AFAM’s independent study courses were popular with athletes, and that Nyang’oro was often teaching them.  Such courses had drawn suspicion in the past due to the sometimes lax attendance and work policies, and athletic programs at other universities had gotten into trouble based on some independent study courses, according to the N&O.

            In all, nine courses from the summer 2007 through summer 2011 timeframe were found to be aberrant, meaning there was evidence that students completed written work, submitted it to the department and received grades, but there was no evidence that the faculty member listed as instructor of record or any other faculty member actually supervised the course and graded the work.  Those nine courses had a collective total of 59 registered students, according to the report.  Furthermore, an additional 43 courses with a collective total of 599 registered students were either aberrant or were taught irregularly.  The latter meant that the instructor provided an assignment and evidently graded the resultant paper, but engaged in limited or no classroom or other instructional contact with students.

* * *

            The AFAM’s long-time administrator, Deborah Crowder, was earlier mentioned as being the person who would have overseen much of the course scheduling and grade recording within the department.  Crowder began working at the university in 1979, and retired in 2009.  Details would emerge that showed a very close relationship between Crowder and the men’s basketball program.  She had been in a long-standing relationship with former basketball player Warren Martin, who played on the 1982 National Championship team.  At the time the various fraudulent classes were being revealed, Crowder also had a Facebook social media page.  When the report was publicly revealed her Facebook page was still open to public view, and her “friends” list contained a staggering collection of former UNC men’s basketball players – many of whom had played on past National Championship teams. 

Included were:

-- Wayne Ellington (played from 2006-09, and was a member of the 2009 National Championship team)

-- Bobby Frasor (2006-09, and a member of the 2009 National Championship team)

-- Tyler Hansbrough (2005-09, and a member of the 2009 National Championship team)

-- Quentin Thomas (2004-08, and a member of the 2005 National Championship team)

-- Wes Miller (2004-07, and a member of the 2005 National Championship team)

-- Byron Sanders (2003-06, and a member of the 2005 National Championship team)

-- David Noel (2002-06, and a member of the 2005 National Championship team)

-- Rashad McCants (2002-05, and a member of the 2005 National Championship team)

-- (The wife of) Jawad Williams (2001-05, and a member of the 2005 National Championship team)

-- (The wife of) Jackie Manuel (2001-05, and a member of the 2005 National Championship team)

-- Will Johnson (1999-03)

-- Terrence Newby (1997-00)

-- Ademola Okulaja (1995-99)

-- Donald Williams (1992-95, and a member of the 1993 National Championship team)

-- Derrick Phelps (1990-94, and a member of the 1993 National Championship team)

-- Kevin Salvadori (1990-94, and a member of the 1993 National Championship team)

-- J.R. Reid (1986-89)

-- David Popson (1984-87)

            One other name of note stood out amongst Crowder’s “friends” list: Kay Thomas.  Thomas was a long-time secretary of the UNC men’s basketball team.  According to a 2012 interview with the website keepingitheel.com, Thomas worked for the basketball program under Coach Dean Smith until he retired.

Also of significant interest was the emerging revelation that Crowder was very close to Burgess McSwain, a long-time academic adviser to UNC’s men’s basketball team.  A story that originally appeared in the Chapel Hill News in February of 2004 detailed many of McSwain’s accomplishments involving academics and the school’s basketball team.  There was even a quote given by Julius Nyang’oro in the article.  It followed a lead-in that proclaimed that McSwain’s efforts and skills as a teacher had won the respect of numerous UNC faculty members who regularly teach student athletes.  Nyang’oro’s remarks immediately followed, part of which stated, “Burgess has a clear sense of what a teacher needs to do to convey the key concepts that need to be understood.  She is another transmission belt in the teaching process.”  In fact, that specific topic, “faculty members who regularly teach student athletes,” was immediately changed following Nyang’oro’s quotes, leaving him as the only faculty member featured in the section.  Later in the article McSwain was quoted as saying, “I tell people who ask me that it’s not a sham at Carolina.  I can’t say what happens at other schools, but at Carolina, while we may spoon-feed them a little bit, they go in and take their own exams and write their own papers.  We don’t do their work for them.”  Whether she was aware of the fraudulent activities within the AFAM department that benefitted basketball players is unknown.  McSwain died on July 9, 2004, after a long illness.

According to information that would surface later in 2012 via an article from the Charlotte Observer, Crowder had received $100,000 and some Hummel figurines in 2008 from the estate of Burgess McSwain’s father.  The payment was said to have arisen from a “close” friendship Crowder had with Ms. McSwain.  The money and items were reported to be in exchange for taking care of the father’s dogs. 

* * *

            More notable information from the AFAM investigative report surfaced just a few days later via another News and Observer article penned by Dan Kane, which made heavy use of statistics gleaned from the documents.  It revealed that football and basketball players accounted for nearly four of every ten students enrolled in fifty-four classes at the heart of the academic fraud investigation.  The actual number of athletically-associated enrollments might have even been higher, as trainers, volunteers, and other “support” members of the teams were not identified – only those who were official sports participants.  While perhaps shocking to the general public, there were signs beforehand that should have hinted at the news, what with Austin and McAdoo’s earlier transgressions, and then Crowder’s close ties with the basketball program. 

Crowder’s presence brought up another huge red flag once the percentage of basketball enrollees was revealed, and led to a topic that few in the media (and none at UNC or even the NCAA) seemed to want to tackle: As previously mentioned, there were unauthorized grade changes.  For whom were they changed?  Were they for football and/or basketball players?  And if so, how did it affect the GPA’s and eventual eligibility of those players?  Someone at the university – and likely the AFAM department – changed those grades.  A fair line of reasoning to follow up on would be to look at people who had connections and/or a vested interest in the athletic programs.  Deborah Crowder unequivocally fit those parameters, especially with the basketball program.  Yet the grades of past basketball players were never looked into by the university – or if they were, it was never publicly acknowledged by the university.  As explained in an earlier chapter, if players were found to have participated while ineligible, then victories would have to be forfeited.  The UNC men’s basketball team won national titles in the very recent years of 2009 and 2005.  It also won a title in 1993, which just happened to be the year after Julius Nyang’oro took over as the chairman of the AFAM department.   And it won a title in 1982, a team on which Deborah Crowder’s boyfriend, Warren Martin, played.  Yet no questions were asked regarding this massive set of coinciding and suggestive information.

According to the News and Observer’s article, university officials say they found no evidence that the suspect classes were part of a plan between Nyang’oro and the athletics department for eligibility-maintaining purposes.  And once again the same reasoning was given that Hartlyn and Andrews had used in their report: Student athletes were treated no differently in the classes than students who were not athletes.  It should be noted that in the summer of 2011 the university hired a Raleigh public relations firm to help with their handling of the ongoing scandal.  As time would go on, more and more people associated with UNC would repeat some of the same phrases over and over again, emphasizing points that would appear to convey less wrongdoing on the university’s part, and thus hopefully keep the NCAA from returning to the school – such as the “student athletes vs. non-student athletes” technicality.

* * *

Former State Supreme Court Justice Bob Orr, at the time an attorney, was quoted as saying, “These kids are putting in enormous amounts of time, and in at least some of the sports that are very physically demanding, they are missing a number of classes because of conflicts, and then if they are a marginal student to begin with, you’ve got to send them to Professor Nyang’oro’s class.  I think the academic counselors realized that and the tutors realized it and frankly the folks up the food chain for the most part recognized it.  But nobody wants to rock the boat because it’s big money.”

Kane’s article went on to further break down the reported enrollments in the suspect classes.  Of the 686 students, 246 of the enrollments, or 36 percent, were football players, and 23 enrollments, or three percent, were basketball players, according to UNC.  Kane went on to point out that football and basketball players accounted for less than one percent of the total undergraduate enrollment – about 120 of the more than 18,500 undergraduate students on campus – yet they accounted for nearly 40 percent of the enrollments in fraudulent classes. 

Some in the social media realm tried to immediately downplay basketball’s involvement, pointing to the relatively low “three percent” statistic (23 enrollments).  That argument was statistically flawed, however.  The short timeframe of the school’s investigative report into AFAM classes was from 2007 to 2011.  During that same time period, there were 26 total scholarship players who participated on the four men’s basketball teams that covered the same timeframe.  There are several counterarguments that could shed a different light on that data:  If each of those 23 basketball AFAM enrollees only took one fraudulent class apiece, then all but three men’s basketball members from 2007 to 2011 would retroactively lose their eligibility (assuming the academic fraud was appropriately acted upon by the NCAA, or even the university itself).  If a group of players took two classes apiece, that would still mean that at least 11 players would retroactively lose their eligibility – 42 percent of the players from 2007 to 2011.  In either scenario, the team would be forced to vacate all of its victories during that timeframe – including the 2009 National Championship.  So once again, it became increasingly apparent why the university was unwilling to dig any deeper into the AFAM fraud.  The basketball team and its past accomplishments were coming close to being placed at the center of the microscope, and those glories were as much a part UNC’s image as any academic reputation had ever been.

* * *

As more dissecting of the university’s investigative report continued, even more questions appeared to be left unanswered.  According to the May 7, 2012, article in the News and Observer, university officials could not say why no one brought the suspect classes to their attention before the previous summer.  Jonathan Hartlyn and William Andrews, the two UNC academic officials who conducted the probe, did not interview students for the report – despite the fact that they must have known all of the students’ names who were in the classes, as they reportedly had open access to all past records.  However, Nancy Davis, a university spokeswoman, said the university’s counsel, Leslie Strohm, and its former faculty athletics representative, Jack Evans, did talk to students.  Inexplicably, those interviews were not reflected in the report.  As noted before, other information that was not reflected in the report was for whom specific grades were altered.  While the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) would prevent the report from naming specific students, it could have very easily indicated whether the grades of athletes were changed – and what effect it had on those athletes’ overall GPA.  But once again, that was not pursued by the report’s investigators or by the university as a whole.

            Tom Ross, the UNC system president and a graduate of UNC’s School of Law, stated a theme that would be oft-repeated in the coming months by those closely associated with the university: It was time to look forward, and not backwards.  He said in a statement that he saw no need to look further into the academic improprieties.  “I believe that this was an isolated situation,” Ross said, “and that the campus has taken appropriate steps to correct problems and put additional safeguards in place.”  On what information he was basing his assumption that it was an isolated situation, however, was certainly unclear.  Hannah Gage, chairman of the UNC System’s Board of Governors and another UNC graduate, said she would not know if the board would be seeking more information until she had talked to others.  As pointed out in Chapter Two, UNC graduates held a significantly higher percentage of the BOG seats than any other university in the 16-institution system.

* * *

The essential (and unanswered) questions:

-- Who changed the grades for the students? 

-- Who forged the professors’ signatures? 

-- Who was ultimately paid for the various classes where the teacher was “unknown?”

-- How many athletes took part in the fraudulent classes, and for which sports? 

-- Did those grades affect their GPA’s, and if deemed impermissible, then retroactively their eligibility? 

-- Had the matter been pursued, would team wins need to vacated, even if it meant national championships? 

-- Even though Deborah Crowder retired in 2009, the fraudulent AFAM anomalies continued for at least two more years.  Was Nyang’oro solely responsible?  If not, who else played a role in the improprieties now that Crowder was gone?

-- Why did the university and its on-staff investigators refuse to ask the above questions and seek answers in a manner that would appear to uphold the honorable and high standards it had long claimed to hold for the institution?

Tarnished Heels -- Chapter Six

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?

Tarnished Heels -- Chapter Four

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 16^th 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?

Tarnished Heels -- Chapter Three

Chapter 3

Parking tickets; tutor Jennifer Wiley

            Evidence of more wrongdoings had continued to surface in the late summer of 2010, and as a result local North Carolina media entities approached UNC with numerous public records requests.  Instead of being forthright and releasing much of the information, however, the school chose to stonewall behind a team of lawyers and delay the release of key records and documents – a practice that actually continues to stretch into 2014.  One set of records was finally released in June of 2011 after the State Court of Appeals denied the school’s request to delay the release pending an appeal.  According to a June 16, 2011, article from the Raleigh News and Observer, this was brought about following a lawsuit by a consortium of media outlets that had requested – and been denied by UNC – those numerous public records.

            A key release dealt with on-campus parking tickets received by fewer than twelve football players.  The players had been specifically named/requested by the media consortium due to the fact that they were some of the key pieces involved in the ongoing NCAA investigation.  According to that same News and Observer article, those players tallied 395 parking violations from early 2007 through August 2010.  The latter month and year was when several of the news entities had made their documents request, meaning the school had fought their release for almost a full year.  This was a stark contrast to the comments made in the previous chapter by people such as Dick Baddour, Erskine Bowles, and Bob Winston who pledged to do whatever it took to get to the bottom of the school’s scandalous issues.

            The 395 tickets led to fines totaling $13,125.  Some of the specific details behind those various numbers revealed much more, however, and would eventually lead to the discovery of deeper problems.  According to the News and Observer, Greg Little, a former wide receiver who was ruled permanently ineligible the previous season due to NCAA agent violations, was responsible for 93 of the tickets.  Even more shocking was the fact that Little was ticketed in five different vehicles, and that those vehicles had nine different license plates on them, apparently in part from the use of dealer tags.  According to a wralsportsfan.com article, by law dealers cannot issue temporary tags to the same vehicle for consecutive months.  However, the parking records showed that one of Little’s vehicles bore temporary tags for the months of March and April of 2008.  Both of those 30-day tags traced back to a company in Durham named 919 Imports.  That auto dealer had closed by the time the parking records were finally released, and the business owner, Shawn E. Brown, was serving a federal sentence for money laundering.  Interestingly, a somewhat related series of events would unfold two years later during the summer of 2013 when UNC star basketball player PJ Hairston would be connected to vehicles supplied by another convicted felon from Durham.  Those events will be covered in full detail in a later chapter.

* * *

            It would eventually be revealed that Jennifer Wiley, the UNC tutor noted in the previous chapter, paid $1,789 in August 2010 for some of Greg Little’s aforementioned parking tickets.  As more information about Wiley was uncovered, her role – and that of the academic support system at UNC – would become more prominent.  According to a timeline provided by espn.go.com, Wiley began her employment with UNC’s academic support center in August of 2007 during her junior year as a student at the university.  During the subsequent three years she provided a number of impermissible educational benefits to athletes, mainly in the manner of making substantive changes to papers, and also composing entire sections in some cases.  There was also the payment of Little’s parking tickets, and at the time that summarized the basic extent of her impermissible assistance.  Despite these impermissible transgressions that were still unknown at the time, Wiley was seen fit to receive an institutional award for tutoring excellence by the university upon her graduation in May of 2009.  The fall of 2013 would shed much more light on her true role, however, and would later paint many of the comments made by those who had defended her in a very hypocritical light.

* * *

            Beginning in October of 2013, the NC Secretary of State would begin issuing indictments based on its investigation into sports agents.  Jennifer Wiley (now with the married last name of Thompson) was the first to be indicted, and the information that was revealed showed that much of her illegal involvement was never uncovered during the initial NCAA investigation of the scandal.  Secretary of State documents showed that she received thousands of dollars in cash (through the mail) from sports agents, and would then pass that money on to football (and one-time basketball) player Greg Little.  Again, the documents associated with the indictment would counter many of the supporting claims made by her defenders several years earlier.  Those indictments will be covered in greater detail in a later chapter.

            In March of 2012, Joseph B. Cheshire V, a Raleigh lawyer who was representing Wiley at the time, gave an interview with the Raleigh News and Observer in support of his client.  In the coinciding news article Cheshire indicated that Wiley’s father had sought his counsel shortly after her role in the scandal became public back in 2010.  Cheshire, a well-known defense lawyer, said he agreed to advise Wiley at no charge because he believed in her and was sickened by “the extent people would go to destroy her life for their own sakes.”  As a predictable side note, Cheshire is a graduate of the University of North Carolina. 

            Up to that point in time Wiley had never talked with NCAA investigators, and it was later revealed that she stonewalled those from the Secretary of State as well.  Cheshire stated that she was a “deeply religious” and “big-hearted” young woman, but conceded that the academic assistance that she had given UNC’s players was “sometimes out of bounds without even knowing she was, but yes, occasionally just out of bounds.”  He went on to say that she broke “convoluted and arcane” NCAA rules, apparently referring to assistance on papers, but her efforts to help were no different from what “thousands of friends, family, fraternity members, suite mates, girl or boyfriend students” routinely do for students not affiliated with an athletics program.  Cheshire said Wiley’s motivation was simple:  She wanted to help people who needed help.

            The obvious question that is raised regarding Wiley (Thompson), especially with the fall 2013 Secretary of State indictments, deals with the illegal acts of accepting cash payments via the US Postal Service across state lines, and then funneling that money to collegiate athletes.  Greg Little has since admitted to receiving more than $20,000 during his time at UNC.  None of that was mentioned by her lawyer in the March 2012 article; he simply decried her as a victim who only wished to help athletes with their school work.  So it begs the question: did Cheshire know that Wiley had accepted cash payments and was giving it to players?  If so, did he deliberately omit that information when verbally defending his client?  Or did Wiley simply lie to her lawyer, in essence continuing the lack of clarity and communication that she had shown the NCAA – and would later show the Secretary of State?

            Other troubling facets of the Wiley situation were connected to her post-UNC employment.  According to the same News and Observer article that is quoted in the previous paragraphs, rumors circulated in the summer of 2009 that she had become “too friendly” with student athletes, and her employment contract was not renewed as a result.  According to an ESPN timeline, this decision was reached in August 2009 by the director of the Academic Support Center and the Assistant AD for Certification.  However, she was soon thereafter hired directly by head football coach Butch Davis to help tutor his son, a high school student at the time.  Wiley would continue to provide impermissible academic assistance to UNC players even after she was no longer employed by the university, and despite being sent a letter by the university that it was not okay to continue providing tutoring services to student athletes.  She also continued to provide impermissible monetary gifts to players – again, during a timeframe that seemingly overlapped with her personal employment with head football coach Butch Davis.

            Wiley, an Education major while at UNC, went on to teach for a short time in elementary schools in both Durham and Raleigh.  Her employment stints were brief, however, due in part to her reputation and past involvement in the scandal.  According to her lawyer, in September 2011 she resigned from Jeffreys Grove Elementary School in Raleigh after a little more than a month on the job.  Cheshire said she quit because parents complained she was “the UNC tutor.”

* * *

The essential (and unanswered) questions:

-- Why did the university fight and delay the release of so many public records (a practice that continues well into 2014), despite the continued insistence by its leaders that they want to fix the problems within their athletic programs?

-- What did Jennifer Wiley’s lawyer know (in 2012) regarding her illegal funneling of money to UNC players?

-- Why would a head coach hire a former university tutor – a tutor whose prior university employment had been discontinued by the school due to her becoming “too close” to players (on his very own team)? 

-- Were/are there deeper connections between UNC athletes and Durham felons regarding the use of vehicles?