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Tar Holes NOA from the NCAA

D4L said:
I will concede the point, jhmd, McCants had no business being on a college campus. There should be some accountability on the student-athletes to make the most of the opportunity they have been given. Of course, offering some of these kids an opportunity to get an "education" is like offering the Indians trinkets for Manhattan. It's not a fair trade.

I don't know what the answer is. On the one hand, Presidents of the University, as well as the NCAA, talk about the lofty ideals represented by a University. On the other hand, they pay the coaches in the revenue sports a shit ton of money to succeed and when they don't, they are summarily dispatched. It makes it challenging to ask those same coaches to avoid bringing really good players onto a campus when there is no hope of them taking advantage of their "opportunity." The University system should not be a Farm System for the professional leagues. The kids that have no ability to compete in the classroom, (as well as the ones that view a college campus as a real life game of Grand Theft Auto), really should not be offered a scholarship. One of the things that has been played down in the UNC scandal is the role that Admissions played.

I have said this before, UNC (and schools like it) need to look in the mirror and ask themselves what they want to be. If it is a football/basketball factory, then so be it. If it is a "Public Ivy" then start fucking acting like it. If the UNC scandal has shown anything, you say the latter when you mean the former and call it the "Carolina Way."
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You had me at hello.

Carolina failed when they said "We're going to pretend there is no problem whatsoever and we're going to make Marvin Austin a grad student on paper."

What they should have done is said "Holy hell this kid is not college material. He might not even be high school material. We [read: somebody who wanted to win football games] admitted him, and 'we' take him as 'we' find him. Therefore, we have a responsibility to teach him at his level and by the time we're done with him, he will be a below average high school student, which is to say a vast improvement over how he presented as a freshman." I hope every other school in the country does this already and that Carolina is doing it now. Frankly, I hope Carolina is like the airline that just had a mishap and now everything is quadruple checked, and that their kids get the best experience in the country. That would be a salvageable outcome from this idiocy to me. That, and Wrangor losing the bet.
 
deaconson said:
it's not about absolving mccants, or anyone else, of personal responsibility. but his lack of interest in learning should not have been enabled by various professional educators. those adults let him down. they should have given him the help he needed to succeed or fail. instead they said "fuck it. we'll keep him eligible to the team and school benefits."

he was a kid that was always going to take the path of least resistance. the adults in his life should not have followed his lead or lead him astray. i suspect that was not part of the recruiting pitch to he and his family in their living room.
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Just because somebody failed at their job (admitted) doesn't make you a victim. We put automatic weapons in the hands of kids three years younger than this kid and send them into combat zones. Rashad can do his own homework without somebody holding his hand (he didn't, apparently).
 
jhmd2000 said:
Again, the hate/fact ratio is unbalanced. McCants was FAILING at the education you are talking about. Would he have been "denied" it if he failed out?

Your theory believe he was "denied" something he never actually sought. Again I ask, do you really believe that, or does it just sound good to you?

The best part is we don't have to speculate whether or not he actually sought it. He equated his college experience to "incarceration." Doesn't sound to me like his heart was in it.
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So the 2005 banner should come down because McCants would have failed without the fake classes then, right ?
 
BiffTannen said:
So the 2005 banner should come down because McCants would have failed without the fake classes then, right ?
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Surely nobody here is contesting that point are they? It's embarrassing that UNC hasn't already pulled it.
 
BiffTannen said:
So the 2005 banner should come down because McCants would have failed without the fake classes then, right ?
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Well to play devil's advocate, you can't really say that for sure because it's possible that if there were no paper classes they could have found real classes for him that he could have gotten good grades in.
 
jhmd2000 said:
Just because somebody failed at their job (admitted) doesn't make you a victim. We put automatic weapons in the hands of kids three years younger than this kid and send them into combat zones. Rashad can do his own homework without somebody holding his hand (he didn't, apparently).
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he could have chosen to try to do his own homework. instead he was at an institution that said "he won't be able to do the work so we'll just give him a pass and not ask him to try to do it. also, we knew he could not when he was in high school. lucky for us we already had a great system in place where we could take a woefully unprepared kid and hide him. so we could win games. worked out pretty well. now if we can just hide what we did..."
 
jhmd2000 said:
Just because somebody failed at their job (admitted) doesn't make you a victim. We put automatic weapons in the hands of kids three years younger than this kid and send them into combat zones. Rashad can do his own homework without somebody holding his hand (he didn't, apparently).
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It is an insult to the military to compare what UNC did with their "student" athletes with the training given to military recruits. There are no "paper classes" that allow a recruit to become a soldier or marine. The military makes sure that every last one of the "kids" they send into combat are trained. Everybody meets the standards. If they don't pass training the first time, they get "recycled" If they don't pass again, they don't go to combat. They go home.

Yes, the military is very good at telling the recruits what to do, when to do it and how to do it. But the recruit has to do it, or he or she flunks. There are no alternate pathways for "special cases" so don't even compare the military with the mess at UNC.
 
jhmd2000 said:
You had me at hello.

Carolina failed when they said "We're going to pretend there is no problem whatsoever and we're going to make Marvin Austin a grad student on paper."

What they should have done is said "Holy hell this kid is not college material. He might not even be high school material. We [read: somebody who wanted to win football games] admitted him, and 'we' take him as 'we' find him. Therefore, we have a responsibility to teach him at his level and by the time we're done with him, he will be a below average high school student, which is to say a vast improvement over how he presented as a freshman." I hope every other school in the country does this already and that Carolina is doing it now. Frankly, I hope Carolina is like the airline that just had a mishap and now everything is quadruple checked, and that their kids get the best experience in the country. That would be a salvageable outcome from this idiocy to me. That, and Wrangor losing the bet.
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UNC should not become an elementary school to prop up the athletic department.
 
jhmd2000 said:
You had me at hello.

Carolina failed when they said "We're going to pretend there is no problem whatsoever and we're going to make Marvin Austin a grad student on paper."

What they should have done is said "Holy hell this kid is not college material. He might not even be high school material. We [read: somebody who wanted to win football games] admitted him, and 'we' take him as 'we' find him. Therefore, we have a responsibility to teach him at his level and by the time we're done with him, he will be a below average high school student, which is to say a vast improvement over how he presented as a freshman." I hope every other school in the country does this already and that Carolina is doing it now. Frankly, I hope Carolina is like the airline that just had a mishap and now everything is quadruple checked, and that their kids get the best experience in the country. That would be a salvageable outcome from this idiocy to me. That, and Wrangor losing the bet.
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I agree to an extent. Education is a good thing. IMHO education is a key element to ending poverty and to break the cycle that some people of certain backgrounds find themselves in. Giving a kid an opportunity to break out of that is a good thing. A really good thing. But if you are going to do that, then you have to do it. You can't NOT educate the kid, shlep him through the system, give him essentially a phony and meaningless degree, and pat yourself on the back for a job well done. At the end of the day, what is clear is that these kids were used. Some of the people that helped make that happen appear to be well-intentioned, if not terribly misguided. What they do not understand is that a degree -- not an education, but a degree -- to an inner city kid, who goes back to the inner city after his 4 years of eligibility are over, is absolutely useless to him or her.

If this whole thing started out well-intentioned, as the Wainstein Report suggests (a narrative that I personally am extremely skeptical about), it eventually morphed into a system designed to help the ASPCA Advisers keep their jobs and for Coaches to win ballgames. The betterment of the kids, if ever truly considered, got lost in the shuffle somewhere.
 
jhmd2000 said:
You had me at hello.

Carolina failed when they said "We're going to pretend there is no problem whatsoever and we're going to make Marvin Austin a grad student on paper."

What they should have done is said "Holy hell this kid is not college material. He might not even be high school material. We [read: somebody who wanted to win football games] admitted him, and 'we' take him as 'we' find him. Therefore, we have a responsibility to teach him at his level and by the time we're done with him, he will be a below average high school student, which is to say a vast improvement over how he presented as a freshman." I hope every other school in the country does this already and that Carolina is doing it now. Frankly, I hope Carolina is like the airline that just had a mishap and now everything is quadruple checked, and that their kids get the best experience in the country. That would be a salvageable outcome from this idiocy to me. That, and Wrangor losing the bet.
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As a top 30 college in the US, does Carolina offer that option to all students? I didn't think so, which makes that an impermissible benefit.

The NCAA has to drop the hammer here. If it is just a slap on the wrist, there will be sham majors popping up all over the SEC and the lawsuit arguments where the NCAA proposes that the education/degree is a fair trade for the work performed by the student athlete will come crashing down around them.
 
91deac said:
As a top 30 college in the US, does Carolina offer that option to all students? I didn't think so, which makes that an impermissible benefit.

The NCAA has to drop the hammer here. If it is just a slap on the wrist, there will be sham majors popping up all over the SEC and the lawsuit arguments where the NCAA proposes that the education/degree is a fair trade for the work performed by the student athlete will come crashing down around them.
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Exactly right.
 
91deac said:
As a top 30 college in the US, does Carolina offer that option to all students? I didn't think so, which makes that an impermissible benefit.

The NCAA has to drop the hammer here. If it is just a slap on the wrist, there will be sham majors popping up all over the SEC and the lawsuit arguments where the NCAA proposes that the education/degree is a fair trade for the work performed by the student athlete will come crashing down around them.
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I think the NCAA needs to drop the hammer, but I don't think colleges will be creating sham majors without some serious challenges by their accrediting authority.
 
91deac said:
As a top 30 college in the US, does Carolina offer that option to all students? I didn't think so, which makes that an impermissible benefit.

The NCAA has to drop the hammer here. If it is just a slap on the wrist, there will be sham majors popping up all over the SEC and the lawsuit arguments where the NCAA proposes that the education/degree is a fair trade for the work performed by the student athlete will come crashing down around them.
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bym051d said:
I think the NCAA needs to drop the hammer, but I don't think colleges will be creating sham majors without some serious challenges by their accrediting authority.
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It will be interesting in that regard. SACSCOC put UNC on probation. Probation doesn't seem to carry any immediate penalties, just sort of "don't do it again or else" There might be some schools who will create something close to sham classes and majors if they thought that might win them a National title or several. And then take their chances with the NCAA and accrediting body. If the NCAA doesn't land on UNC pretty hard, they will be looking at more of these type of activities.
 
91deac said:
As a top 30 college in the US, does Carolina offer that option to all students? I didn't think so, which makes that an impermissible benefit.

The NCAA has to drop the hammer here. If it is just a slap on the wrist, there will be sham majors popping up all over the SEC and the lawsuit arguments where the NCAA proposes that the education/degree is a fair trade for the work performed by the student athlete will come crashing down around them.
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If they did, wouldn't they have done it?
 
As noted in the football recruiting thread, Chazz Surratt changed his commitment from Duke to UNC. The following tweet explains the rationale for the move.

redsteel33 wrote: Phillip Gardner ‏@GazettePhil · 3m3 minutes ago
Chazz Surratt on NOA affecting UNC football:
“The coaches said that their lawyers told them 100% the football team won’t be touched.”

I don't know whether to be pissed that the UNC Coaches are essentially lying to these recruits are laugh at the recruits' Parents' naivete. I'd be willing to bet neither Suratt, not his parents, read either of the NOA or the Wainsten Report. Unreal. . .
 
Morgan Randall: UNC players not to blame for scandal

“If you wanted to go to school to get an education, you should’ve gone to (expletive) Harvard,” UNC football coach Butch Davis said. After a few seconds of silence, we started laughing and cheering. As scholarship football players at UNC, we knew we were there to play football, but hearing the head coach proclaim it with such eloquence was a real treat.

Today it appears the UNC administration agrees with Davis, at least when it comes to its athletes.

The “paper classes” at the heart of the UNC scandal have widely been condemned as insufficient to qualify as college credit. Having taken two of these classes, I can confirm this to be the case. And while the courses took relatively little effort, no one questions whether I fulfilled their requirements.

This clear violation of academic integrity has prompted the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools to place UNC on academic probation. And in an effort to get the scandal behind it, the current administration seems more than willing to also accept NCAA sanctions that may include vacating wins and forfeiting postseason opportunities.

While many (especially those at The N&O) salivate for penalties like these, I see this approach as selling out students. The existence of “paper classes” was the university’s failure, not mine or my teammates’. Our wins on the field came through tremendous sacrifice – a sacrifice UNC demanded of us. If someone didn’t qualify academically to play, it was up to the university to bear that out. UNC, therefore, should stop blaming the victim for a dilemma of its own making.

Rather than accept the NCAA’s perverted definitions of “morality,” UNC should stand up for its students. It is long overdue for an institution to resist the many injustices the NCAA advocates. I, along with every other athlete, did what was asked of me and more. Submitting to such punishments would provide a convenient scapegoat but in actuality only demean the athletes’ talents and efforts.

The university’s mea culpa is insincere if it sells out the students it is supposed to value and protect.

Maybe I should have taken Davis’ advice and gone to Harvard instead. Then perhaps my university would have valued at least part of my college career.

Morgan Randall

Greenville

The writer, an offensive lineman on the UNC football team 2006-2008, graduated from the school in 2010 and completed medical school at University of Kentucky. The length limit was waived.
 
I agree that the current players shouldn't be punished, in a perfect world.

Without causing pain to the current programs, there's effectively no punishment and no deterrent for schools to repeat the crime.
 
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