Breaking News: Tarheel Football

I see it being worse than USC. Reggie Bush was the main guy involved but with UNC, you had up to 9 players sitting out games. If the NCAA sanctions on UNC are less than USC, then it's a shame.

 

''Based on the allegations reported so far at UNC, we're looking at one of the most egregious college sports scandals in recent memory. A staff member who's actively recruiting for an agent with whom he has a financial relationship? Not just for the Tar Heels, but for players at other schools? And an academic fraud scandal on top of that? One in which the tutor at the center of it had direct ties to the head coach? UNC better enjoy whatever bowl it goes to this year, because it could be its last for a long, long time.''

Read more: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2010/writers/stewart_mandel/10/12/mailbag/1.html#ixzz12LAf5200

 

I am really not looking to give anyone a pass, but thanks for assuming and structuring your entire post around that assumption. That's always fun.

And, considering that the guys are black, we can remove the tan thing from the entire equation, but even if they weren't all they had to say was that they went to Kerr Lake for the weekend. It's not that freaking hard. And again, these guys were probably not wearing the bling around the coaches. And if the coaches aren't seeing it, it is going to be pretty tough for them to know about it. I also highly doubt that all of the players are required to submit to jewlery inspections, but in your world where you expect them to be on the Ed Channel, perhaps you think that is a swell idea.

I would be saying the same thing if it was Richt or Saban. Oh wait - they had players all get free trips to Miami as well and didn't know about it. I think that there were some more suspensions there as well. So either they are all morons too or perhaps it's a bit of a stretch to expect that you can know where your players are 24/7/365 all year round.

If this had been a situation like with Bush where the guy is pretty poor and yet living in a sweet pad or his parents can all of the sudden afford to go to all of the away games or like that other USC running back that all of the sudden shows up to practice in a Range Rover, I would not be defending the coaches not knowing because that kind of thing is blatantly obvious.

 

Chapel Hill is going to need a scapegoat. In America, there always has to be be a scapegoat. Who will it be? Do you think that was Blake and if so, will getting rid of him alone be enough?

 

Michael Jordan rent a car for UNC players.

 

Rameses?

 

He accepted money from Blake and may miss the next 3 games due to the NCAA investigation.

 

I don't know enough yet to say. If more stuf comes out and it turns out that Butch should have known, it will definitely be him. He may be it regardless. If I was Baddour, I would not be looking at making any house renovations either.

It's all going to depend on what comes out of the investigation. As far as I know, none of his UNC players signed with Wilchard though (and maybe none of his players from other schools as well, but I could be wrong on that). So if Wilchard was using him to recruit UNC players, Blake apparently was awful at it - which makes no sense.

Blake is a key figure obviously. Was he just misleading UNC about his role with Wilchard, was he the middleman for Davis, or could it be that he and Wilchard are just really good friends and Wilchard had no problem giving his friend money sometimes. I have no clue at this point and all of them are very viable options.

The academic allegations are also obviously key. If it turns out that the University was complicit in this and that the athletes were receiving "free grades" then I personally think that Davis, Baddour, and Thorp should all go.

In my time in Chapel Hill, I had some classes with players and had some fairly good friends on a variety of different teams and all of them said that they were not allowed to skate or get free grades. A lot of them did get help or had tutors, but I think that is fair enough.

 

vp, Kentwan Balmer who directly played under John Blake (who was the DL coach) is a Wichard client.

The other part of this is I don't ever know of an example where an Associate Head Coach (and lead over recruiting) was being paid by an agent while also performing his duties. The NCAA should have a field day with that one. There will be loss of scholarships, bowl ban, etc. and someone will have to take the fall.

 

I know not every player is like this but some are. Wolfpac and I know one guy who attended UNC(I won't say his name out of respect) but the guy couldn't win a first grade spelling bee in a special ed class as a senior in high school. During his senior year, not sure how this got set up but he had 3 weightlifting classes a day. There are exceptions because winning for some coaches is more important that making sure they are getting the grades.