UNC: Give yourself the 'death penalty'

The news — and the embarrassment — just keeps getting worse at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Today's News & Observer reports on a leaked transcript of football superstar Julius Peppers' days at Chapel Hill. The transcript shows that Peppers was, to say the least, a marginal student who was bailed out by a series of classes he took in the African and Afro-American Studies Department. Peppers majored in African and Afro-American Studies, a major that qualifies you for two kinds of jobs — teaching African and Afro-American Studies or professional athlete. (The latter pays better.)

The implication of this leaked transcript — beyond the fact that the university might be in violation of a federal law requiring that student academic records be kept top secret — is that the academic embarrassment of non-existent courses, special consideration for athletes, tutors and advisers who kept athletes' heads above the academic flood, and a disconnect between the university's academic mission and its athletic practices have existed for at least a decade in Chapel Hill. The withdrawal of football wins, the firing of a coach, the banishment of football players and the post-season ban by the NCAA are minor annoyances compared to the shame of subverting a great university into a football factory.

UNC does not seem to have grasped just how discrediting these athletic misdemeanors are. More drastic action is needed to put the whole episode (however far back it goes) into context.

Here's my suggestion: UNC should give itself the "death penalty." It should shut down the football program for one year, maybe two, and if the basketball, baseball, soccer or other sports programs are shown to be involved in these transgressions, shut them down, too. Spend that year or two examining the university's priorities and studying the ways academics were subjugated by intercollegiate athletics. Establish a protocol to ensure that never again will unqualified students be admitted because they can dunk a basketball or catch a football, never again will student athletes be given a pass on academic standards and never again will an academic department be established for the apparent purpose of keeping athletes in school with inflated grades. Television contracts and coaches' exorbitant salaries should also be examined. While football is suspended, the African and Afro-American Studies program should be examined and either absorbed into other disciplines or re-established as a genuine academic pursuit.

The football fans will scream, as they did when Coach Butch Davis was fired, but more is at stake here than a dozen football games; the university's entire reputation and qualifications are in jeopardy because sometime in the past, some university officials decided winning ball games was more important than educating North Carolina's students.

'Why now?' is the question at Chapel Hill

The question I have about UNC's firing of head football coach Butch Davis is not "Why?" but "Why now?" Chancellor Holden Thorp said there was nothing new in the year-long NCAA investigation of the football program, just cumulative damage to UNC's reputation as a quality educational institution that plays by the rules. So he chose to fire Davis a week before football practice begins.

Why now? Although Davis asserted his innocence in a written statement issued after his surprise dismissal, UNC had grounds to fire the coach a year ago. That was when it was revealed that assistant coach John Blake, whom Davis had hired and supervised, was acting as an agent in an unseemly scheme to connect UNC players with a sports agent friend of Blake. The bad situation unraveled from there. The NCAA investigation happened upon academic problems with a tutor hired by the university, and about a dozen players were withheld from one or more games. A couple of players' actions were so egregious that they were banned from college football. One player's lawsuit against the NCAA led to the revelation that he had heavily plagiarized a term paper, and the student Honor Court had failed to discover the obvious violations. You can complain with some justification that NCAA rules are too picky and its disciplinary actions too inconsistent, but the activities revealed by the NCAA probe and news media investigations have been embarrassing to the university. That cumulative embarrassment apparently is what led Thorp to fire Davis.

But in the weeks and months leading up to Wednesday's announcement, Thorp and athletics director Dick Baddour had repeatedly vouched for Davis, missing every opportunity to hang the responsibility around the coach's neck. By reversing himself days before practice begins, Thorp has not only shown himself to be inconsistent, but he has badly damaged UNC's ability to field a competitive team. And if Davis is responsible, so is Baddour, who selected Davis and started UNC on this path of embarrassing surprises.

The football scandal at UNC goes back further that Wednesday's announcement or last year's NCAA probe. The university's decision to hire a big-name coach with Football U. and NFL experience paved the way for the embarrassment UNC is trying to purge now. Under Davis, venerable Kenan Stadium has lost its iconic and charming tile-roofed field house to be replaced by fancy wrap-around lounges for well-heeled donors. Die-hard fans had hoped Davis would bring top-five national rankings, even a championship, to Chapel Hill, but that hasn't happened. Davis has brought a megalomaniacal super stadium, some talented teams and exciting games. But his four years as head coach will be remembered mostly for the embarrassment of the NCAA and academic investigations.

Winning the game while losing your integrity

The permanent suspension of three UNC football players is not the climax of this embarrassing and depressing episode for my alma mater. Three of the most skilled players on the team are permanently barred from college football after the NCAA found they had taken illegal gifts from sports agents. Two of the players also lied to investigators, the NCAA said. Another 10 or so UNC players remain in limbo, either suspended for a defined number of games or still awaiting the consequences of investigations by the NCAA and the student honor court. More shock waves are no doubt in store for Tar Heel fans when the NCAA and honor court reach their conclusions about what went on within the football program and how severe the punishment will be.

It's a sordid sort of mess one would expect from the nation's football factories, but not from a respected state university with a history of stringent ethical standards, at least since the basketball point-shaving scandal of 1961, which hit colleges across the country. Losing your integrity is a lot worse than losing a ball game.

As someone who can remember what Kenan Stadium looked liked before the upper deck was added, I have not been a fan of the tree-destroying, field house-razing and charm-eliminating expansion of the venerable stadium in a hell-bent effort to duplicate the style of the football factories. "Bigger, hungrier, richer" is not an appropriate slogan for a college athletic program.

Colleges and universities have ignored the 20-year-old recommendations of the Knight Commission, which sought to put a bridle on runaway college sports. Now, with the addition of sports agents eager to cash in on the multi-million-dollar contracts a first-year professional football, basketball or baseball player can earn, the entire college sports establishment may have been hijacked by the professionals, agents, television and shoe companies. It seems doubtful that the universities, which have acquiesced to every demand of coaches, players, shoe suppliers and television, can retrieve the powerful stallion they have unleashed.

Years ago, I scoffed at the notion that college athletes should be paid for their services. They bring millions of dollars to their universities and get only a few thousand dollars' worth of scholarships and other services in return. With college sports behaving more and more like a private enterprise with only nominal ties to their academic namesakes, which exercise little real control over their sports programs, I'm rethinking my opposition to paying college players what they're worth. Until colleges once again field teams composed of students who occasionally play sports instead of athletes who occasionally attend classes, perhaps we should strip away the charade, admit that college players really are pros and pay them accordingly. Forget the NCAA rules, forget academic progress, forget graduation rates; just let 'em play and be the pros they are.

The cost of big time college football

It should have been seen as a harbinger. The championship-hungry power brokers who tore down the idyllic and iconic Kenan Stadium Field House (seen in the center background in this 1927 photo) in a push for more seating and high-priced suites for wealthy fans should have seen it coming. If all you care about is winning, there is a price to be paid. They tore down the charming old Field House at the east end of Kenan Stadium, even though it had been there since the 1920s, when the stadium was built. They wanted an exclusive new edifice, one that would charm and fete the wealthy donors who were highly sought after to feed the big-time football program's hunger for big money for coaches and equipment. They wanted to close in the stadium, to make it a complete oval, like Michigan's stadium, or the Rose Bowl, or the Lowe's Motor Speedway. A few years before, they had cut down the trees and enclosed the west end zone with a huge, multi-storied football center, making Kenan Stadium, which had been built in a natural ravine with seats on each sideline, in a horseshoe-shaped stadium. The new facility was supposed to make Carolina football competitive with the Big Boys. That wasn't enough; only a complete oval would do for a Big Time College Football Powerhouse.

But just a week before the start of the 2010 season — in a nationally televised game, no less — the UNC Tar Heels are wondering whether they'll have enough skilled players to field a team. An NCAA investigation into players' relationships with professional sports agents threatens to decimate the team. Double-digit player disqualifications are being rumored. On top of that, the NCAA investigation led to a subsequent university investigation into irregularities involving a tutor of football players. There is even the possibility that last year's wins, which came after the allegedly illegal contact between players and an agent, might be vacated.

In just a couple of weeks, the Tar Heel team has gone from top-20 preseason excitement to potential disaster.

That's what you get when all you care about is winning. The old mission-style Kenan Field House has been demolished. It cannot be resurrected. I searched for a recent photo of the Field House and could not find any online. The closest I came was this photo of the building's demolition. The Field House had stood, with many renovations and additions, for 80 years. It had seen many championships and many All-Americans. It was good enough for those glory years, but it wasn't "Big Time."

Personally, I'd prefer to have the Field House back, along with a little integrity.