College Football

[AugustWest]

no. you would.

[10ac]

Is that your real name?

[AugustWest]

David McPherson? yes.

LT's study tips

None of this fictional stuff is nearly as funny as the truth.

Listen to Lawrence Taylor's educational tips (that he used to stay eligible at UNC), included in his autobiography, Living on the Edge:

Page 79:
"There were a number of courses that were ready-made for football players. You know, large lecture classes, twelve hundred people or more, with two tests -- a midterm and a final -- both multiple -choice. @#%$. In those courses, you're gonna get what the guy sitting next to you gets. The only thing you have to do is remember not to copy the same name on your paper."

I love the comment "you're gonna get what the guy sitting next to you gets"

even funnier is the LT tip "The only thing you have to remember to do is not copy the same name on your paper."

Letterman's staff never came up with anything that funny.

[AugustWest]

In August, excerpts from former Tar Heel linebacker Lawrence Taylor's book, "LT: Living on the Edge," appeared in newspapers across the country. In the book, Taylor was extremely critical of the university and its football coach, Dick Crum. In short, Taylor said he slid through school because he was an athlete, that he hardly ever went to class, that he cheated on assignments and lots more.

http://articles.latimes.com/1987-11-08/ ... ball-coach

[Saint]

Thanks.

Can you live with this rewrite?

UNC has a checkered history going back to the 1940s when two-time Heisman Trophy runner-up Charlie Justice was one the highest paid athletes in the country. In the 1950s, UNC basketball players were involved in a point-shaving scandal, and in the ‘80s, Pro Football Hall of Famer Lawrence Taylor dictated a book in which he details remaining eligible at UNC while not attending class as well as other academic and legal improprieties.

[TheBigMook]

Thanks.

Can you live with this rewrite?

UNC has a checkered history going back to the 1940s when two-time Heisman Trophy runner-up Charlie Justice was one the highest paid athletes in the country. In the 1950s, UNC basketball players were involved in a point-shaving scandal, and in the ‘80s, Pro Football Hall of Famer Lawrence Taylor dictated a book in which he details remaining eligible at UNC while not attending class as well as other academic and legal improprieties.

...Charlie Justice was one of the highest paid athletes...

GRAMMAR SERVED!

[AugustWest]

leave out the "two-time heisman trophy runner-up" stuff and you got a deal

[Saint]

OK, I'll just put "football star" in its place so people who don't know Justice will know what he was

[AugustWest]

dig it

[TheBigMook]

The casual reader won't know who Charlie Justice is (other than a good name for a cop character in a shitty tv show). The Heisman stuff helps show that it was kind of a big deal that he was being paid. Stu was actually helping your point, not trying to make UNC look big time by having a Heisman runner-up.

[AugustWest]

Stu, as has been pointed out my real name is attached to the editorial. I'll leave it to you to determine whether it should be published with the article or not. you have a much better idea of the kind of backlash if any this would generate.

[TheBigMook]

Don't worry, Stu will change your name to "Chickenshit Jealous State Fan"

[Saint]

mook is correct but alas, it was still too long and I had to cut here and there, including the Justice, etc. graph.

Here's the version going into print and yes, we run names and towns of the letter writers. I actually think this will draw some reader comments, moreso on your side since there are more State-ECU-Duke fans than UNC fans.

Fan calls for independent investigation of UNC football
On March 14 of this year, the University of North Carolina system announced the members of its task force on academics and athletics. It’s an independent commission charged with examining the entire UNC system to weed out any academic or athletic improprieties among its 17 member institutions. The problem is that only one of the member institutions is currently under investigation for either, and it’s under investigation for both: the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
So why is the entire system under investigation when only one school is in trouble? In the late 1980s when N.C. State’s basketball program was under investigation no one was calling for a review at Western Carolina, and currently no one is calling for an investigation of the Ohio Bobcats.
Fifteen UNC football players missed games last season after being suspended for academic improprieties, receiving illegal benefits from agents or both. Five were banned from college football. An assistant head coach/recruiting coordinator was allowed to resign after the NCAA uncovered evidence that he was acting as an agent for a California-based company run by the coach’s best friend. Some of these violations are unprecedented in NCAA history. Yet UNC has imposed no penalties on itself; indeed, it admits no wrongdoing on its part at all. I don’t understand why UNC is risking its academic and athletic reputation for a coach who has never finished with better than eight wins or third in his division and is currently 0-fer against N.C. State.
It is the responsibility of the Board of Governors to find out what happened at Carolina and who should be held responsible for the mess. Yet nobody within the system is looking at UNC at all. And there’s a reason why. The University of North Carolina Board Of Governors is dominated by people with ties to Chapel Hill. Thirty-five board members either attended or graduated from UNC while East Carolina has five alumni and N.C. State has four alumni on the board. UNC, therefore, has more power on the board than all the other schools combined. Eight new members of the BOG were named March 25. Four received degrees from UNC. One has donated over $30 million to UNC. What do you think the chances are of him trying to expose corruption at the university he’s given so much money to?
The only way the public will ever find out the truth about UNC’s football program is through an independent investigation that the BOG has no interest in forming. It is time that the makeup of the BOG is changed to make representation of all schools more equal.
UNC-CH has always prided itself on its academic reputation. So why haven’t the academics at UNC stood up and called for an investigation into the football team’s academic improprieties? More than one football player that had admitted to cheating was allowed back on the field without going before the honor court. Shouldn’t professors want to know if the athletes attending their classes are really doing their own work? Apparently not. Eighty-two percent of the grades issued by those same professors to the general student population in 2007 were A’s or B’s, per a recently issued report on grade inflation at UNC. Maybe UNC’s academic integrity should be as in question as its athletic integrity.
Lastly, I want to ask the press in North Carolina why there has been no call for an independent investigation of Butch Davis’ program like there was of (former N.C. State basketball coach) Jim Valvano’s. While several articles have been written detailing the transgressions of individual players, and even more blaming agents, but there have been few if any asking what anybody in UNC’s athletic department knew and when did they know it?
Multiple potential first-round draft picks were flying all over the country, paid for by a close acquaintance of both the head and assistant head coach, while others were wearing expensive jewelry and more were getting inappropriate academic assistance from a personal employee of the head coach and the press isn’t asking who knew and if they didn’t, why didn’t they? I understand that it’s difficult in today’s economic times for a newspaper to do investigative journalism which is all the more reason that an independent panel appointed by the UNC BOG would have the funding and the power to get to the bottom of UNC’s transgressions.
One difficulty that the press is having with any investigation into UNC’s football program is that UNC tried to hide behind student privacy laws in order to keep records from the public. UNC has refused to release unredacted transcripts from phone and text records of Butch Davis and John Blake among others. They claim FERPA (Family Education Rights and Privacy Act) laws prevent them from doing so even though other institutions have lost similar lawsuits and still other universities have given out the same information without the courts being involved. UNC lost their case last week when a judge ruled that FERPA did not apply. Hopefully UNC will not continue to waste taxpayers’ time and money and release the records so that the public can have a true accounting of who knew what in UNC’s athletic department.
Marvin Austin’s tweets have exposed a culture of cheating in Chapel Hill that needs to be cleaned up. The academics at UNC need to hold the athletic department to at least the same standards they hold the general student body. The Board of Governors needs to appoint an independent commission to determine if the athletic department knew about the violations and did nothing or if they were truly ignorant of what was happening, and then make sure those responsible are punished appropriately. North Carolina’s press corps needs to be willing to ask some tough question and follow up if the answers don’t make any sense. I’ll believe it when I see it.

[Saint]

and it's a pretty good letter, augie. i'm impressed since you're pretty much a halfwit redneck state fan/oscillating fan salesman

[AugustWest]

I'll be happy with that version Stu. thanks for your help with the editing and for allowing me to vent through your workplace.

[Saint]

did any other paper print your letter?

[TheBigMook]

did any other paper print your letter?

The toilet paper did! ZING!

[Jungle Rat]

Wow. It took less than a month.

[AugustWest]

did any other paper print your letter?

I will not lie. I have not sent it anywhere else yet.

[Jungle Rat]

Thanks God