The Goat Pen

"it takes alot for me to say something about the refs"

Like the opening tip?

no, I usually wait until the first free throw

Just like Stu's paper, those guys are merely suckling off the News and Observer's reports...

I'm ok with that

Won't surprise me to someday see Indiana rush the court at halftime after a stellar first half.....

[youtube]N8KfEzfZMgE[/youtube]

another interesting twist is Willingham joining Ed O'Bannon's lawsuit.

why? because if its proven that using the NCAA treatment of UNC as an example that college student athletes have forced amateurism without regard to the quality of education they get, O' Bannon has a slam dunk and will get millions from the NCAA which puts the NCAA in the position to revisiting their "academic only, not athletic" initial ruling for UNC.

I'm pretty sure athletes at UK, UNC, NC State and everywhere are being illicitly compensated, per NCAA regulations, by someone and if you think otherwise, you are naive.

Saint wrote:I'm pretty sure athletes at UK, UNC, NC State and everywhere are being illicitly compensated, per NCAA regulations, by someone and if you think otherwise, you are naive.

define illicitly being compensated? hundreds? thousands? tens of thousands?

I think UNC fans calibration is out of whack given Hairston's Camaro. You guys have new levels of "norms" for players.

but its good to see we've gone from the denial stage to the "everyone does it" stage.

The next stage is unfair persecution.

everybody forgets kansas kentuck both start/play a boatload of freshman

both of them should be final 8 if not final 4 in the tourney

what's to deny? players get benefits outside NCAA rules everywhere. it's been done to varying degrees of success at many places for many years. it goes on everywhere and some places just get caught more than others.

as far as athletes taking easy courses to push up their GPA, I'd never heard of that going on anywhere before. I always thought athletes were held to the same academic standards as other students. that's a groundbreaking revelation.

Trust me, I am no defender of the Tarholes, but it is hilarious watching Kentucky fans busting the chops of UNC fans on this matter.

well, I can't blame them but this latest stuff is in bad need of context before it can be considered further damning evidence against UNC. I don't expect that to matter to the ABC crowd though

Players take easy courses everywhere. UNC created an entire department full of FAKE courses and then had its athletic advisers encouraging everyone to sign up for them. That seems fairly unprecedented, at least insofar as what can actually be proven.

Oops, I meant, it was all the work of a lone rogue professor and one office worker. Shame on them.

I was in AFAM 40 with Mike Copeland, Bobby Frasor, Tyler Hansbrough, a bunch of football players, some baseball players and regular students. The class was about 50/50 athlete/regular student. We did work in the course. We read a bunch of books. It wasn't as challenging as some advanced science course, but it entailed more work than a Drama course.

sardis wrote:Trust me, I am no defender of the Tarholes, but it is hilarious watching Kentucky fans busting the chops of UNC fans on this matter.

and thats exactly why - we get our shit busted, and the NCAA has come down hard on many schools since for much less than what is going on at UNC.

200 classes - I don't care who finds it hilarious - its academic fraud and its possibly unprecedented in college athletics.

If it's true, it's fraud but I'd bet my bottom dollar (which isn't far off) that it's not unprecedented

Tonight, UNC is fighting back.

Saint wrote:If it's true, it's fraud but I'd bet my bottom dollar (which isn't far off) that it's not unprecedented

certainly not that it happened but the scope and breadth of it , as described to date, makes it so.

I'm not sure what the University is trying to accomplish by discrediting Willingham.

Are they saying their athletes are smart enough to take standard classes? Is there really a big degree of separation in saying that they aren't specifically illiterate but weren't capable of taking regular college classes ? That's a win in UNC's book? At the end of the day, Willingham is vindicated either way. UNC can't go the route of the complete denial because they still have the AFAM scandal as the root cause. Why the need for bogus classes that didn't meet if your athletes were capable of handling a normal course load (and normal is relative in the case of athletes who all major in communications or some physical fitness related degree)

Folt or whoever it was says that athletes in 2012-2013 met ACT standards - well duh, I suspect they would given that UNC knows its ass is in a crack, but Willingham's study is from 2003 - 2010, which was conveniently ignored on the OTL counterpoint provided by UNC and the official response they published.

While I"m sure many UNC faithful are seeing Folts or whoever's response as the closed book, and eventually firing the whistleblower as a justified move - it won't play out like that in the court of public opinion. Instead of dancing around the obvious and making creative denials, until UNC stands up and admits a much higher level of wrong doing , this will be an albatross around their neck- and I now personally believe the longer it plays out the harder the crash is.

Utlimately, they may get their goal - to avoid any sanctions by the NCAA to their athletics program - but look at the cost to their reputation in the process.

"200 classes - I don't care who finds it hilarious - its academic fraud and its possibly unprecedented in college athletics."

It is precisely that "possibly" that I don't think the NCAA wants to find out about. And they certainly don't want to go all in on it. B/c if it's not unprecedented (or anything close to that), their whole house of cards comes tumbling down overnight. And that's alot of cards...