The Goat Pen

Saint, I need to update the paragraph regarding the farpa lawsuit since unc lost this week. I'll throw up a sentence or two tonight that you can run by your editor.

http://rivals.yahoo.com/highschool/blog ... ool-wp1188

CMAC would be pumped... if he wasn't dead.

More Urban Meyer to OSU yackety yak.


>http://collegefootballtalk.nbcsports.co ... te-in-2012

AugustWest wrote:check this info. I got the numbers from an article I posed at WC (no not a packpride post) but this info matches yours. I'll keep looking but this info still shows unc with half the votes. by far the largest voting block while representing 13% of the student body.

http://www.northcarolina.edu/bog/members.htmFrom the UNC website

35 members - 17 direct ties to UNC-CH, 4 to NCSU. (Counting undergrad & grad both).

OK, can I change your quote from "Forty-four members of the Board are alumni of UNC. The next closest schools are NC State and East Carolina, both of which have five alumni on the board."

to

"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." ?

If you can get the update on the lawsuit to me today (it's 5 p.m. on Sunday), I'll run the letter tonight for Monday's paper.

dig it. give me a minute. it's hard to criticize the press for doing nothing while acknowledging the lawsuit but I can do it dammit.

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 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 1st round draft picks were flying all over the country, paid for by a close acquaintance of both the head and assistant head coach, 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 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 who's family name is on a street in Chapel Hill ruled that FERPA did not apply. Hopefully UNC will not continue to waste taxpayer time and money and release the records so that the public can have a true accounting of who knew what in UNC's athletic dept.

On March 14th the University of North Carolina announced the members of it's 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 it’s 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 ‘1980’s when NC State 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.
15 UNC football players missed games last season after being suspended for academic improprieties, receiving illegal benefits from agents or both. Five were banned permanently 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 coaches’ best friend. Some of these violations are unprecedented in NCAA history. Yet UNC has imposed no penalties on itself, indeed it admits no wrong doing on its part at all. I dont understand why UNC is risking it's academic and athletic reputation for a coach that's never finished with better than 8 wins 3rd in it's division and is currently 0-fer against Nc 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 we’re named on March 25th. Four received degrees from UNC. One has donated over $30million 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? Apparently the board members are more concerned with winning football games than fixing the problems at their favorite university. The only way the public will ever find out the truth about UNC’s football is through an independent investigation that the BOG has no interest in forming. It is time that the make up of the BOG is changed to make representation of all schools more equal.


UNC-CH has always prided itself on it’s academic reputation. In fact Carolina likes to think of itself as a public Ivy League school. So why haven’t the academics at UNC stood up and called for an investigation into the football teams academic improprieties? More than one football player that had admitted to cheating was allowed back on the football field without going before the honor court. Shouldn’t professor want to know if the athletes attending their classes are really doing their own work? Apparently not. 82 percent of the grades issued by those same professors are A’s or B’s Maybe UNC’s academic integrity should be as in question it’s athletic integrity. Maybe the just don’t want to give up those choice seats in the Dean Dome.


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 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 1st round draft picks were flying all over the country, paid for by a close acquaintance of both the head and assistant head coach, 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 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 who's family name is on a street in Chapel Hill ruled that FERPA did not apply. Hopefully UNC will not continue to waste taxpayer time and money and release the records so that the public can have a true accounting of who knew what in UNC's athletic dept.


UNC has a history of cheating going back to the 1940’s when Charlie Justice was one the highest paid athletes in the country while attending UNC. (Justice agreed to attend UNC after they agreed to provide his wife with a scholarship. Ironically NC State was put on probation 20 years later for supposedly offering a scholarship to Duke to a recruits girlfriend. In the “50’s their basketball program was involved in a point shaving scandal, and in the ‘80’s Lawrence Taylor dictated a book in which he details remaining eligible at UNC while never attending class, selling shoes and tickets for pocket money and having numerous arrest covered up by the UNC administration. The fact that UNC has avoided punishment for most of these past acts should not excuse them from punishment and exposure now. 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 needs 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 was knew about the violations and did nothing about them 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.

David McPherson

are you altering the charlie justice line?

OK, thanks.

I'll have to cut it because it's a lot longer than our allowed guidelines for letters to the ed (and a lot longer than the stories we usually write) but I'll try to keep the cuts to a minimum.

I'll just leave the Justice line as is.

if you have to make cuts and dont like the justice line then start there. (unless you know it was cheating. heh)

I was interviewed by a TV reporter once. They cut and rearranged it so that it sounded like I was pissed when I actually told them I wasn't following the story and I really didn't care one way or the other.

I fully expect to be perceived as pscho-paranoid nc state fan regardless, so it doesnt really matter.

AugustWest wrote:I fully expect to be perceived as pscho-paranoid nc state fan regardless, so it doesnt really matter.

Well, yeah....

I don't mind leaving in the part about Justice being highly paid although it sounds better to say UNC has a checkered history instead of a history of cheating since the former is irrefutable. Also, I have never read anything written by Lawrence Taylor but an extensive Google search doesn't turn up anything on selling shoes or arrests covered up. I don't doubt that it happened but would rather be sure what you say about it being in a book is accurate.

I don't mind a letter writer or even a columnist saying UNC is full of cheating bastards because there's enough on the table in this case to warrant that accusation. but if we use specific details, I want to make sure they're right

AugustWest wrote:I fully expect to be perceived as pscho-paranoid nc state fan regardless, so it doesnt really matter.

That was a given many many years ago.

Augie,

I just cleaned it up for spelling, punctuation and AP style issues. I may delete the last 2 paragraphs since they're redundant to a degree. If there's space, I'll leave them in but would still like clarification on the LT book thing.

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. In fact Carolina likes to think of itself as a public Ivy League school. 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 football 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. Maybe they just don’t want to give up those choice seats in the Dean Dome.
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 who’s family name is on a street in Chapel Hill 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.
UNC has a checkered history going back to the 1940s when Charlie Justice was one the highest paid athletes in the country while attending UNC. In the 1950s, the UNC basketball program was involved in a point-shaving scandal, and in the ‘80’s Lawrence Taylor dictated a book in which he details remaining eligible at UNC while never attending class, selling shoes and tickets for pocket money and having numerous arrest covered up by the UNC administration.
The fact that UNC has avoided punishment for most of these past acts should not excuse them from punishment and exposure now. 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 questions and follow up if the answers don’t make any sense. I’ll believe it when I see it.

David McPherson
Charlotte

Cant you fuckers do this through email?

it sounds better to say UNC has a checkered history instead of a history of cheating since the former is irrefutable

I dont mind that change.

re: Lawrence Taylor, give me a minute.

Rat, I'll get this published through your asshole if you dont shut the fuck up.

You'd enjoy that.