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A rush to judgment?

Posted on September 2, 2010September 5, 2010 by Staff

By Eddy Landreth, Staff Writer

This week should have been a celebration of Carolina football and how far it has come entering Butch Davis’ fourth season as head coach.

Instead, it is a season of uncertainty, a time when the program and the school are teetering on the brink of one of the worst scandals in school history.

Chancellor Holden Thorp sat before the state’s media a week ago and started a press conference by apologizing to the school’s faculty, alumni and followers before conceding that he believed some football players and a tutor had committed academic fraud.

But as the days drag on and Saturday’s 8 p.m. game against Louisiana State University in Atlanta draws closer, one cannot help but wonder if Thorp did not do the football team and all those who cherish the university a disservice by apologizing before anyone has been proclaimed guilty.

As time passes, one cannot help but remember the infamous Duke lacrosse case in which university officials rushed to proclaim guilt only to learn in the end that the Durham district attorney was the true villain. While the lacrosse players’ behavior did not present them or the school in the best light, they did not commit a horrible crime as charged.

And if one or two football players are found guilty of cheating, then we can easily say this whole incident will have been handled in a disastrous fashion, a manner that did more harm than the behavior of a couple of players.

If, as so many rumors would have us believe, five, six, seven or more players cheated with the help of a tutor and possibly school officials, the university will suffer a blow that will inflict a bruise that will last for years.

If, instead, the administration has overreacted, it will be because the leadership of the school believes too much of its own propaganda. The urge for too many Carolina administrators, faculty and fans through the years is to try to put the school beyond reproach, to act as if students and athletes are not normal people. The marketing is that they are superior because they attend North Carolina.

Little wonder the others schools from the “old ACC” hate Carolina with so much passion and have taken such tremendous joy in seeing these events.

The most important occurrence from hereon out is for Coach Butch Davis and his bosses, Thorp and Dick Baddour, the director of athletics, to lead with more courage and less fear of what might happen.
“There is no one single game that is more important winning than the integrity and character of this university and this football program,” Davis said to open the first of his weekly press conferences on Monday. “That is the overwhelming conviction that I have and I think it is the same with this entire football program and the administration.”

The same, no doubt, can be said for the overwhelming majority of the alumni. But painting the entire football team with a broad brush before anyone has been proven guilty is not a path toward integrity. Integrity is not the off-spring of rushing to judgment.

Just ask the former district attorney of Durham.

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