
{"id":21610,"date":"2011-10-27T14:18:47","date_gmt":"2011-10-27T18:18:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/?p=21610"},"modified":"2011-10-27T14:18:48","modified_gmt":"2011-10-27T18:18:48","slug":"day-of-reckoning-for-unc-football","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/2011\/10\/27\/day-of-reckoning-for-unc-football\/","title":{"rendered":"Day of reckoning for UNC football"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/2011\/08\/18\/support-the-players-by-filling-kenan-stadium\/landreth-mug-30\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-20318\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/landreth-mug1.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"landreth-mug\" width=\"100\" height=\"134\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-20318\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/landreth-mug1.jpg 100w, https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/landreth-mug1-84x113.jpg 84w, https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/landreth-mug1-74x100.jpg 74w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 100px) 100vw, 100px\" \/><\/a><br \/>\n<strong>By Eddy Landreth<\/strong><br \/>\n<em>Staff Writer<\/em><br \/>\nThere is a Carolina football team today, but there is no Tar Heel football program at the moment.<\/p>\n<p>Whether there will be one in the near future rests a great deal on what happens in Indianapolis on Friday. Chancellor Holden Thorp and Dick Baddour, retiring director of athletics, will face the infractions committee for what everyone hopes will be the end of the investigation into UNC football.<\/p>\n<p>There were mistakes made, horrible mistakes for an institution that prides itself on abiding by the rules. But the scope of the entire mess is not nearly as horrible as it has been made out to be.<\/p>\n<p>The biggest issues were the three players who took large sums of money from agents. There is not a school with potential professional athletes that is not subject to the same fate. It could happen to Duke or Carolina basketball tomorrow.<\/p>\n<p>The other issue was Butch Davis\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 blind spot, John Blake.<\/p>\n<p>Blake is an egotistical, money-hungry person who preys on the athletes he is supposed to be coaching and teaching values, although Blake possesses few, if any.<\/p>\n<p>Had Davis never hired Blake, Carolina may have won the ACC title last season and be on its way to being a consistent national power in football instead of a team hanging on a precipice.<\/p>\n<p>The other issue was the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153cheating scandal,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d over which Thorp foolishly called a press conference and branded all the players guilty. In the end, only a handful were found to have cheated.<\/p>\n<p>Had Thorp kept his mouth shut publicly and handled the academic issues in-house, this whole mess probably would have been gone long ago.<\/p>\n<p>The fact that he did not cannot help but leave the option open that he wanted to harm football and eventually fire Davis. The two were not on particularly fond terms. Davis did not have a great deal of respect for Thorp as a leader, and Thorp has proven to be a duplicitous character who has made serious errors in judgment on the academic and athletic sides during his brief tenure as chancellor.<\/p>\n<p>For an example of a different way to handle these matters, consider Auburn University. The NCAA drove through Auburn, Ala., waved at the Tigers\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 play-for-pay schemes and proclaimed the matter settled.<\/p>\n<p>Nobody ever even accused the Tar Heels of such, yet there is a chance the NCAA could hammer UNC with even greater sanctions than the school has already placed upon itself.<\/p>\n<p>If that happens and the team loses to Wake Forest on Saturday at 3:30 p.m. at Kenan Stadium, there may not be a football program to speak of in Chapel Hill for five to 10 years.<\/p>\n<p>Here is an interesting fact you may not know.<\/p>\n<p>The most utterly disgusting part of what has happened in Chapel Hill during the past two years, and across the country, is the vile hypocrisy of it all.<\/p>\n<p>The NCAA is a corrupt organization as dirty as the schools it proclaims to govern. The former athletic director at Miami was a part of the committee that placed Southern California on probation. He waved his finger in the air and chastised the Trojans and head coach Pete Carroll.<\/p>\n<p>Just a few months back, we learned Paul Dee, the man with his finger in the air, was the director of athletics at Miami while an agent was supplying women, drugs and about anything else the players wanted.<\/p>\n<p>Dee even allowed corrupt booster Nevin Shapiro to run onto the field with the team a few times before games.<\/p>\n<p>It is people like this who are going to sit in judgment of Carolina come Friday, although Dee has now retired.<\/p>\n<p>UNC fans can only hold their breath and hope Thorp has not succeeded in destroying Carolina football, the revenue it could potentially generate and the overall enthusiasm for UNC athletics that so many people had before this all began.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There is a Carolina football team today, but there is no Tar Heel football program at the moment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":20185,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[431],"class_list":["post-21610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21610"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21610\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21612,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21610\/revisions\/21612"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}