What the Heel: Carolina Way Still Includes Stalling From All Corners

Did North Carolina hire Hillary Clinton's vigorous lawyers experienced at redacting documents before releasing NCAA allegations stemming from a shady African and Afro-American independent study course? Amid the "Four Corners" stalling (administration/coaching staff/press/politicians), could we at least have some pre-response entertainment such as a spirited dunk contest among foot-dragging Chancellor Carol Holt, Sgt. Schultz-like coach Roy "I Know Nothing" Williams, look-the-other-way media represented by Dick Vitale and mum state politicians more enthused about prospect of third NCAA championship in 12 years justifying contract extension for Williams? The dunk-a-thon should be conducted on a kids goal because that is the Sepp Blatter-like way principals involved in this ruse have played footsie with onlookers.

If the Heelhole of a selling-your-scholastic-soul scheme was solely for GPA boosting, Carolina's 2005 (10 of 15 members were AFAS majors with total of 35 "pretty doggone good" bogus classes over two semesters) and 2009 NCAA titles could be in jeopardy of being vacated. Shrouded in more secrecy than Area 51, candid commentary probably will hinge on subpoena-related deposition details emerging from suing players promised a good education but major-manipulated into AFAS, Communications plus Exercise and Sport Science.

At any rate, for the sake of supplying a good chuckle to offset a portion of the angst, the public should have an opportunity to digest a sampling of the pithy prose from those unread Prime Time 10-page papers (assigned mostly A grades with few B+ marks since a player or two may have misspelled his name). Pilfering POTUS lingo, pinhead purveyors simply seek to say: "You didn't write (or build) that!" UNC, admitting "regrettable actions" even before an academic accreditation sanction, may deserve the death penalty simply because disgraceful no-show classes came under the umbrella of a Center For Ethics. To date, there has been no delusional discrimination claim among UNC athletes or regular students failing to have access to Asian-American, Cuban-American, Irish-American, Latin-American or Mexican-American studies.

The university has paid in excess of $1 million in PR costs dealing with the scholastic scandal but that's an affordable expense insofar as there was significant savings over these many years when no faculty was necessary to actually provide instruction for bogus bookwork. Rather than learning classy pass fakes on the court, the courted players passed by "learning" in fake classes. It's no excuse but, if the let's-not-dwell-on-the-negative media would get off its royal cushion, how many other schools across the nation have comparable compromising courses? This is not exactly virgin territory among power-league members after a former Minnesota tutor claimed she wrote or helped write more than 400 papers or pieces of coursework for in excess of 20 Gophers players in the mid-1990s. Amid notice of allegations to UNC, the NCAA should remember: "If you don't stand for something (such as higher scholastic standards), you'll fall for anything (excessive number of suspect student-athletes)."

How in Heel is having athletic department personnel steering players into sham classes for 18 years not, at its core curriculum, a textbook definition of "lack of institutional control?" On the other hand, it may be the "institution (athletic department)" was very much in control and knew damn well it was playing puppeteer as much as POTUS using the "N" word in a radio interview. What exactly were the names of these equally undignified 101 classes? Perhaps the AFAS coloring-book syllabus included: Urban Riots Honoring Michael Brown, Freddie Gray and Trayvon Martin; Hands Off! Don't Loot!; Black Lives Matter Except For Aborted Innocent Babies; Rap is Crap But Deserves National Anthem; Cultural Impact of Hair Braiding and Pants On the Ground; Dignity and Ethics in Setting O.J. Free; Profiling Welfare Kings and Queens; Where's Your Baby Daddy?; Race-Hustling Leaders Rev Al, Jesse Jackson and Van Jones; Reasons Why Black Sheep Vote More Than 90% For Dimorats; Impact of Tattoo Misspellings; How Jailin' Rose Bombs Uncle Toms; Dancin' On Their Graves Like Ray Lewis; Breathing Around ESPN's Undefeated Post-Jason Whitlock, etc., etc., etc.

When will ESPN, while shedding influence of "right radicals" Mike Ditka and Curt Schilling, get to the bottom of the chicanery by giving truth serum to two of the network's college football commentators (former UNC coaches Mack Brown and Butch Davis) or yielding answers via another orchestrated interview with Coy Roy serving as master of "really-bothered-by-whole-thing" ceremonies featuring backdrop of supportive ex-players? ESPN, in a stimulating move as vital as the Bunny Ranch endorsing Shrillary Rotten, should have just gone ahead and issued Williams' support group some "Game Day" posters for their journalistic juvenile pep rally. Defining courage down via crass tabloidism, the network has gone so far let-it-be left it Jennerly defended decision to give ESPY Courage Award to Bruce or Caitlyn or whatever he or she is rather than infinitely more obvious choice of Army veteran Noah Galloway or the late women's hoopster Lauren Hill. At least ESPC, after first expressing laughable "piracy concerns," cancelled a 30 for 30 documentary fawning over sad-sack Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson.

What a surprise Brown's coaching career included Texas, which is also investigating reports of academic misconduct among Longhorns athletes. Amid all of the press posturing and Carolina's scholastic shenanigans, even if you have to fabricate, don't let integrity icon Dean Smith's last two Final Four teams in the mid-1990s be involved in any way or else no coach on the planet can be trusted. It seems totally out of character, but time will tell if liberal "do-anything-for-them" overkill via "fairness" control-freak tendencies polluted UNC's program at the genesis of the academic scandal and will eventually stain his legacy. If so, we'll all be weeping like a Villanova pep-band piccolo player before the Wildcats won it all a year later.

How difficult would it have been for Williams, instead of pleading educational mission ignorance, to take a few minutes out of his busy schedule per semester to assess academic progress of each of his players? Didn't he acknowledge there was "class clustering" early in his Carolina head coaching tenure? It is the height of hypocrisy for him and other "father-figure" DI mentors to have contract bonus provisions stemming from APR/graduation rates. Will UNC's extension into the next decade demand he apologize to whistle-blower tutor Mary "Just Keep My Players Eligible" Willingham? Didn't Williams figuratively assault her (triggering death threats in aftermath of additional administration admonishments) by impugning Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary's character saying her illiteracy claims were untrue and totally unfair about a striking number of scholars boasting middle-school reading skills?

Said Willingham prior to settling a lawsuit with UNC for $335,000 (about $1,000 per basketball player enrollment in paper class minus attorneys' fees): "I went to a lot of basketball games in the Dean Dome, but Roy never came and sat with me while I tutored his guys." Heaven help us if Williams' "sad-time" excuses, coupled with equally lame remarks from gridiron mentors Brown and Davis regarding the academic debris, are typical of the coaching community level of interest in authentic advancement toward a genuine diploma. Reminiscent of escaped convicts in New York deserving inclusion in a penitentiary honors program, two-time All-American Rashad McCants claims he made Dean's List at UNC one semester despite failing to attend any of the four classes in which he "earned" straight A's on his way out (at least not via manhole cover).

In this absence-of-standards era, Williams is virtually guaranteed a job with ESPN as an analyst if he fibs to NCAA investigators similar to certifiable liar Bruce Pearl. Amid the pimpish compartmentalization, there are also "clever" guys such as Oregon stemming from its timing in waiting to expel three players implicated in an alleged sexual assault in order to avoid a reduction in its Academic Progress Rate score. Meanwhile, fellow Pac-12 Conference member California adopted a stricter admissions policy when it comes to academics. Will Cal set a nationwide trend for increased scholastic standards or will majority of universities duck the issue? Not if the condescending NCAA headquarters appears much more concerned about Indian nicknames and total restroom access for transgenders.

Former Duke starter Jay Bilas, who succeeded Vitale as ESPN's Prime Time Performer in the GameDay color commentator role, has experiential ACC knowledge competing against colorful North Carolina State coach Jim Valvano's suspect squads (735 average SAT score - featuring Chris Washburn at 470 - and excessive number of positive drug tests during the 1980s). While pondering rigorous courses washout Washburn passed to remain academically eligible for more than a season, a cold-blooded question surfaces as to whether the academic anemia at UNC is worse than what occurred at N.C. State, which probably gains the negative nod if only because of Washburn teammate Charles Shackleford's following animal-expert quote: "Left hand, right hand, it doesn't matter. I'm amphibious." The "A" in "bring your A-game" in an ACC ad apparently doesn't stand for academics.

If bookish Bilas genuinely knows self-evaluation "toughness," he will maneuver upstream and shift his passion from lambasting the NCAA about paying these gentlemen and scholars to a lawyerly focus on stopping the NCAA from preying on players who have no business representing universities because they aren't authentic student-athletes. Granted, such an academic-values modification will translate into an inferior product for him and his network to promote (and for luminaries such as Jim Boeheim, John Calipari, Bob Huggins, Mike Krzyzewski, Rick Pitino plus Williams to coach for that matter). But does a mediocre Duke player such as Lance Thomas need more than $30,000 as down payment on jewelry? What about multiple Memphis players reporting they were robbed of more than $66,000 worth of vital items for Calipari-coached college students (mink coats, diamond earrings, stereo equipment, flat-screen TV)?

Moreover, Syracuse's Boeheim wouldn't have an opportunity to be "impressed" about one-and-done Carmelo Anthony's 1.8 gpa before failing to mention if Anthony attended more classes than games his second semester. Did BMOC Melo mellow out in Orange-hot Child and Family Studies? Too many self-serving schools and their athletic departments are living an academic lie as much as the white NAACP chapter president and are ignorant as much as CNN anchor calling Dallas gunman "brave and courageous" for shooting at police headquarters.

When there are games and national crowns to win, how interested could Bilas' alma mater and Carolina's chief rival possibly be in education these days, anyway? Three freshman sensations from this year's NCAA titlist give Duke six one-and-done "graduates" in a five-year span. After Julius Randle became the sixth Kentucky freshman in the previous five years to be among the NBA's top eight draft picks, the gifted group may have pooled credit-hour resources for a single shared diploma (hopefully not useless AFAS). Randle, breaking his right leg in NBA debut with the L.A. Lakers, and Duke All-American Jabari Parker, incurring a season-ending knee injury between Thanksgiving and Christmas, got prompt "nothing-lasts-forever" lessons that it might be prudent to pay a little attention to academic pursuits. What quality of classes are taken in college by mercenary professional-caliber athletes if a mind-numbing 60% of NBA players file for bankruptcy five years after retirement?

Openness in revealing UNC's academic allegations and the NCAA's mission-statement response to this subterfuge will determine how ethically bankrupt major-college athletics has become under the present leadership and corrosive press incompetently covering the corruption.