ot:U.N.C. Investigation Reveals ‘Shadow Curriculum’ to Help Athletes

[husky99]

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/10/2...rriculum-to-help-athletes.html?_r=0&referrer=


Wil stuff

 

[Samoo]

"The counselors and coaches were “painfully aware,” the report said, “that Crowder’s retirement would require the whole football program to adjust to a new reality of having to meet academic requirements with real academic work.”"

 

[Go_Huskies]

Is there going to be any penalty?

 

[upstater]

Why is Andy Katz ignoring this part?

In November 2009, Ms. Reynolds and other members of the academic support program convened a meeting of the football coaches to discuss how the departure of Ms. Crowder would affect the players’ academic standing. The counselors and coaches were “painfully aware,” the report said, “that Crowder’s retirement would require the whole football program to adjust to a new reality of having to meet academic requirements with real academic work.”

And what do Crowder and Nyang'oro's bank accounts look like today as opposed to a couple years ago?

 

[Kembacity]

Is there going to be any penalty?

I bet they feel the university has already been punished enough, what with all of this bad press!

If there isnt considerable action, it'll be another time for everyone to freak out about how awful the NCAA is, but it sounds to me that they arent discussing involvement with the basketball team despite McCants' claims

 

[sdhusky]

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/10/2...rriculum-to-help-athletes.html?_r=0&referrer=


Wil stuff

My favorite part?

Powerpoint!!!

In the meeting, two members of the football counseling staff explained to the assembled coaches that the classes “had played a large role in keeping underprepared and/or unmotivated players eligible to play.” To emphasize this point, they presented a PowerPoint demonstration in which one of the slides asked and then answered the question, “What was part of the solution in the past?”

“We put them in classes that met degree requirements in which … they didn’t go to class … they didn’t have to take notes, have to stay awake … they didn’t have to meet with professors … they didn’t have to pay attention or necessarily engage with the material,” the slide said. “THESE NO LONGER EXIST!”​

 

[CAHUSKY]

I liked this quote about why it went "undetected" for so long...........

Speaking to reporters Wednesday morning, Ms. Folt, the U.N.C., Chapel Hill, chancellor, said that a reason the paper class scheme thrived for so long was that it was hard for anyone to imagine that something so beyond the pale could happen at all.

“It was such a shock that it was hard for people to fathom,” she said.

 

[FfldCntyFan]

Is there going to be any penalty?

If this happened in Storrs we would have gotten something along the lines of SMU's football death penalty but it would have ben extended for at least a decade. Normally the two titles they won fully within the time frame should be vacated (and their title in '93 should also be under scrutiny) but as the NCAA is very selective in who they punish I imagine Emmert will say something along the lines of "That UNC is actually require student athletes to attend class shows a dramatic improvement in their process. We believe that in being victim of such an elaborate plot the athletic department at UNC has been punished far more than what was warranted by these academic missteps. It is unfortunate that student athletes who merely wanted only to be athletes were able to take such severe advantage of a school as proud and forthright as UNC. No further action is necessary.".

 

[Chuck]

Is there going to be any penalty?

I would be shocked if there is any penalty at all. The report definitely finds that the athletic department got the biggest benefit from these classes, but it also references that others could take the classes. I like that the greeks got wind and started filling the classes which worried the professor. The only reason for the NCAA to change their position that this was an "academic" scandal, and not an "athletic" scandal, is if the pressure is just too great to do something.

Here's something I'd find interesting. Even if you don't go back and try to take credits away from those that properly completed the class, most of the athletes were found to have plagiarized a large portion of their papers. I would think that is grounds for taking away a diploma. That would most likely leave the football team, and possibly the basketball team, in APR trouble.

I still say nothing will come of this.

 

[defaultroute]

The NCAA needs to be consistent here. If Calhoun can be punished for failing “to promote an atmosphere of compliance in the men’s basketball program”, and no one at UNC gets that, then WTF.

The statement below from the report could possibly show Roy had prior knowledge that this AFAM thing wasn't a good thing. If the NCAA can prove it.

"Roy Williams was not comfortable with that “clustering” in the AFAM major and “after a year or two on the job he asked Holladay to make sure that basketball and ASPSA personnel were not steering players to the AFAM Department.”

 

[amory]

There won't be any punishment for UNC athletics. They're college royalty.

Regardless, the school and its alumni should be ashamed. If you have to defend yourself by saying "our athletics program wasn't the problem here, it was our entire academic system!" then you're really in some .

 

[Kembacity]

Exactly! Just take away all accreditation then... if the proof says that their academic integrity had been completely ruined. They cant have an NCAA D1 team if they arent an accredited university right?

 

[MilliniumPrince]

There won't be any punishment for UNC athletics. They're college royalty.

Regardless, the school and its alumni should be ashamed. If you have to defend yourself by saying "our athletics program wasn't the problem here, it was our entire academic system!" then you're really in some .

Agreed.

Pretty damning statement from one of the leading institutions of higher learning in the nation. Sadly, there will be no punishment. I expect some bullsh*** press conference and some more bulls*** about UNC already being punished...

 

[8893]

In other news, the sun rose this morning.

 

[Huskies4ever]

I would be shocked if there is any penalty at all. The report definitely finds that the athletic department got the biggest benefit from these classes, but it also references that others could take the classes. I like that the greeks got wind and started filling the classes which worried the professor. The only reason for the NCAA to change their position that this was an "academic" scandal, and not an "athletic" scandal, is if the pressure is just too great to do something.

What I find interesting, is that even though non-athletes could take the course, obviously athletes in trouble academically were steered towards these classes. Was this done by someone in the athletic department? If so, then the athletic department should be held accountable. I like how the article mentions how "after a year or two" Roy Williams didn't want his players taking these classes. What did he do about it? What was done to keep his players from taking those classes? So many unanswered questions.

While there may be reasons for penalties to be thrown UNC's way, I, like most here, think nothing will happen. If anything, Emmert will probably make sure UConn takes the rap.

 

[Walker11]

So Roy's academic advisor that he personally brought from Kansas knew of the problem, but he didn't? Yea, that's a stretch.

And even if he didn't know, as the great Roger Goodell said, ignorance isn't an excuse.

 

[Fishy]

There is no wiggle room here.

If Memphis had to return their final four because of Derrick Rose, North Carolina has to give back the 2005 title.

 

[Dogdeacon]

I doubt UNC will get any penalties either. IN addition to their royalty status, somehow this falls into the past abuse category (obviously not fair given UConn's penalties).

Their abuses represent the hypocrisy of college athletics taken to the extreme. So penalizing them for making the pretense of 'student athletes' a total corrupt sham somehow is redundant. I'd bet their overall academic accreditation is more at risk versus any NCAA suspension or penalties.

 

[selles]

Is there going to be any penalty?

I think there's going to be a penalty. I don't think the academic/athletic distinction the NCAA originally tried to make is going to be tenable and I think the report is too damning for the NCAA to avoid some sort of sanction.

The details in the report are pretty incredible - emails from the academic counselor to the women's basketball team requesting specific grades, papers (which were the only requirement) consisting of intros and conclusions with only long quotations in between, a ton of plagiarism, the football team power point, the whole thing being run by a non-professor administrator who didn't do anything other than skim the beginnings and ends of papers and then hand out A's and B's, evidence of a significant impact of the grades from these courses on keeping basketball and football players above a 2.0....A lot of people tried to keep plausible deniability but the more you digest the report, the less that's credible.

There was very clearly a structured effort at UNC for over a decade to get struggling athletes into fake - not easy, fake - classes so that they could stay eligible. I think the NCAA is going to be forced to do something.

 

[UconnU]

This has to affect recruiting until there is an outcome. Think we might be able to get involved with kids who were thought to be heavy UNC leans like Rabb or Seventh Woods?

 

[ThetaZoo]

I think there's going to be a penalty. I don't think the academic/athletic distinction the NCAA originally tried to make is going to be tenable and I think the report is too damning for the NCAA to avoid some sort of sanction.

The details in the report are pretty incredible - emails from the academic counselor to the women's basketball team requesting specific grades, papers (which were the only requirement) consisting of intros and conclusions with only long quotations in between, a ton of plagiarism, the football team power point, the whole thing being run by a non-professor administrator who didn't do anything other than skim the beginnings and ends of papers and then hand out A's and B's, evidence of a significant impact of the grades from these courses on keeping basketball and football players above a 2.0....A lot of people tried to keep plausible deniability but the more you digest the report, the less that's credible.

There was very clearly a structured effort at UNC for over a decade to get struggling athletes into fake - not easy, fake - classes so that they could stay eligible. I think the NCAA is going to be forced to do something.

Whatever the NCAA does they will do it grudgingly because they don't really want to punish a blue blood.

 

[intlzncster]

There is no wiggle room here.

If Memphis had to return their final four because of Derrick Rose, North Carolina has to give back the 2005 title.

I agree, but I'll be surprised if it happens. If not, how does the NCAA explain it?

 

[dandar]

UConn was banned from post season for 1 year for low scores. This should be multi year ban in both BB and FB. We all know it won't happen though.

 

[upstater]

What I find interesting, is that even though non-athletes could take the course, obviously athletes in trouble academically were steered towards these classes. Was this done by someone in the athletic department? If so, then the athletic department should be held accountable. I like how the article mentions how "after a year or two" Roy Williams didn't want his players taking these classes. What did he do about it? What was done to keep his players from taking those classes? So many unanswered questions.

While there may be reasons for penalties to be thrown UNC's way, I, like most here, think nothing will happen. If anything, Emmert will probably make sure UConn takes the rap.

That line about Roy was inserted to firewall the basketball program.

 

[intlzncster]

"Ms. Folt, the U.N.C., Chapel Hill, chancellor, said that a reason the paper class scheme thrived for so long was that it was hard for anyone to imagine that something so beyond the pale could happen at all.

“It was such a shock that it was hard for people to fathom,” she said."

This is the most disingenuous ever. At an administrator level, you have to be either utterly incompetent or a complete idiot (or both) to not know this was going on*. Talk about "failure to foster an atmosphere of compliance." Most of the involved administration should resign simply for being worthless. Go bag groceries with 15 year old kids.

*I'm not necessarily saying the chancellor herself, as I don't know how much of the nitty gritty she'd be exposed to in her position. But the entire administration is being shielded here.