The "Carolina Way"

While our nation was watching the horrific events that happened at Penn State unfold, an ugly situation was erupting in Chapel Hill, NC. Many members of the media were questioning why the events unraveling at Chapel Hill were not being covered simply because of this scandal at Penn State. Well, worry no more members of the media, the academic scandal at UNC is about to explode.

Newspapers, TV & radio stations throughout the state of North Carolina have been out of control the last few days with the leak of former UNC star DE Julius Peppers' transcript. Yet, at the moment, you can not find a single article on the ESPN.com homepage concerning the UNC academic scandal (ESPN President John Skipper is a UNC alum, coincidence?). Don't worry though, soon ESPN will have no choice but to cover what is happening in Chapel Hill and you can bet once they get involved, so will the NCAA.

The release of Peppers' transcript brings three ugly conclusions to the plate of North Carolina fans.

Without even knowing it was Julius Peppers' transcript we can tell that:
1. The transcript contains the classes known as the "tainted classes" in UNC's AfricanAmericans department.
2. The student was SURVIVING at UNC because of these "tainted classes".
3. Academic fraud has gone as far back as 2001 (UNC thought it only went back till 2007).

Another hurtful thing the leak of this transcript does is possibly incriminate classes that hadn't been considered some of those "tainted classes".

When UNC halfheartedly launched their own investigation into these cases of academic fraud they came up with 54 "tainted classes". 67% of the enrollment in those classes were athletes, mostly football players, but this is where this scandal hits deep for UNC fans: Without a doubt, these cases of academic fraud have been some-what connected to the Men's Basketball team.

Of those 54 "tainted classes", two were bogus, not real classes with only one student enrolled. That one
enrolled student according to the University of North Carolina? A member of the Men's basketball team.


Now there are still way more questions to be answered. However, it seems as if these cases of academic fraud could easily stretch back to the Dean Smith days because on the 1997 Final Four & ACC Championship team, Vince Carter along with 2 other teammates were African-American studies majors.

It's hard to believe that guys like Dean Smith, Bill Guthridge, Matt Doherty, Mack Brown, Butch Davis and many others didn't know that their players were being steered toward classes that either gave out grades or simply didn't exist but if they did know about it, there is going to be a whole lotta hell to be payed in the form of firings, vacated seasons & records, removal of banners, scholarship reductions, probation, and maybe worse.


The NCAA needs to go back and refine their search from earlier this year. The NCAA didn't find any of the bogus classes from 2007-2011 nor did it uncover Julius Peppers' transcript which was uncovered by a random NC State fan (he then posted it on PackPride.com). The "expert" NCAA investigators, if they are who they say are, need to go to Chapel Hill and dig as deep as possible.

"The Carolina Way" defined by UNC Chancellor Holden Thorpe is:

"The extraordinary substance that we have academically combined with a humility that comes from putting the institution above any individual."

Well, it seems to me that "The Carolina Way" is tainted classes, and likely worse.