Jay Wright's "gotta own it" I have no idea what that means, but it must be important given how many times he said it post-NCAA Tournament embarrassment.
Love the avatar. Btw, you know why the NCAA didn't go all the way back to 1993 with their allegations, right? You know who won the NCAA Championship in 1993, right? Can't sully HIS reputation. _
http://abc11.com/education/unc-gets-serious-punishment-in-wake-of-scandal-/777947/ UNC-CHAPEL HILL GETS 'SERIOUS' PUNISHMENT IN WAKE OF SCANDAL Thursday, June 11, 2015 05:02PM CHAPEL HILL, N.C. (WTVD) -- The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill received a "very serious" punishment Thursday in the wake of the damaging Wainstein report on academic fraud. The agency that provides accreditation to institutes of higher learning, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, announced its decision to place UNC on probation for 12 months. SACS cited the university for 7 out of 18 compliance violations including integrity, comprehensive standards, control of athletics, program content, academic support system, and academic freedom. "The board intended to send a serious message with the 12-month probation," SACS President Dr. Belle S. Wheelan said. "The issue that academic integrity is at the heart of everything our institutions do ... they need to take every step possible to ensure the academic integrity of their programs and degrees." Possible punishment from the SACS board included the option of stripping UNC of its accreditation. UNC has a year to respond to the agency and explain exactly how it plans on addressing the violations. "All great institutions encounter challenges at one time or another," Chancellor Carol Folt said in a statement. "Recent years prove that Carolina is no exception. The important question is how the University has responded and will continue to respond." Earlier this year, SACS sent a warning letter to the Tar Heels after officials there got a look at the now infamous Wainstein Report. The report, commissioned by UNC, detailed so-called "paper classes" for athletes going back two decades. The classes required little to no work for passing grades. SACS first put the university on notice back in 2011 when the scandal erupted, but said last fall the agency now considered the findings of Kenneth Wainstein as a new issue. The agency claimed UNC showed a lack of "institutional integrity," wasn't diligent in providing information, and that two university employees withheld information. In a 224-page response, UNC officials asked the agency to find them in compliance, noting numerous changes that have been made in the wake of the scandal. "SACS places its member institutions on probation only rarely. One can only assume that the decision in this case reflected SACS's frustration with the University's pattern of less-than-forthright testimony about its past failures," UNC history professor Jay Smith said in a statement following the announcement. "Let's all hope that UNC finally learns a hard lesson from this embarrassing punishment." Smith is also a co-author of a book on the academic scandal. Mary Willingham - the former academic adviser who publicly criticized the reading levels of student athletes, and self-proclaimed whistle blower - filed a lawsuit against UNC claiming she was retaliated against for speaking out. She and Smith have co-written a book called "Cheated: The UNC Scandal, the Education of Athletes, and the Future of Big-Time College Sports." _
Speaking of Francesa, a caller tried to get in a defense of UNC in their cheating scandal blaming it all on women's basketball and he went off on them. He said no one cares about women's basketball, this was all about the men's basketball and football teams and anyone who thinks otherwise is naive. Said Roy definitely knew about it and shockingly, he had to admit that it's obvious Dean knew too--which was crazy because Dean was one of the most principled men he had ever met. But he did say Roy didn't deserve to lose his job because it was the way the whole university operated--everyone knew it and assumed it's what they did. Roy just went along with the program, but it appeared McCants was speaking the truth, even though Roy will continue to deny it. But it was obvious. _
It's still disgusting how they treated Mary Whillingham. http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/article...ut-unc-college-sports-and-academic-corruption Four Blunt Points About UNC, College Sports, and Academic Corruption The powers that be in North Carolina seem unable to accept that the scandal roiling the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill has become ground zero in a national debate about how big-time college sports undermines education. This is a story about the moral foundation of a multibillion-dollar business: Division 1 of the National Collegiate Athletic Association. That’s why we’re devoting time and energy to it at Bloomberg Businessweek. Tens of millions of Americans—college basketball and football fans—are loyal customers of NCAA Inc. Ultimately it’s up to them to demand that the universities sponsoring lucrative sports extravaganzas live up to their promise: that in exchange for athletic services, undergraduates will receive a meaningful education. With that in mind, here are four blunt points to ponder while the UNC drama unfolds: 1. Keep your eye on the ball. UNC’s administration for years has obfuscated the core elements of what’s gone wrong at Chapel Hill, and that pattern continues. This rigid defensiveness speaks volumes about the mindset that dominates the NCAA’s “revenue sports.” To cut through the fog of denial and personal vilification, one has to remain focused on what’s important: At UNC, the university’s own internal reviews and investigations—limited though they’ve been—have shown that since the 1990s, football and basketball players have been steered into fake “paper classes” that didn’t meet. Grades were routinely altered without authorization, and faculty signatures were forged. Top university administrators have refused to acknowledge that this corruption resulted from a campaign to keep football and basketball players academically eligible to play. Instead, administrators have implied that the phony classes and grades were the work of one rogue department chairman, who in December was criminally indicted for defrauding the university. UNC’s resistance to connecting the dots between its powerful Athletic Department and the counterfeit classes defies logic and reveals, at a minimum, willful blindness. The pending prosecution of longtime African and Afro-American Studies professor Julius Nyang’oro—and the prospect that, in pursuit of leniency, the former department chairman will explain who actually initiated and knew about the bogus classes—may finally force UNC leaders to face reality. Let’s hope so. The NCAA, for its part, has been equally lax in accepting the school’s implausible contention that there was no connection between sports and academic fraud. 2. The problem probably wasn’t limited to one department. Why would it have been? Yes, numerous varsity athletes majored in African and Afro-American Studies, raising serious questions about whether past Tar Heel champion basketball teams were populated by players whose eligibility, in retrospect, ought to be questioned. But if authorities were earnest about wanting to find out just how widely the rot has spread, they would investigate the transcripts of all varsity players for the past 20 years, scrutinizing whether dubious grades were available from other departments. That kind of aggressive probe hasn’t occurred. Administrators just don’t want to know. 3. Rather than engage in painful introspection, UNC has changed the subject to Mary Willingham. A campus “learning specialist,” Willingham blew the whistle on the shameful coddling of athletes. She explained to Dan Kane of the Raleigh News & Observerhow for years she and her fellow tutors steered basketball and football players into sham classes, crippling them intellectually. She was just doing her job—until her guilty conscience prompted her to speak out. On the side, Willingham, who has a masters degree, did some research on UNC athletes’ literacy levels. She gathered statistics that reinforced her personal experience that an alarming percentage of football and basketball players can’t read or write at a college level. She informed UNC’s top brass. Last summer, they rewarded her candor with a demotion and ostracism. Then, last week, in response to CNN’s having cited Willingham’s research, among other data, the university orchestrated the campus version of a public flogging. At a faculty meeting on Friday, Provost Jim Dean accused Willingham of scholarly malpractice. “Using this data set to say that our students can’t read is a travesty and unworthy of this university,” Dean declared. “These claims have been unfair to the students, unfair to the admissions officers, unfair to the university.” It’s difficult to know where to start in refuting Dean’s denunciation. First, to be fair, UNC raised interesting questions about whether Willingham correctly analyzed the facts and figures she gathered. She told me that she stands by her work. At least part of the discrepancy appears to arise from UNC’s stressing different and more recent data than the numbers Willingham relied on. I haven’t reached a firm conclusion about the statistical dispute. But I think it’s very possible that in its zeal to discredit a dissident, UNC has compared apples to oranges, vastly overstating Willingham’s mistakes, if she made any at all. Much more important, though, is UNC’s transparent attempt to change the topic from undisputed fraud (phony classes, faked grades) to Mary Willingham. The “travesty,” to use Provost Dean’s highly charged word, consists not of one chagrined staff tutor who may—and I stress may—have misinterpreted test results. The travesty is that UNC put athletes in pretend Swahili language classes to keep them eligible. The “unfairness” stems not from Willingham’s desire to come clean after years of participating in a dirty system. It stems from UNC cheating its basketball and football stars out of the education they deserve. And let’s not forget that non-athlete students became collateral damage when they unwittingly wandered into sham classes that did nothing to build their knowledge or skills. 4. UNC students are learning a horribly misguided lesson. By far the most disheartening reaction I’ve seen to the Tar Heel fiasco has been UNC student body President Christy Lambden’s statement (PDF), issued on Friday. Expressing lockstep support for the administration, he said student leaders “are convinced that the procedures and protocols that have been put in place are exactly the right measures to ensure that student-athletes at Carolina continue to succeed academically.” Lambden lashed out at Willingham for “hurt[ing] the reputation of Carolina without cause and in doing so hurt[ing] its students and student-athletes, for seemingly no other reason than to draw attention and to create a buzz-worthy story.” This is exactly backwards. UNC has sullied its own reputation by hosting Potemkin courses. The university has hurt the students enrolled in those courses. Willingham, who has no discernible appetite for celebrity, has tried to put a stop to the harm. Sadly, Lambden and presumably other future Tar Heel alumni prefer to preserve the athletic spectacles they so enjoy, rather than consider the real costs to themselves and their classmates. NOTE: Peter Grauer, the chairman of Bloomberg L.P., which owns Bloomberg Businessweek, is a trustee of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and sits on its Foundation Board and the UNC Global Research Institute Board. _
Not to mention the NCAA double standard that's always in play when it involves cash cows cheats such as UNC: http://articles.courant.com/2012-09...basketball-tournament-uconn-ad-ncaa-violation
As expected, UNC signs Williams to a contract extension. Good move by them--they had to do it, the academic cheating and fraud scandal was killing their recruiting--they had to stop the bleeding. _
VILLANOVA, Pa. - The defending regular season champions of the Atlantic Coast and BIG EAST conferences are set to meet in 2015-16 as part of a two-year agreement between the University of Virginia and Villanova announced today. The Wildcats, who established a new school record with 33 victories in 2014-15 while claiming the BIG EAST regular season and Tournament titles, will visit John Paul Jones Arena in Charlottesville to meet the Cavaliers on Dec. 19, 2015. Virginia tied a school record with its 30 victories in 2014-15 en route to its second straight ACC regular season championship. Virginia will then return the game with a visit to Philadelphia in 2016-17. "We're really excited to play an outstanding program with a great coach in Tony Bennett," stated Villanova head coach Jay Wright. "We compete as an academic institution with Virginia and we have so much respect for the basketball program and its tradition of success. This is a great series for Villanova and we're really looking forward to it." "We are excited to announce a two-game series with Villanova," Virginia head coach Tony Bennett said. "Villanova has a storied history and has been one of the premier basketball programs over the past few seasons. I have a lot of respect for coach Jay Wright and his program, and we look forward to a couple of highly-competitive non-conference games." The Cavaliers and Wildcats have met six times previously, with Virginia holding a 4-2 advantage. The most recent meeting between the schools came in the 2004 National Invitation Tournament at the Pavilion with the Wildcats posting a 73-63 victory. The complete 2015-16 Villanova schedule is expected to be released in September.
Very cool.... it doesn't get much press on ESPN but the World University Games are taking place in Korea. I am currently writing this from the airport in Seoul and I just bumped into the gold medal winning Kansas Jayhawks. Not sure how they select a team to play but KU represented the US and defeated Germany yesterday to win the gold.
