Just got back from vacation, friends. Thought I would share this photo of the family celebrating Villanova's success:
AMEN! http://www.offtackleempire.com/2016...-cheating-fraud-ncaa-violations-investigation On the eve of its eleventh anniversary, I took some time the other night to watch the 2005 Illinois Fighting Illini complete an epic comeback against theArizona Wildcats in the Elite 8. One of the greatest games in the history of theNCAA tournament propelled Illinois to the Final Four, where they would eventually fall to the North Carolina Tar Heels in the NCAA championship game. Of course, as it turns out, a familiar story was playing out: UNC was playing well outside the rules, as a 2014 re-opening of an older investigation would later confirm. Second-leading scorer Rashad McCants would later confirm that not only did tutors write all of his essays, but he even landed on the Dean's List for a semester during which he never once attended a class. As it turned out, the African-American and Diaspora Studies major largely consisted of sham courses with an end-of-term essay as their only requirements. This had been traced back to at least 1997, during the last days of Dean Smith's tenure as head coach. I'll put aside the irony of Dean Smith's Wikipedia pageclassifying him as an "American civil rights activist" when practices initiated during his tenure have tarnished the reputation of the entire field of African-American studies, which will surely face criticism for being a "fake major" as it was at UNC. Instead I'll talk about the fallout from a scandal serious enough to gain attention from accrediting bodies. The most similar case to the UNC scandal was perpetrated by the Minnesota Golden Gophers men's basketball team under Clem Haskins. The NCAA hit Minnesota with major sanctions including the dreaded "lack of institutional control." As USA Today's Steve Weiberg wrote back in 2001: It was two years ago last March that the St. Paul Pioneer Press began pulling back the curtain on what the NCAA eventually would classify as the worst academic scandal to hit a college athletic program in a couple of decades, revolving around a tutor who wrote papers for at least 18 players over a 5-year period and a coach — Clem Haskins — who allegedly tolerated the practice. Haskins was forced to resign, as was the athletic director, and the 1997 Final Four appearance was vacated. Scholarship and recruiting restrictions damaged the program considerably. They've been to the tournament just four times since the 1999 scandal, with the first coming in 2005, and haven't been back to the Sweet 16. Haskins was hit with a seven year show-cause penalty. Although it shouldn't make a difference, some would argue that a top athletic brand would be treated differently, and there's some truth to this. See, the same year Roy Williams got his first title, the USC Trojans football team under Pete Carroll had won the 2004 BCS National Championship (yes, the game was played in 2005), which was later vacated due to players (especially Reggie Bush) receiving substantial payments. To this day, Carroll is criticized for his conveniently-timed jump to the NFL just before the sanctions came. So, what became of Roy Williams and the Tar Heels? Where are they now that the NCAA charged them with a lack of institutional control last June? They're in the fucking Final Four! Somehow, the fact that even more institutional fraud in other sports emerged meant the sanctions were delayed indefinitely. Quite convenient timing, considering that Roy Williams described this year's Tar Heels as "his favorite team of all time". This team will send most of its players to the NBA, and Williams will retire at that juncture. Then and only then will the NCAA consider acting. Even though the University is being sued by former athletes because they received no education, the Roy Williams Basketball Academy has rolled into the Final Four because the NCAA lacks either the authority or the will to step in and say that this is not acceptable. Of course, they were much more decisive with SMU, which is good, because at least the sanctity of the tournament was preserved by banning a team that was poised to follow up its play-in game loss to UCLA last year with a potential Round of 32 run. A former UNC football player indicated that the football program's sanctions under Butch Davis were for exactly what the basketball team had been doing. Roy WIlliams is absolute slime, and yet CBS will spend at least one more full-game broadcast fellating him before this tournament is over. Here's a look back at Roy Williams' first NCAA title: 2005 NCAA title team: Jackie Manuel - AFAM degree Sean May - AFAM degree David Noel - AFAM degree Melvin Scott - AFAM degree Reyshawn Terry - AFAM degree Quentin Thomas - AFAM degree Jawad Williams - AFAM degree Marvin Williams - No degree Raymond Felton - No degree Rashad McCants - No degree It's entirely reasonable to say that not a single one of those players should have been academically eligible. Regardless of what rules the players and teams should or shouldn't be subject to, the rules are there and most other teams have to play by them. Retroactively vacating the 2005 and 2009 titles would be a nice gesture, but wouldn't really undo the damage. However, the least the NCAA could do is to prevent that slick bastard and his functionally illiterate student-athletes from continuing to benefit from fraud. Instead, because they're North Carolina, here they are in the fucking Final Four again. Surely the way that the fouls suddenly started piling up against key Providence Friarslate in the game was enough of an advantage for a team with UNC's raw basketball talent that they didn't need massive academic fraud to give them an extra boost. I hope North Carolina gets crushed by the 10th-ranked team in their own conference (Syracuse) and I hope all their players eventually have to use their worthless degrees. I hope Roy Williams gets kicked out of the Hall of Fame and banned from basketball. If you are currently reading this post out loud to an illiterate UNC basketball player, I hope your name turns up in the final ruling and you get exiled along with Roy Williams. None of that will happen though. The Final Four run of these UNC Shit Heels destroys the NCAA's credibility and lays bare their favoritism, and the more lopsided their defeat is, the better off college basketball will be. If you don't agree with this, I can only assume you're a Tar Heel born and a Tar Heel bred and you love a program that should be dead.
And please don't lump Syracuse in with UNC, what we did was peanuts compared to what UNC did. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jay-m-smith/college-basketball-an-unhealthy-addiction_b_9463152.html College Basketball: An Unhealthy ‘Addiction’ The return of March Madness has office pools humming. For decades, from the epic Magic and Bird final of 1979 to the era of the one-and-done’s, the nation’s appetite for college basketball has continued to grow. Buzzer beaters and Cinderellas and shining moments have created an “addictive” spectacle. Even president Obama eagerly fills out his brackets. Among the most serious costs of this national “addiction” is the hypocrisy it cultivates among the leaders of our public universities. Gate receipts, NCAA tournament bonuses, and the goodwill and fundraising advantages that allegedly accrue to schools with a successful basketball “brand” have led the stewards of universities to ignore or tacitly accept practices that directly conflict with the core missions of their institutions: to pursue truth and to educate tomorrow’s leaders. Take one of the top seeds in this year’s tournament, the North Carolina Tar Heels. We have learned much about the athletic-academic scandal uncovered at UNC between 2010 and 2015. We know that the fraud involved hundreds of classes and thousands of students. Faculty and administrators in many offices were complicit in the scam. They helped athletes enroll in notoriously soft courses across multiple departments. We know that many athletes stayed eligible for competition thanks to generous grades handed out in sham classes scheduled specifically for them. But a key detail about UNC’s experience with academic fraud has gone largely unnoticed — thanks to the university’s assiduous PR management and a strangely desultory NCAA investigation. The system of academic fraud cooked up around 1990 was initially intended to benefit one team in particular: the men’s basketball team. The first UNC course offered as a favor to the basketball team, scheduled in 1988, was an independent study for two painfully weak students who hovered at or below the eligibility line. They received helpful B’s, and out of that little experiment the UNC course scam was born. In fall 1992 one star of the basketball team ostensibly pursued an independent study with a faculty member who was on sabbatical at the time. (I know this because I shared a fellowship leave with that faculty member.) This had to have been one of the “shadow” courses offered by the administrative assistant who played such a central role in the fraud, a generous woman whose closest friend was the basketball team’s academic counselor. She assigned A or B grades in the shadow courses, which required no attendance and little work. One player on the 1993 team took seven suspect courses with her help; four starters on that team majored in the department where she worked. UNC’s 1993 championship run seems to have been aided and abetted by fraud. By 2005, when UNC won its next national championship, the “paper class” system (so called because students had to turn in only one paper of uncertain provenance to collect their A’s) was hitting on all cylinders. Players on the men’s basketball team took over one hundred of the fake courses, with one racking up eighteen. Star forward Rashad McCants has admitted that he rarely attended a single class in the spring of 2005 — even though he landed on the Dean’s list for the high grades he was awarded. Players on the 2009 national championship team received similar favors. UNC’s leaders first worked hard not to learn that men’s basketball had been the driver of the scandal and then refused to acknowledge that reality when the evidence for it was finally exposed. In a comical maneuver, they redacted the word “basketball” from emails they were forced to release to the public. When Rashad McCants spoke the truth about his academic experiences, the athletic department lined up former teammates to accuse him of fabricating tales. (McCants, tellingly, is the only player on the team willing to show the world his academic transcript, where the truth resides.) When the Kenneth Wainstein report of 2014 at last proved that the fraud scheme had been designed to keep athletes eligible, and that the worst abuses occurred during the basketball championship year of 2005, the university reacted by doubling down and handing coach Roy Williams a contract extension. Meanwhile, administrative leaders continue to urge the university community to “move forward” as the dithering NCAA enables UNC’s pursuit of another national title. The UNC case is of course only one symptom of a national disease. At Syracuse, officials pressured a professor to change a grade for the star center. At Florida State, players were handed answers to quizzes. At Michigan, administrators appeared to cover for an independent studies scam led by a faculty member with courtside seats. At UCLA, an advisor for the basketball team resigned in disgust when he claimed he saw a pattern of illicit grade changing. At Louisville, prostitutes and strippers were reportedly used to lure in talented high school players. Rather than call out this corruption and reassert the primacy of academic values, university presidents duck responsibility and cravenly feed the nation’s basketball “addiction”. Winning on the hard court, they have decided, is more important than integrity. We should all ponder the hypocrisy such leaders are modeling for today’s university students — the leaders of tomorrow — as we await the next tip-off. Jay M. Smith is a professor of history at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is the co-author, with Mary Willingham, of Cheated: The UNC Scandal, the Education of Athletes, and the Future of Big-Time College Sports. _
Or you're a sycophant fanboi with no connection to the school yet you'll defend it in your feetsie pajamas like it's your family. _
At least the NCAA acknowledged that Syracuse did wrong. UNC is still being treated as this pristine program!!
100%. Btw, we tried to keep one player--Fab Melo-- eligible and some booster (unaffiliated with the university) with the local YMCA paid 5 athletes (only 2 of them basketball players) a total of about $8500 back in 2005. Big deal. UNC had hundreds of athletes that never should have been eligible. _
But not controlled by the university. I'm affiliated with the university but if I wanted to give Michael Gbinije $10,000, the university would (i) not be able to stop me and (ii) be unaware that I was doing ti. _
true and I'll never make the claim that Syracuse's violations are as bad as UNC's which are some of the worst I've seen, but at the same time I find it hard to believe no one in the staff would be aware of that stuff. They had closer relationships with the boosters in question than your average alumni. Also in your proposal the University could stop the transfer by suspending Gbinije. I imagine the serious threat of being kicked off the team would cause him to not accept your gift.
If I gave Gbinijie cash, how would the university know about it or stop the transfer? I'd be transferring him a wad of cash--I wouldn't be wiring it into his account. That's what the booster did--he paid them cash to work some events. And I think every major program in the country has boosters giving players cash or gifts--I remember Tony Red Bruin driving around a sweet ass Trans Am back in the day--the one with the big gold eagle painted on the hood--pretty sure Red didn't have the cash to buy that car. And given the landscape of how much $$ the NCAA and the universities make off of these players, who can blame them for taking some $$. _
I agree that the players should recieve some financial benefit and I do believe it happens everywhere. I just have a problem with Syracuse playing the angle that they didn't know about these things. Boeheim knew
Again, which was why they were punished. You think a man with Roy's experience was unaware with what was happening at UNC? Disgraceful! It really makes me sick how the NCAA is in UNC's pocket when it comes to hoops. They should thank whoever they paid off that Villanova was not in the East region, because they would have gotten destroyed in Philadelphia.
Problem is, it didn't start with Roy, it started with Dean Smith. If they ever come down hard on UNC basketball--they will tarnish Smith's legacy and the Lord knows, you can't do THAT. _
I agree the UNC thing is shameful. And the selection committee showed just how corrupt the NCAA is. I hope UNC gets rocked this weekend but IDK they have scads of talent. I question their mental toughness though, which is why you might be right about the whole Philadelphia thing
I have always believe that Villanova is jinxed against UNC. Even when we beat them, the NCAA finds a way to rip us off (See O'Neil, Tom). That being said, we would have kicked their asses on a Philly court. No doubt whatsoever.
