UNC Lands Two Players That Clemson Admissions Turns Down

The alternate titles for this entry were “There is a War Brewing in Clemson” or “Can’t Wait to Hear Dave Glenn talk about Carolina’s bad academics”.

It will be interesting if this piece will show up in any of Dave Glenn’s anyalsis after we have heard for the last few years how NC State consistently admits a lower level student-athlete on the football field. There are a lot of upset fans today in Tigertown.

Jones has a 2.25 core GPA and a 670 SAT. He is currently taking three core classes. If he made Bs on each core credit he would have to raise his SAT to an 800. Jones signed with North Carolina, a top 10 public institution, on Wednesday.

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Football Recruiting General

109 Responses to UNC Lands Two Players That Clemson Admissions Turns Down

  1. choppack1 02/08/2007 at 5:37 PM #

    Noah – I don’t know about VaWolf, but my main beef w/ Glenn is that he chooses to leave out facts that in fly in the face of his truisms. He knows that Mack’s best classes were challenged academically, but I don’t think he ever made a public issue of it. If scores of this class don’t qualify, will Glenn make a big deal of it? If UNC is taking Clemson’s rejects will Glenn mention it?

  2. beowolf 02/08/2007 at 5:48 PM #

    Your argument isn’t very good. Athletics bring in tons of cash for the university, way more than it costs in scholarships. If anything, that athlete will be helping subsidize a good students education.

    If you want to go that route, then PAY the athlete and drop the “student/athlete” stuff.

    That isn’t the case here. This pertains to a student/athlete who is demonstrably not able to live up to the “student” part of the equation taking the place of some other student/athlete who would be able to perform as a student as well. Either one as athletes would be able to meet your “subsidize a good student’s education” criterion.

    Regardless of whether he helps raise money for the frigging university does NOT pertain to the other matter of me being coerced to pay the bulk of the student/athlete’s freight at UNX.

    The above are in defense of the merits of “my argument.” Your criticism is ill-thought and lacking.

    My thoughts and passion on the matter, being my own, are not up to challenge from you or anyone else.

  3. GAWolf 02/08/2007 at 6:27 PM #

    A couple of thoughts:

    1) It always seemed, and maybe facts could dispute this, that the lower the ranking of a Florida recruit Chuck got, the better he turned out to be. I always wondered if there was a reason we…. little old NC State… beat out Ohio State, Florida, FSU, Miami, UGA, and the likes for these “blue chip” recruits. I definitely wonder how hard some of those schools went after the same, and I at times went further to wonder if they even went after these kids at all. In the case of Bobby Washington, I wonder if Coker and Miami realized the potential problem and that’s how he ultimately “chose” us. I just can’t help but believe that some of these schools in their backyards saw there was little substance to the hype while we turned a blind eye to the same.

    2) I don’t read David Glen weekly without provocation from this site, but this is the first I’ve heard that his Carolina roots show in his journalism. I thought he was pretty well-respected amongst Pack fans for his coverage of the basketball search, if nothing else.

    3) Schools recruiting unintelligent knuckleheads with athletic ability is nothing new. Ever since college sports became big business, and there’s no denying that it is, this practice has been going on and it will continue till the end of time. Of course, that doesn’t make it right.

    4) I think student/athletes should get paid. They don’t have time to have a part-time job or are forbidden to, and how many regular students could get through college without at least a 20-hr/week job delivering pizzas? Very few. I’ve got no problem with kids who put in 30-40-50 hours a week playing a sport… any sport… for their school getting a little bit of spending money to eat when they’re hungry at eleven o’clock which is 3 hours after the dining hall closes.

    5) I’m still a firm believer that there’s truth to the rumor that Cal refused to come here because he didn’t like the tighter restraints the ACC and the UNC-system places on our student athletes.

  4. VaWolf82 02/08/2007 at 6:34 PM #

    You should email Glenn and see if things have changed.

    Before his blog, I swapped e-mails with him on two different issues….the AJ Davis recruitiment and his inaccurate portrayal on State and UNC’s SAT scores. I will never waste my time like that again.

    In addition to the issues previously discussed, the local sports talk show here in VA has him on regularly. At the exact same time he was praising Amato and his recruiting on Triangle radio, he was running him down in VA.

    I have it from a pretty good source that DG absolutely hated Amato. We’ll see how he treats TOB in the future.

  5. VaWolf82 02/08/2007 at 6:35 PM #

    4) I think student/athletes should get paid.

    Have you ever heard of PEL grants. I’m sure that the athletes have.

  6. GAWolf 02/08/2007 at 6:40 PM #

    No. No. Vawolf… I don’t mean those grants/loans offered to needy kids. I would never have qualified for a grant and I still needed to have a job in college for spending money.

  7. highstick 02/08/2007 at 9:16 PM #

    As far as athletics subsidizing other good students, doesn’t the bulk of it go to subsidize “non revenue sports”?

  8. Charles Kuralt 02/08/2007 at 9:21 PM #

    I find Clemson’s message board unbearable. Every redneck thinks their opinion is worthy of its own thread, most of which generate one or two responses. Their thread list reads like this:

    1. Here’s the thing..
    2. Did you guys know that
    3. I just read where
    4. Come on folks you need to
    5. Tonight should
    6. If I
    7. Tommy Bowden said he
    8. Baseball should fit into
    9. I can’t…
    10. Could you guys…

  9. wolfpack95 02/09/2007 at 12:10 AM #

    [Are you sure? I was told recently that he had indeed planning on failing this year and would be at Hargrave next year.

    If he’s planning on graduating from FVHS, he’s either way closer than was originally reported or is planning on going to JUCO. Or has no plans to attend NC State.]

    I am VERY sure.
    I will let Sam publicly comment on his status. It would not be right for me to share this information. Rest assured that Sam hopes to be with the Pack for the 08 season.

  10. TNCSU 02/09/2007 at 8:50 AM #

    Don’t athletes get a monthly stipend in addition to their books, tuition, etc? I know it is not alot, but I do think they get “spending” money. Not sure if all athletes get the same amount, but I think they do. I do think athletes should get the monthly stipend — especially if it’s “need-based.”

  11. noah 02/09/2007 at 9:05 AM #

    A couple of things:

    — If you want to dislike Dave Glenn, I’m fine with that. I don’t know why what Mack Brown did when he was coach is relevant when we’re three coaches removed from him. I don’t even think Glenn had taken over the Poop Sheet when Brown was still coaching there.

    — Student athletes usually ARE paid. Every NCAA official I’ve ever talked to (a grand total of five) was perfectly aware that just about every starter at a top-75 program got $50 handshakes from boosters. They were pretty dismissive about it and just sort of chalked it up to the cost of doing business. They are also allowed to work during the offseason. They lifted that ban a long time ago. They just have to do real work. No alligator monitoring.

    — If Sam Jones graduates from FVHS, his core GPA is locked in forever. There’s nothing he can ever do to change it. It means that if he wants to qualify for 2008, he’ll have to get an SAT score that corresponds with that GPA. If he fails the year, he can enroll at Hargrave or Fork Union and re-do the year and the grades from the past season won’t count. That means that a good effort in the classroom would reduce the necessary score needed to qualify.

    I wasn’t disparaging Jones, it is just good strategy to re-do the year in some cases. I had been told that Jones had let things slip this year and that he was planning on making it up at Hargrave.

    — Lots of people didn’t like Amato. Even his defenders said that he was incredibly cocky. I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before, but I had to do a couple of things with the university and on one occassion, I had to work with Sendek and on another, I had to work with Amato. I was struck by how personable Sendek was. Amato was a real prick. I know a lot of people ran down Doc Holliday and talked about what a jerk he was…he couldn’t have been nicer to me.

  12. RedTerror29 02/09/2007 at 9:09 AM #

    All athletes on scholarship get a semesterly check from the university, the same as a student on full academic scholarship would. This check represents the difference between the amount of the scholarship and tuition (and room and board if applicable). There’s a federal dept. of education number that determines how much it costs to go to a particular school – tuition + room + board + books + transportation + etc. The problem is the etc. isn’t really enough to live off of.

    Universities already pay their players. They should have the freedom to give their players more valuable scholarships.

  13. choppack1 02/09/2007 at 9:19 AM #

    “I don’t read David Glen weekly without provocation from this site, but this is the first I’ve heard that his Carolina roots show in his journalism. I thought he was pretty well-respected amongst Pack fans for his coverage of the basketball search, if nothing else.”

    His roots have always shown. However, this doesn’t mean that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about when it comes to recruiting and a program’s performance. If UNC was removed from the equation, I’d trust Dave Glenn when it came to reporting these things. However, especially in footall, it’s hard to remove the NC State – UNC rivalry from the equation.

    A lot of wolfpack fans haven’t forgiven his behavior on that signing day 5 years ago when AJ Davis signed w/ State instead of Carolina. I haven’t heard the broadcast, but supposedly, he implied that something had gone on, to get AJ to change his committment. I think time has shown that what really happened was that Dave Glenn and others were privy to only 1 side of the equation and that AJ’s heart was w/ NC State. For the record, there was really nothing of any kind of substance to indicate that NC State had done anything wrong when it came to AJ Davis. (Funny, was Glenn this upset when Ronald Curry switched his committment from UVa to UNC? Also, did he think something funny went on w/ Euwell who switched from State to UNC?)

    I did read the article on Tramain Hall that the ACC Sports Journal/Poop Sheet did a few years back. This article painted Amato in a very bad light. Basically it said that Amato knew that Tramain hadn’t and wouldn’t pass the FL test, but allowed Tramain to enroll in order to ensure his services. The article was very critical of Amato and staff. I’ve always thought that Amato Inc. took a chance on Tramain – and didn’t get as lucky as they thought they would.

    Now, it’s important to mention that in both of the cases above, a reasonable person could see these things the way that Glenn saw them. But bias rears its ugly head is when the same type of thing can happen at another institution and it doesn’t cause the raised eyebrows and stir the emotion that was obviously stirred in Glenn by these 2 cases.

    Glenn could have a lot more credibility to Wolfpack fans – and he can still earn some. Just once, I want to see the ACC Sports Journal/Poop Sheet be critical and investigate a successful coach at UNC.

    He can start today – UNC has 2 big-time commits from kids who committed elsewhere. Find out why they changed their mind. Or – criticize the academics of the class. Write that UNC-Ch only had a limited # of scolies to give, but they gave many more. Heck, they could have said the same thing about Bunting, but they never did.

  14. RedTerror29 02/09/2007 at 10:00 AM #

    On a non-UNC recruiting related note, TOB made this interesting (and IMO correct) statement:

    Q ? Will recruiting Florida be an emphasis? A ? We will recruit Florida. We had a player or two committed to Boston College before we left. It’s not that we don’t have ties there. It just didn’t fit for what we were doing this year. Another thing, when you are looking for linemen, you tend to go North. They are not in Florida.

    Picking up your core in NC, going north for size and south for speed is a damn good recruiting plan, IMOH. He also said the coaches would visit every high school in the state this spring.

  15. RedTerror29 02/09/2007 at 10:03 AM #

    What Dave Glenn posted about UNC’s class today:

    “Why third? Like Miami and several others in the ACC (and almost all of the SEC), the Heels will have to cross their fingers on the academic status of many of their signees, including two of the All-Americans. If they end up with two or three non-qualifiers when it’s time to enroll this summer, that’s a routine year for most ACC schools. If it’s six or seven, it will be the heaviest attrition in school history (see Virginia last year), and the signing-day celebration will have a hollow ring.”

    http://www.wral.com/sports/blogpost/1198307/

  16. choppack1 02/09/2007 at 10:05 AM #

    “If you want to dislike Dave Glenn, I’m fine with that. I don’t know why what Mack Brown did when he was coach is relevant when we’re three coaches removed from him. I don’t even think Glenn had taken over the Poop Sheet when Brown was still coaching there.”

    That’s not exactly the point. The point is that Glenn doesn’t acknowledge that UNC-Ch’s most successful teams in recent history were built in no small part by academically marginal students. (Let’s not even get into his relative silence on the “character factor” that has been on display in Chapel Hill for the last 2 or 3 years.)

    Heck, I want to like and trust Dave Glenn. I’m on record that he’s probably the finest ACC analyst around – certainly the best one on the radio. There are times when I really enjoy listening to him.

    I don’t know why folks want to paint folks into one corner or another. I enjoy his show, he knows his stuff, but I think, especially when it comes to UNC, he’s not necessarily one to be trusted. Hey, I’m not saying I’d be any different when it came to NC State if I had all that info at my disposal.

    Noah – maybe you can add something about Glenn’s reaction on signing day to the whole AJ scenario. My impression is that on that day, he wasn’t his normal rational self, but rather suspicious and angry.

  17. choppack1 02/09/2007 at 10:20 AM #

    Shoot – well, that’s one of the reasons I do like Glenn – nice analysis.

    I’m surprised though, didn’t one of Bunting’s class lose 2 or 3 of it’s all-american’s to academics for a year?

  18. gopack968 02/09/2007 at 10:39 AM #

    As already posted above by RedTerror29, Glenn clearly identified Carolina’s gamble – and compared the potential problems to Virginia’s catastrophe of a few years back.

    He seems very fair and no one is more knowledgable in the current media crowd about ACC sports. Period. I enjoy his work – and have not identified any sort of anti-NC State bias.

  19. choppack1 02/09/2007 at 10:42 AM #

    gopack – I wouldn’t say that Glenn is anti-NC State. I would have just said he is pro-Carolina. This article indicates to me that perhaps he’s trying to be more objective.

  20. highonlowe 02/09/2007 at 10:50 AM #

    With the class they’re bringing in, I think the issue was unavoidable for him. Its so obvious, there’s no way he could not address it.

  21. RedTerror29 02/09/2007 at 10:54 AM #

    Having it posted and discussed on a popular blog didn’t help Glenn ignore it either.

    A Louisiana paper ran an editorial this week attributing quotes to Saban from a fake news story. A Bama blog pointed out it was based on a email hoax that same day and within another day a retraction had been printed and the sports editor responsible removed from his duties.

    The internet is a good thing for journalistic integrity – maybe that’s why MSM journalists hate it so much.

  22. tcthdi-tgsf-twhwtnc 02/09/2007 at 11:19 AM #

    “if I am going to be extorted to pay about 80 percent of someone’s freight to the “flagship” public institution in this state, I would prefer him to be reasonably prepared to succeed academically.”

    With all due respect Beo but what a load of crap. You have no right to know students grades and SAT scores. Every student that attends a public school or university is taking your tax money and everyone elses. I have no kids and pay property tax let me run over to Broughton and start requesting students grades since I’m paying for them. Please.

  23. RedTerror29 02/09/2007 at 11:52 AM #

    ^I have no reason to believe the “normal” kids are sneaking into our flagship universities with 500 SATs. I can’t say the same for athletes. And their academic information is important, because it matters to the fairness and integrity of the game. That may be suspect, but let’s keep what we got.

  24. tcthdi-tgsf-twhwtnc 02/09/2007 at 12:34 PM #

    It is my understanding that athletic scholarships are provided from ‘friends of the program’ not state funds. It makes senses to look at average GPA and SAT scores for a program but not to single out some 17 year old kid and publish his information which should not be public knowledge in the first place unless his family chooses to release it.

    However I understand the idea of personal privacy is gone and most people celebrate the fact that they have the right to gossip about anybody anytime. At the very least you should leave children out of your daily gossip needs.

  25. RedTerror29 02/09/2007 at 12:39 PM #

    18 year old men aren’t children.

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