To say that the last few weeks have been quite entertaining on sports radio, or on message boards and blogs where UNC fans gather would be an understatement along the lines of saying that the weather has been warm the past few weeks. Like the 95 degree-plus weather we seem to see day after day in these parts this summer, callers to radio shows and commenters on message boards have been hot too, creating some of the best revisionist-history accidental comedy I have come across in years.
There have been times when I have needed to park the car to get a laugh out of my system, or close my office door so I don’t need to explain to my work neighbors why I am laughing out loud.
The arguments I have been reading and/or hearing regarding the pratfalls and foibles of the NCAA probing UNC Football generally run on these lines:
1) It’s all an ABC conspiracy. Everybody who “hates Carolina” is out to get them.
2) No problem! That everybody successful does these things, it’s a sign of success
and finally,
3) That UNC is a special place, blah blah blah.
Okay, point one is a black helicopter theory. If you happen to have any CREDIBLE evidence that the “ABC fans” (which I guess are State’s, Duke’s, Wake’s, and the rest of the ACC’s) started this to “get Carolina” let me know and I will publish it here. Let’s be honest, whatever Carolina did, their own players did it to them. This site, Pack Pride, Carolinasucks.com, none of them got the ball rolling on this investigation (and that’s what it is.) UNC player’s big mouths did.
Now then, let’s look at the inherent hypocrisy of arguments 2 and 3, which are wholly incompatible.
Why?
If you are “special” you don’t need to do things the way “everyone else” does it. You’re special. Why do you need to cheat?  You must not be that special if you have to resort to nefarious tactics like everyone else.
At any rate, the “everyone does it” defense falls flat on its face. AKA the “Nuremberg Defense” it was used heavily in the warcrimes trials after WWII and it didn’t work a single time. Another example is this: say you are going down the highway speeding along with everyone else, but you get pulled. Do you think you have an ice cube’s prayer on August pavement that the judge will let you go because “everyone else” is speeding? Nope, it won’t happen.
Then there’s the “special place” argument. Yes, UNC has good academics, and yes, it trains good doctors, lawyers and I suppose Indian Chiefs too. But let’s call UNC what it is: one of the better but by no means “the best” college in the US.
UNC is not even the best public university in the country. Carolina is no University of California, it is not UCLA, it is not even the University of Virginia — all schools it trails where-ever public colleges are ranked. It’s a good school, it produces fine graduates, but goodness gracious, it is not the Mecca of education in world, the country or even its own conference. If there are pearly gates to a blue heaven driving into Chapel Hill on NC-54 or Manning Drive, I’ve never seen them.
All that said, these arguments that are being bantered about are not only factually incorrect and intellectual dishonest, they must also certainly be quite embarrassing to the administration, the faculty and the alumni of UNC-Chapel Hill. Mark Twain once famously commented that it often was “better to keep your mouth closed and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.” Like their players, some of Carolina’s fans just need to shut their mouths before they remove any doubt of it whatsoever.
