Today brings more fun news from released emails!
Yesterday we learned through a released email that Butch was supposedly so in-tune with his 16 suspended players that he knew they needed counseling. He thought they might do all sorts of bad things, even including violence. This is a coach who supposedly had no idea that these same players were flying to places like Las Vegas, Miami, California, had no clue they were receiving free jewelry, did not know that others were at agent parties, was not aware that Chris Hawkins was hanging out in the weight room, did not know the tutor he privately employed was helping football players, did not know his players were training with agents over the summer, and did not know his Associate Head Coach was taking money from an agent while employed by UNC-CH. I could go on. He knew none of that stuff, but all of a sudden developed such admirable emotional empathy. Riiiight.
Moving on, today we learn in an excerpt from this piece from the N&O that on September 30th, (in the wake of the Yahoo! revelations about Blake getting money from an Agent while Blake was a UNC-CH employee) Erskine Bowles gave marching orders to Thorp and Butch just before a press conference:
“There needs to be a sense of outrage expressed on our part,” Bowles wrote in a Sept. 30 email to Holden Thorp, the UNC-CH chancellor, one day after the Yahoo! report was published. “I know you feel it. Its [sic] not enough to just have not known. We are and should be both outraged and deeply disappointed that someone we hired would have done this. It is certainly something none of us would have condoned or turned a blind eye to.”
Thorp responded just 14 minutes later.
“Just tried to call you,” he wrote in part. “Butch going on camera at 2:50 with very specific instructions from me.”
Two questions. If Bowles knew Thorp and Butch felt outrage, why did he need to tell them to express it? Also, what is this “Its [sic] not enough to just have not known” stuff? Hasn’t UNC-CH’s entire defense been that Butch not knowing is a totally acceptable explanation/excuse?
Remember, Bowles was running the show when McQueen Campbell and Oblinger (our BOT Chair and Chancellor) resigned over a mess was that was far less serious than the UNC-CH football scandals. But for UNC-CH, Bowles has take the “lead spin master” role, telling Thorp and Butch what to say and how to say it while standing behind them at press conferences telling everyone how great they are. No talk of resignations obviously.
The top administrators in the UNC system and UNC-CH are going way out of their way to protect an employee of the University that not only is not a part of the central mission of the University, but who has brought them immense shame and unprecedented negative press. Apparently, Davis is more important than UNC-CH’s national reputation. And the kicker is that Butch hasn’t even won anything!
I am told that “Dickie” was on the radio this afternoon saying that this all would be over in a few days. In the past, that has been a sure indication that all hell was about to break loose. Stay tuned.
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