For months, The Carolina faithful — aided by, among others, the vocal Dick Vitale and Jay Bilas — campaigned for the NCAA to #FreePJ. In the end, it turned out it wasn’t the NCAA, but in fact The Flagship, that wouldn’t #FreePJ. It’s just another in a growing list of examples of The Flagship’s athletics administration misleading its own.
Keith Jarrett writes (Asheville Citizen-Times):
A former player employed by the basketball program — a guy twice suspended when he was a member of the team, allegedly for getting high — is found smoking pot in a $600,000 home he is renting from the famous coach.
A current player on suspension admits to breaking several NCAA rules involving impermissible benefits, including borrowing rented cars — like a Porsche — from a convicted felon.
Another current player has apparently committed such egregious NCAA violations that the school decides to not even ask for reinstatement, leaving open possibilities that include rule breaking so major that the request would be denied or the school fears the player hasn’t been completely honest about his transgressions, which could lead to the forfeiture of games if the player was allowed to compete.
After the player is told he will no longer be allowed to play in games, he continues to practice with the squad and sits on the bench in his finest suit, much like the one he would wear to court to impress a judge.
UNLV under Jerry Tarkanian?
Nope, it’s coach Roy Williams and North Carolina, the tarnished Tar Heels that bear little resemblance to the revered program built by Dean Smith.
…
But the Tar Heels have lost their way, with layer after layer revealed of an athletic program and academic leadership that looked the other way while football and basketball players took fake classes for more than a decade, where athletes’ parking lots boasted more luxury cars than a Hollywood premiere.
And during it all, coaches, athletic directors and a chancellor denied, dodged, weaved and talked of an integrity that was as absent as the African-American Studies’ teachers who gave As for classes that never met.
These aren’t the rants of an ABCer, they are the facts of a school that is broken and yet insists all is well in Blue Heaven.
One of the NCAA tenets is condemnation of a “lack of institutional control.”
Does it sound like athletic director Bubba Cunningham and Williams and have things under control?
In one sense, they certainly do. The football program is off one year’s probation and in a bowl game despite major NCAA infractions, and there hasn’t been a peep from college sports’ governing body about what’s going on with the basketball team.
