Earlier this afternoon we tweeted that we heard the NCAA was back in Chapel Hill today continuing their investigation of the UNC-CH football program…and this evening we got mainstream media confirmation. (If you aren’t currently following us on Twitter and FaceBook then we would encourage you to get connected with us.)
With a hat tip to our email box and the Pack Pride message boards comes what could have been some pretty scary stuff —
We’d like to introduce you to a guy named, Marcus Wilson. You can click here to see Wilson’s FaceBook page and click here for Wilson’s LinkedIn profile. Marcus is originally from Jackson, MS and currently is the Assistant Director of Agent, Gambling and Amateurism Activities for the NCAA. A quick look through at his FaceBook page indicates that he is a big UNC-CH fan and is friends with A LOT of hot girls well and former UNC-CH athletes.
…wait a second…a big UNC-CH fan and friends with a lot of former UNC-CH athletes!? Hmmmm.
Upon further review, I guess that makes sense being that it appears the current Assistant Director of Agent, Gambling and Amateurism Activities for the NCAA played football at North Carolina in the early part of this decade, where he graduated with two degrees.
The best that I can tell, the NCAA has a seven-person investigative team focusing on Agents, Gambling and Amateurism – of which it appears Marcus Wilson is one.
There is nothing that explicitly or officially links Wilson to any kind role in UNC’s current investigation; and, I doubt very seriously the NCAA would ever allow an alum who played the very sport being investigated to hold a role in such an investigation. But, I do know that a seven person staff isn’t very large and therefore it would be reasonable to believe that everyone on such a small staff would at the very least have access to information related to major investigations.
I also know that it smells really odd that just the potential of this conflict of interest has not been made public by anyone at the NCAA or the University of North Carolina or has been reported by anyone in the mainstream media. (Shocker! I know)
I also know that, in addition to some interesting emails we have received the last couple of weeks, quite a few members of various UNC internet message boards have insinuated that they had good information about the current investigation and that Tarheel fans shouldn’t worry too much because they had some ‘friends in high places’ associated with the investigation.
Point here is that anything that can be construed as shady or subterfuge is not a good thing for the University of North Carolina. Over the last few weeks they have been caught with their pants down on almost every angle of this story — including the very story itself! Trips taken by athletes that supposedly didn’t happen were later proven to have happened; the NCAA publicly contradicting the University’s position on not speaking to the media; and a high school recruit who was originally quoted that Butch Davis another coach told him that all was going to be well in Chapel Hill long before the investigation has been completed don’t mix well in any kind of public relations recipe.
11:15pm Update
While we were writing this, RavensInsider Aaron Wilson confirmed our suspicions that the NCAA & Wilson are officially buttoned up on this matter as they should be. Wilson tweeted, “He has to recuse himself from UNC investigation under NCAA rules. Plenty of other investigators, though. Not a big deal.”
Good stuff for all parties. Anyone who knows the strange characters and conflicts of routing interests associated with NC State’s past brushes with the NCAA can understand how some of the Wolfpack faithful could have gotten extra paranoid with anything originating from the NCAA.
Now…it sure would be nice to figure out who are these ‘friends in high places’ to which Carolina fans keep referencing?
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