I assume most of you have heard by now about the UNC comments following the BOG meeting today. You can watch a report and read about it here also. This stuff gets covered in real-time during the day on our message boards which is one of the reasons we are always trying to send your attention that way.
The big story is that the folks in Chapel Hill have publicly acknowledged that it could be a year or more before a final NCAA decision comes down the pike. This is the first realistic timeframe publically admitted to by UNC. Butch and Baddour have spent the better part of the last two months telling people that the “review” was almost over while other coaches and UNC ‘insiders’ made it a habit of perpetually leaking the same stories to their buddies in the Tar Heel online media – ‘there is nothing to worry about’ and ‘this will be over by next Friday’.
They could not have possibly believed this stuff even as they said it, and I wonder if this bit of finally-admitted reality will put a crimp into Butch’s recruiting pitches.  Also Thorp looked and sounded very down to me compared to the happy face he has been projecting before today. I am not sure what to read into that. There are several funny quotes to enjoy, such as (from Thorp):
“Coach Davis knows he has a lot of work to do.â€
What does that even mean? As an example of my previous comments, we already had a thread discussing this on our message boards .
Tonight’s second topic has to do with the current spin out of Chapel Hill — that Butch heard nothing, saw nothing, and knew nothing about the full catalogue of violations going on under his nose. Given that we will be hearing this for a while, in this entry I will go through some of the reasons why this line of reasoning is ludicrous.
Before I even get started, it is important to realize that Butch’s supposed ignorance does not matter. This entry does an excellent job detailing the NCAA’s written policy that ignorance is not an excuse for a head coach’s failure to maintain control. Also, when assessing Butch’s credibility remember that Butch has said that Marvin is being suspended for reasons unrelated to the “review,” and that Marvin is in the process of “working his way back on the team.” I will let you decide if those are credible statements.
I am not even going to touch on the fact that Butch supposedly had no idea about the day-to-day actions of his Associate Head Coach and Recruiting Coordinator. Common sense tells you that this is a person the Head Coach would be with/in contact with ALL THE TIME. But we are to believe that Blake had all sorts of relationships and communications without Butch knowing anything about them whatsoever. Riiiiiight. But let’s look at three small specific things a little closer.
#1 – Butch’s “Sgt. Schultz defense” relies on you believing that Butch did not know about Blake’s reputation when Blake was hired at UNC-CH. Butch recently made a huge production of saying that he was sorry he trusted John Blake and acting very surprised that Blake would do the things UNC-CH now is finally admitting Blake did. You can read the full N & O piece about it here. But, given that Blake’s reputation was so well known, can we really believe that Butch had no idea what Blake would be up to? As you can read here, Steve Spurrier made it very clear that Blake’s shady reputation was well-known and well-established in the coaching community. Certainly Davis, even if he hadn’t known Blake for decades (which he had), would have known of this reputation through coaching circles. Furthermore, Blake’s reputation was also known by the general public. Butch’s contention that he did not know Blake’s reputation does not pass the laugh test.
#2 – “Sgt. Butch” would have us believe that he employed the football tutor to help his son AFTER she was let go by the University, yet had no idea there was any problem with the football team. Remember, according to Thorp, she was let go because “there was too much of a friendship between her and the players.” You can read the full details here with the pertinent dates — the tutor’s contract with the University was not renewed in the summer of 2009. Yet she worked for Butch Davis into May of 2010 — and all that time Butch supposedly had no clue there was any problem with her and/or the football team’s academics. It is not believeable that Butch employed a person in such a position of trust for nearly a year without knowing what happened — particularly when she was let go due to innapropriate tutoring conduct with the football team. Remember as an aside here that UNC somehow still claims that they “self-reported” the cheating element of this scandal even though they did nothing to investigate or report the tutor (let go by the University in the summer of 2009) until her name came up during NCAA questioning of players about agents in the summer of 2010. That is some great quote-unquote “self-reporting”! The next time you get caught doing something you shouldn’t, why not take UNC’s lead and “self-report” your misdeed to whoever just caught you. See how that works. For example, if your wife catches you with another woman, go ahead and “self-report” your violation right then and see how that goes. Leave it to UNC to come up with a rationalization so ridiculous and then try to pass it off as legitimate. Hilarious!
Anyway, once again something was right under his nose but Butch knew nothing!
#3 – Butch’s “Sgt. Schultz defense” requires us to believe that Kendric Burney  knew more about Marvin Austin’s dealings with agents than did Butch Davis. Remember that Kendric Burney’s dad explained in this article  that Kendric did not go to the Miami agent party in May because he knew that there would be agents there and this would be improper. (Kendric instead made the “wise” choice to go to Las Vegas with Chris Hawkins, but that is another story).   How in the world is it possible for the Miami agent party to have been known about ahead of time by UNC-CH players such as Kendric, but not be ever known about by Butch, the other coaches, the UNC compliance office, etc, etc.? Also, if Kendric (and certainly other players) knew about this upcoming improper party, why would they not report it to their Head Coach??? Does this sound like a culture of compliance to you????
Stay tuned!
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