was (I think obviously) the racism angle. bigbadbird called it a "racist system." That's a pretty serious chargeand even though this is just a message board, I don't think anyone should throw stuff words like that around without any evidence to support it.

The only evidence I've seen to support the racist stuff is that a lot of the players who benefitted were black. That's some seriously flimsy evidence. Like worthless as "evidence."

And as for the notion that advisors would've steered kids because of racepossible, I guess, but their goal is to keep kids eligible. They know the students HS grades and SAT/ACT scores when the come in. They obviously know all the UNC coursework/grades after the kids are enrolled. They've got much better data to use to know who to steer to the fake classes than race. So, sure, some racist people might have been involved and occasionally acted based on race, but that's not a "racist system."

The other angle you raisethe fact that it was an African Studies departmentI don't buy that there is racism involved there either. Everything I've read points to this thing having happened kind of organically. Debbie Crowder, lifelong UNC devotee and sympathetic-I-want-to-help-you personality, ended up with a job in AFAM. A lot of athletes already took those classes. She had some athletics connections. At some point, she realized she could help some kids who were struggling by letting creating some pseudo-classes and pushing some paperwork through. The department head was either complicit or a complete idiot, so it was allowed to grow. The athletic department at some point can't help but notice there's a nice "GPA booster" path out there and starts steering people toward it, likely rationalizing it with a "hey, academics isn't our responsibility, if the courses are out there, we'll send players to them." Eventually it looks like (and essentially is) a "system," but I'm not convinced it was ever conceived to be such by a bunch of guys in a smoke-filled room.

I'm sure some of you will read that and think I'm trying to let UNC off the hook. I'm not. I think what happened is totally reprehensiblemore from the academic perspective than the athletic one. Heck, I'd support academic punishments before athletics ones.








[Post edited by Pylons at 02/19/2016 2:09PM]