Some Thoughts About and Carolina Basketball

In the aftermath of the “point shaving scandal of 1960-61”, Frank McGuire’s departure to the NBA left his trusted assistant, Dean Smith, on a path to become a future Hall of Fame Coach for the Carolina Tar Heels. During the next 50 years with the aid of a supportive state media, well organized fund-raising organizations, aggressive strategic placement of supporters in positions of both economic and political power, all coupled with a university administration willing to turn a blind eye and, in some case participate in bending of the rules, turned Dean Smith into a hero of saintly proportions. A North Carolina icon, Dean Smith could make the Bible Belt Carolina fans miss their church services if the Tar Heels were playing at noon on Sunday television! Over the years the saintly Dean Smith was often compared in state media and among Tar Heel Basketball zealots in contrast with the “thugs” at State College that almost “brought down” ACC basketball. It was often said the Dean Smith got better press in North Carolina than Jesus Christ! In 2010 the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill campus was found to have operated, unchecked by faculty or administration for over 20 years, a corrupt system of academic fraud that was designed to keep “student-athletes” eligible for play in violation of accepted practices re their university accreditation agency. This academic fraud was designed to give its athletic teams advantages of an “uneven playing field” in competition with opponents. In retrospect the system was known by multiple faculty and administrators but accepted for its massive financial benefits. The book Cheated: The UNC Scandal, the Education of Athletes, and the Future of Big-Time College Sports written by UNC professor of history Jay Smith and UNC athletics department whistleblower Mary Willingham, while limited by available information from a hostile administration, gives a peek into the fraudulent inner working of this well-known university. The book speaks to the facts that for decades woefully underprepared basketball, football and other “student-athletes” were systematically allowed to take fake courses and earn devalued degrees from one of the nation’s, perceived, top universities while faculty and administrators looked the other way. The book speaks to academic fraud in the universities’ athletics department as university leaders focused on the process of “damage control” designed to keep its billion-dollar sports revenue machine producing dollars. In addition to the dollar effects of the process, Smith and Willingham make the strong argument that the predominately black “student-athletes” involved have been cheated out of a promised college education. One reviewer of the book, a PhD. Graduate of UNC-CH who maintains a blog under the title of dcdave calls attention to the omission of any negative comments re Dean Smith in the book and wonders if even-here the sainted Dean Smith is a “sacred-cow.”

“Cheated is not without its shortcomings. One could think that he’s reading the book carefully and still not see anything in it that might undermine the impression left on the Wikipedia page that coach Dean Smith was a paragon of virtue “known for running a clean program.” You have to notice it yourself because the authors fail to call your attention to the fact, but when Nyang’oro and Crowder got their paper class system up and running and made it available almost exclusively to basketball players, the head basketball coach was Dean Smith. It continued for those first few years and beyond his retirement at the end of the 1996-97 season. His second and last championship team was at the end of the 1992-93 season. This little bombshell is not in Cheated; it’s in an online publication for North Carolina State partisans called StateFansNation and refers to admitted fraudulent courses taken by the starting lineup of that team. Here, it was shown that in the first year a curriculum for African American Studies existed at UNC-Chapel Hill (1992) 4 of 5 members of the starting lineup of the National Championship Basketball team immediately majored/minored in the new curriculum. In just one year an almost entire team happened to migrate to one particular and brand new curriculum, 4 of 5 members of the starting lineup of the National Championship Basketball team immediately majored/minored in the brand new curriculum. In just one year, an almost entire team happened to migrate to one particular, and brand new, curriculum? It is especially noteworthy that some of these players were juniors and seniors when the curriculum was created.” In a Huffington Post blog Jay Smith clarifies the timing of the known academic fraud system. “The first UNC course offered as a favor to the basketball team, scheduled in 1988, was an independent study for two painfully weak students who hovered at or below the eligibility line. They received helpful B’s, and out of that little experiment the UNC course scam was born. In fall 1992 one star of the basketball team ostensibly pursued an independent study with a faculty member who was on sabbatical at the time. (I know this because I shared a fellowship leave with that faculty member.) This had to have been one of the “shadow” courses offered by the administrative assistant who played such a central role in the fraud, a generous woman whose closest friend was the basketball team’s academic counselor. She assigned A or B grades in the shadow courses, which required no attendance and little work. One player on the 1993 team took seven suspect courses with her help; four starters on that team majored in the department where she worked. UNC’s 1993 championship run seems to have been aided and abetted by fraud. By 2005, when UNC won its next national championship, the “paper class” system (so called because students had to turn in only one paper of uncertain provenance to collect their A’s) was hitting on all cylinders. Players on the men’s basketball team took over one hundred of the fake courses, with one racking up eighteen. Star forward Rashad McCants has admitted that he rarely attended a single class in the spring of 2005 — even though he landed on the Dean’s list for the high grades he was awarded. Players on the 2009 national championship team received similar favors.”

Here, the reasonable question should be asked. Was this curriculum created for the express purpose of benefitting the basketball team? Cheated points to the lack of ability to substantiate this claim but does confirm that the fraudulent-class abuses initially benefitted the basketball team almost exclusively. Dean Smith was described by dcdave as a fierce competitor who would do almost anything to win. One of those things was the use of his national status in the intimidation of referees; the sportscasters even came up with a euphemistic new expression for it, “working the officials.” Smith did it almost from the opening buzzer. As the media tried to protect the perceived sainthood of Smith, dcdave continues that: “Smith was always looking for an angle to gain an advantage, and one would have to admit that offering courses that required no work and guaranteed a good grade gave UNC a big advantage over its rivals. The AFRI/AFAM paper classes might not have been Smith’s idea, but it is very difficult to believe that he knew nothing about them. Jay Smith and Mary Willingham do their readers a disservice by not reminding them that the fraudulent class regime at UNC began on Dean Smith’s watch. Perhaps they felt that this was one sacred cow that they had better not touch.” On a personal note, as a faculty member at rival North Carolina State University, I often attended lunch at the Faculty Club where from time-to-time Dean Smith’s bitter rival, , would meet with the faculty as his way of athletic/faculty “bonding.” During part of that time I was the chair of the Student Affairs Committee for the university Faculty Senate, working on academic progress requirements for student- athletes. In this regard I was especially interested in some of his impressions about the student-athlete academic condition. This was in the 1970s, well before the time period dealt with in Cheated. As a faculty who interacted with colleagues at Chapel Hill I knew of second-hand information about eligibility issues for star athletes at their campus but like many faculty considered the examples the “normal course of doing business.” By this time both NCSU and Chapel Hill had instituted a “special talents” process that allowed the admission of under-performing high school students. As a former student-athlete I often talked to prospective recruits about NC State most of whom were being recruited by both Chapel Hill and NCSU. One more than one occasion the prospects were not able to read at a 4th grade level and had a hard time putting a sentence together in their interview. In one case of a player that wound up at Chapel Hill, his mother did all the talking for the interview for obvious reasons. Both NCSU and Chapel Hill would have accepted the young man into a campus program but at this point the convergence between policies at NCSU and Chapel Hill ended. Both Dean Smith and Norm Sloan had the same problem, keeping their “student-athletes” academically eligible over time. From Norm Sloan I learned, “Dean can do things with student eligibility that I can’t do.” When asked how he might level the playing field his response was, “I am on the wrong campus to get that done!” While both Norm and Dean could get unprepared students into their respective universities, Dean could sell the parents of a recruit that if they stayed the course the student-athlete would get a degree. At NC State, Norm Sloan could not make that promise, thus losing many star basketball players to his Dean Smith rival. This advantage played out after and the “Cardiac Pack” won the 1983 national basketball championship when the Ram’s Club dominated Board of Governors came after Valvano for not graduating his players. Although the NCAA governing body found little-to-no reason to seriously sanction Valvano and NC State, Dick Spangler, the UNC Board of Governors and the Dean Smith “fan boy” media literally crucified Valvano and put NCSU into a competitive position re Chapel Hill for which it has never recovered.

W. Douglas Cooper June 15, 2016