Investigation thoughts from an old Heel

Kenan Stadium

After listening over and over and over to the presser, which has now become two pronged due to the academic infraction/misconduct that might have occurred, all I could think about was: “where is this all going to end?” Sure, some people think I am taking it too hard, way too hard, this is just a blip on the radar in the overall scheme of the school’s history. Or that everyone does it, Carolina just got nailed for it. Or even the one that talks about how the NCAA investigation is looking a lot more at UNC than it would (or has) at other programs under the microscope. All fair, and maybe even true points, but they definitely are not mine. And by all means, if all players were discovered to have done nothing wrong then I will eat crow and say I was dead wrong, but right now, at this moment, as I write this post, I have a feeling a lot more will be found guilty of having done what either the NCAA or UNC itself claim they did.

The press conference began with this small phrase, uttered by chancellor Holden Thorp:

“To all of you out there who love Carolina, I’m sorry for what I’m about to tell you”.

He could not have been more right. What he, AD Dick Baddour and head coach Butch Davis told us were all things I knew were coming, heck, all things most of us knew or thought to be the case, but did not want to hear about. I’ve been following Carolina for about three decades, been a Tar Heel for a quarter century, seen the ups and downs of the football program (yes, I remember the 1 win seasons and the untimely departure of Mack Brown), the ups and downs of the basketball programs (which have been a lot less) and followed many more of the teams that the University of North Carolina put on the field. Those of you that read this blog or follow me on Twitter know that I stayed faithful to the basketball program last year when the fan base just kept getting off the bandwagon. That is who I am, I am a Heel for life, I will back my teams. I will back them, all of the time, with few exceptions, and this is one of them.

I want what the chancellor said in the conference, “The way Carolina does things is going to be apparent in how we handle this”, to be followed to the letter and to the end. I want that quickness to be replaced by accuracy when dealing with the problem and that once it comes to an end no one can say that things were forgotten, hidden, or whatever else the rivals or ABC’ers can come up with. This cloud is not going to go away soon, and the potshots from both the opposing fan bases and the media who is biased to the other programs are not going to go away either. Let’s make sure that those potshots come from what happened and not from how the investigations are both handled/managed and ended.

Someone at the press conference asked if “lack of institutional control” could be happening. Now, I think that is going a bit overboard (once again the bias thing coming out), but I have to say that, like it or not, this lies on the head coach and he needs to be the one spearheading the battle to fix it and making sure that any and all players involved are punished in a way that does not seem like a slap on the wrist but a true and fair way. I have said it on Twitter, said it on boards, said it in many email’s I have had back and forth with other fans of the Heels and I will now say it here: I would rather have a 0-12 team that is clean and I can be proud to support than a 12-0 squad that has cheated and I can’t get behind. Both the AD and the chancellor made sure to say that they supported the coach in their statement, and they put that out there at the beginning of their wording, not in the middle or at the end. I thought that was very significant, but even more so I thought the way Davis looked was more compelling.

A man that seems to always be, no pun intended, on the ball looked beat up and shocked by all of this. That could be for many reasons, like the tutor involved in this story was also used by Davis’ family to help their own son in school, making guilt by association come to mind. Another could be that he does have the support of the school, but until when or at what point? If it were to come out that he knew anything about anything would he be asked to leave immediately? And of course other things come to mind, like how many parents have called with their kid thinking about going to UNC or already having signed on to play. But one thing I am pretty sure about is that what the head coach said last night were not words written to please anyone, but words that were meant to be said because that is how it was going to go.

I will not jump to conclusions, even if I am a blogger, and will just say that I am very upset if the things that have been said are true. I am not going to talk about the rumors going around that one player or another has been kicked out, I will let the mainstream media, who is supposed to be more objective and fair in their reporting, do that. I will also keep supporting my school, my love, the University of North Carolina first and foremost, while making the programs, coaches and players my second love.

The chancellor also said this:

“We will find out what happened. We will do everything we can to keep it from happening again,” he said “And we will not let these mistakes define our university and what we stand for.”

As a UNC faithful, a man who lives with principles before personalities as a rule, I truly hope that is the case!

Shortlink: