Let’s have a poll, less formal and more detailed than you find on Chapelboro.com every day.

You’re a UNC alumnus and/or fan. How do you feel about the Carolina football program being dragged through the NCAA mud for the last year or so?
Does it make you mad that the governing body of college athletics is picking on the Tar Heels when the NCAA should be frying bigger fish like Ohio State and Auburn, like they skewered Southern Cal a few years ago?

Is it embarrassing that your school has spent time on the wrong side of the news since last summer after more than 50 years of mostly being on the right side . . . so much so that a slightly self-serving phrase was created called the Carolina Way?

Does it make you spittin’ angry that the head coach, despite being tall and handsome and smooth as a newly varnished floor and tied to all the right charities, has been asleep at the wheel while driving hard on recruiting trips; and that he continues to get a hall pass from the athletic director, chancellor and Board of Trustees because they believe “he didn’t know” what was going on in his own program?

Or do you basically not give a damn what happens off the field as long as Carolina can continue striving to play “big time” football and build $70 million facilities that, despite the academic smokescreen, is really about giving the head coach what he wants to be successful in recruiting.

And, after deciding where you stand on this poll, would your answers be any different if the Tar Heels had been better than 8-5, 8-5 and 8-5 the past three seasons and were less than 30 years removed from their last ACC football championship?

C’mon, fess up.

This poll comes down to the question of reputation and integrity. Ironically, UNC remains under investigation after opening its doors to the snoop dogs, while schools from the SEC make it harder for the NCAA to come on their campuses than flushing out bin Laden. We said, “Sure talk to our players, check out their emails, we have nothing to hide.” And we obviously did not properly prep those players on what to say, so some of them lied to the NCAA, the ultimate no-no.

Meanwhile, a chancellor who seemed to have the right perspective when all this started has instead fallen into “lockstep” with the athletic department and Trustees in what now looks like a growing game of dodge ball. No more documents, phone records or parking tickets flowing to the media under the Freedom of Information Act until all appeals are exhausted.

And the continued insistence that what Butch Davis didn’t know can’t hurt him.

In a recent mock case the NCAA staged for the media, it was clearly stated that “regardless of knowledge or involvement under NCAA rules, institutions are responsible for actions of staff members, student-athletes and boosters.”

So whether or not Butch Davis knew about the escapades of Marvin Austin, Robert Quinn, Greg Little and, more recently, Quinton Coples and three other players who attended a post-NFL draft party, it does not matter in the eyes of the NCAA. In the eyes of some alumni, it may be worse that Davis claims he didn’t know because that equals lack of control and oversight.

So your answer to the poll question: Is having big-time football at Carolina worth all of this . . . the crawls across the bottom of the ESPN broadcasts, the columns and blogs in the national press that have redefined the Carolina Way?

Certainly, it doesn’t seem so now.

But one last poll question: Even if the Heels were to win the ACC title, reach their first BCS bowl – maybe even make the hallowed BCS Championship game and win the whole enchilada – would this kick to our collective keisters be worth it?

How much does the reputation of dear old NCU mean to you?

Your personal poll:
·         Screw the NCAA?
·         I’m embarrassed?
·         Full disclosure?
·         Can the coach?
·         OK, if we win big?