Now that the NCAA has acknowledged it has no jurisdiction over the sanctioned courses offered at its more than 1,000 member institutions, it is time to defend the notion that UNC’s ongoing athletic scandal began with the late Dean Smith more than 18 years ago.
Smith believed in educational opportunity for all people. Yes, in his last 10 years as UNC’s basketball coach he did accept more recruits with academic records below the university’s baseline. He was allowed to do so because of his outstanding graduation rate of players up to that time and his assurances that these sub-standard admissions would get the help they needed to make it through four years at Carolina.
Some biased publications like the Duke Basketball Report claimed Smith wholesaled these special-exception students. Here is an excerpt from a column written by the DBR’s J.D. King in 2015, quoting several former ACC coaches whom Smith’s teams beat like a drum:
“They (UNC) took the most exceptions the last few years of Dean Smith’s career, they took the most exceptions of any school in the ACC. Meaning kids that would not normally get accepted into the university, that were accepted to the university to play sports. I remember one year at Carolina they had five exceptions starting on their men’s basketball team. So they were taking guys with very low level qualifications and then they would keep them eligible. By putting them in these courses. So if a guy was close to not being eligible and his GPA was a 1.8 he would then take a couple of these courses and his GPA would be up to 2.4 and then everybody took a deep breath and they did it again.”
Funny how these coaches seemed to know what was going on in other programs more than their own.
[King, whose writing is obviously pro-Duke, unfairly cited former UNC player Kevin Madden as having a sub-par SAT score; conveniently, he did not know or mention that ACC coaches who recruited two-year Duke guard Will Avery and saw his transcript said Avery could not get into to any of their schools.]
Did Smith attempt to help athletes whom he knew would struggle against UNC’s normally rigorous academics? Of course. Here is how he did it:
The relatively few athletes he helped were placed into elective courses that would be both of interest to them and less-demanding than some they were required to take in their General College curriculum the first two years. Most African-American athletes took some AFAM courses at UNC, which is logical. My recent book Game Changers recounts how the Black Student Movement’s original 23 demands delivered to Chancellor Carlyle Sitterson in 1968 included the creation of an African-American studies curriculum. Classes in black history were soon offered long before official formation of the AFAM department.
Since Smith’s roster had become at least 50 percent African-American, wasn’t it logical that many black athletes took courses in history highly relevant to them? But Smith had three rules for all of his players:
1) They had to go to class. Assistant coach Bill Guthridge was notorious for walking across campus and peeking into classrooms to check attendance. Those without excused absences were running the stairs of Carmichael Auditorium or laps at the Smith Center that afternoon, in or out of season.
2) Players had to do the work that was assigned to them.
3) They could get tutored by basketball academic advisor Burgess McSwain, who knew she could help the players but not do the work for them.
Simple. Go to class, do the work, get some legal help and complete the course. Over and over again for all of Smith’s players, who graduated at a rate of about 96 percent. Every kid who played for him from 1961 through 1997 will tell you that. If you know any, ask them.
Smith’s program has been run ever since by disciples Guthridge, Matt Doherty and Roy Williams, and they all followed most of the tenets and procedures established by their mentor. Go to class, do the work, get a grade and, eventually, graduate.
Smith bristled at the notion that some kids who wanted to go to college did not belong there. In Smith’s mind and world, everyone who desired a chance deserved it. Even if they came from a poor educational system based in a community with sub-standard resources, Smith believed they still had the right to fulfill their potential as students and athletes.
As much as “play hard, play smart, play together and have fun,” that was the Carolina Way. Just being away from home, experiencing a new environment, making friends from different backgrounds and cultures and forming lasting relationships – not to mention the education and college degree they received – increased the odds they would go on to lead successful and productive lives.
I can fill five more paragraphs of this column listing the names of basketball players at Carolina, athletes at UNC and college graduates across the country for whom that is true. Besides fielding the best team he could each season, within the boundaries he set for himself and his program, it was the mission of Dean Smith.
And it was a mission that made Smith far more than a basketball coach.
Art,
“Everyone does it” .. you emailed me in reply to our discussion about UNC’s impermissible benefit / “fake” classes which put every other NCAA member institution at a competitive disadvantage.
You also note that half of the student athletes compromising the “over 50%” of all enrollments in the “fake” classes, were no longer eligible or had no remaining eligibility. However, these ineligible students and their “fake” classes, GPA and graduation are factored into the school’s APR which determines the eligibility of each sport’s participation in post-season playoffs (ie; College Football Playoffs & Bowls, plus NCAA Basketball Tourney and College World Series).
And, ALL of the 3,100 fraudulent enrollments in UNC’s “fake” classes, each represent a violation of UNC’s Honor Code.
As for Dean Smith, John Swofford and Mack Brown …. They readily availed themselves of UNC’s generous academic exception admissions policy. Each year UNC admits somewhere between 20 and 30 student athlete “star” recruits (primarily Football, Men’s and Women’s basketball and occasionally a soccer or baseball recruit or from other “olympic” / non revenue sports).
In any given year, these “stars” who will someday compromise UNC football’s entire defensive unit- plus a few “athlete” players; the entire starting five of next years mens’ basketball team; and most of the starters for the womens b-ball team. These student are admitted, even with poor ACT/ SAT scores, after committee review and despite being woefully under prepared for college academics. These are the same players who become very high draft picks in the NFL and the NBA if they can remain eligible until their junior or senior season.
But, even before arriving at school in the fall, the first-year student-athlete is assigned a course schedule which often included the “fake’ classes including upper level AFAM courses. (See UNC letters to Women’s Basketball’s entering freshman (N&O FOIA Documents). The student athletes are assigned to academic counselors, advisers and tutors. Additionally the Football or Basketball team has a faculty adviser, the position coach, additional tutoring, study hall monitors, classroom monitors and teaching assistants to monitor each student-athlete’s academic progress and NCAA eligibility. Reports, feedback and attendance records are furnished to coaches and staff on a weekly basis. These “star” student-athletes are more heavily supervised than most inmates.
And, … These special admissions – future sports stars were the main beneficiaries of the “fake” classes, and represented a very skewed proportion of the 3100 enrollments (student athletes only comprised 4% of the total student body). Over the next couple of seasons these “special admit” “stars” would appear in countless reports from staff decrying their lack of interest in academics, their unpreparedness, their inability to focus in study hall, their restlessness in class – when they even attend any class held on campus!
These student-athletes were shunted by tutors and advisors into the ‘fake” classes and eventually into “fraudulent no-show classes as described in the Wainstein Report because there was no other way to keep the student-athlete in school – and NCAA eligible.
That UNC seems to think calling it an academic scandal is preferable to calling it an athletic scandal still baffles me.
It’s such a shame that McCants felt the need to lie about everything – we all know he did the work assigned to him in order to make Dean’s List!
When did NCAA acknowledge they have no jurisdiction over sanctioned courses at member institutions?
Dean Smith was a great man. I had the privilege of service on a board with him after his retirement. He was a man with unquestionable integrity.
I refuse to get into a discussion of what (if anything) started when or by whom. There are plenty of people who know more about that subject than I to debate. I will only ask this question: An overall graduation rate of 96% is unheard of at most every university in the nation (it would outpace University of Pennsylvania, Georgetown, Johns Hopkins, Tufts, and Cornell based on data from the Open Education Database [oedb.org]).
Are we really expected to believe that these numbers are legitimate, and that everything was above-board? If so, please explain how a 100% graduation rate for 36 years is more believable than systemic and systematic academic malfeasance in Chapel Hill.
It’s a question that doesn’t seem to be asked, and if asked, has certainly not been answered.