Opinion

It’s been a crazy time here in the southern part of heaven. Like anyone else with normal human feelings, I was pretty shocked by the cold-blooded murders of Deah Barakat, Yusor Abu-Salha, and Razan Abu-Salha. By now, everyone...

The passing of Dean Smith has produced remembrances from some of America’s best national sportswriters. Below is a collection of those pieces:

Dean Edwards Smith coached his first UNC basketball team in the fall of 1961, my first year at Chapel Hill. His team eventually finished 8-9, recording Smith’s only losing season at Carolina. I flunked both French and...

My mom, a native New Yorker and not shy about voicing an acerbic opinion on any topic, jumped off the couch and pointed at our living room television screen. “There! That man there, Dean Smith! Dean Smith is the luckiest son of...

My relationship with North Carolina goes back to Dec. 13, 1966, when I covered the Tar Heels’ 64-55 victory over Kentucky in Lexington’s Memorial Coliseum. At that time, the young Carolina coach Dean Smith wasn’t far removed from the days when he was being hung in effigy on the Chapel Hill campus. I wrote a game story that complimented Carolina’s execution of Smith’s ball-control game plan – a “Picasso,” I called it – and Smith never forgot it.

I recently listened to a very fine book – A Prayer For Owen Meany by John Irving.  Irving’s signature opus was his 1978 novel The World According To Garp.  That phrase bounced around inside my head as I seized the Good Sports’...

At the core of the scandal that has brewed at UNC for the past 18 years is one question:  Can a major university advance its mission to serve as a center for scholarship, research, and creativity while attempting to achieve...