The bi-weekly summer Tar Heel brings up an old, sore point.
I picked up a copy of the Daily Tar Heel, which during the summer comes out once a week and every other week is devoted almost exclusively to Carolina sports. This one has some pretty good stuff in its eight pages.
It leads off with a story about Luke Maye and his brother Cole both winning college NCAA championships last spring. It was written by Chapel Fowler, who could be related to the Charlotte Observer columnist and UNC alum, Scott Fowler, who wrote a similar story on the Maye boys recently.
It also has some hard news, like the latest response from the NCAA to UNC’s latest response, previewing the August meeting with the Committee on Infractions in Nashville. That story is interesting if the whole dad gum thing hadn’t become such a boring power struggle between the two parties.
It also has a more detailed explanation of the complicated athletic facilities renovation that I touched on in yesterday’s Sports Notebook, plus stories on the 2017-18 football and basketball teams at Carolina and an editorial chastising fans for using social media to harass recruits who don’t pick their schools. Good luck with that one.
To me, the most interesting story is the oldest one – about the Smith Center having one of the worst atmospheres for students in college basketball. Some new athletic official at UNC explained that the original donors were given lifetime seat licenses, which is only partially true. Their seat licenses were for their lifetime and the lifetime of their oldest child.
That is why more students can’t get closer to the court like at Duke, Maryland and Michigan State, three of the best arenas in the country for student involvement. The story goes over why Carolina students don’t rate preferred seating and why the lottery system leaves most kids ambivalent about attending Tar Heel games and represents an unsolvable problem until the day UNC builds a new basketball palace and those nearly 40-year old agreements become obsolete.
Yes, it is the oldest subject covered in the summer sports Tar Heel, but in my opinion still the most salient.
(Photo: The Daily Tar Heel)
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