Why are Adam and Joe shooting themselves in the foot?

Truthfully, I like Adam Gold and Joe Ovies. I’ve been on their show several times and they have a shtick unto themselves. Not a lot of call-ins and a few too many cheap tricks. But, as they have reminded me in the past, they are the highest rated program in the Triangle for the 3-7 pm weekday time slot.

Maybe so because drive time is bumper-to-bumper with commuting sports fans, and there is no locally focused competition in PM drive. But sometimes Adam and Joe smack of too little research and too much sensationalism. That was the case again Wednesday.

With the NBA draft coming up and six local players slated for the first round, the duo spent part of their show rolling out a silly social media poll. Their proposed question made me turn off the radio, and surely other UNC listeners did the same.

Here was the question, from so far out of left field that the Green Monster at Fenway would be a bunt. Carolina fans giving back their 2005 NCAA championship for the guarantee of two more NCAA titles by whoever succeeded Roy Williams as head coach.

Huh? What does that even mean?

Why would anyone but the ABC crowd vote to give back the NCAA title in the first place? They kept calling it academic fraud, and they know there has never been any proof of that. There was no NCAA penalty and the aberrant classes never resulted in a single athlete caught cheating, which would have been a violation. The easy classes were no different than what every school offers, and some make them strictly for athletes with coaches as the teachers.

What kind of imbecilic trade is it to project two NCAA titles by future UNC teams coached by some unnamed successor? Maybe only N.C. State would take that deal, since the Wolfpack holds the record of 27 years without winning a championship of any kind.

Even in the dead of summer, this is a waste of radio time for hosts and listeners. The only people still referring to what happened at UNC as widespread academic fraud are the grossly misinformed or the highly biased, which Adam and Joe sounded like.

And, don’t they realize it’s bad for ratings, risk alienating an audience that has more Tar Heels than any other affiliation?

As one of my former radio bosses used to say: Not smart, guys.

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