Unexpected Carolina sports weekend

The Dec. 9-11 weekend was unexpectedly phenomenal on three athletic fronts that had almost nothing to do with the Carolina victory over Long Beach State Saturday evening.

My fiancee and my friend Daniel's wife, Kathryn, lured him and me to Franklin Street at 10 a.m. Saturday for the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Holiday Parade. We both resisted at first but caved when we discovered the other had received as much pressure to attend.

"I'll go if J.D. goes," Daniel reportedly said. I had not been out of bed for 20 minutes by the time we accidentally set our lawn chairs next to a dozen children who could barely walk.

The parade was surprisingly enjoyable despite boasting roughly three too many martial arts groups for elementary and middle school children. The RE/MAX float's hot air balloon flame nearly ignited a crosswalk stoplight. The Orange County Jammers Senior Cheerleading Group was a nice surprise.

But my favorite moment came from a trailer full of adolescent girls who signed Christmas carols for the deaf while a musical pickup truck towed them along. The driver either struggled with a sticky accelerator pedal or exercised a sharp sense of humor when he suddenly jolted the truck and trailer forward. The girls lurched for an overhead bar to stay on board. They smiled after a few tense seconds, released their grips and began to cautiously sign what was left of "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" with noticeably less excitement.

"There goes Roy," Daniel said just as the parade ended. I spun around in time to see Carolina head basketball coach Roy Williams walk into Chapel Hill Sportswear.

We nervously stood on the sidewalk for a few minutes while we deliberated what to do. Of course we followed him. The receptionist informed me that Roy was upstairs. When we were halfway up the steps, Roy began his descent with a little boy. We were unsure of what to say and whether we should awkwardly continue our climb. Kathryn broke the ice.

"Is he yours?" she asked.

"He's mine all right," he said, patting the big-eyed kid on the head. We smiled and walked up the rest of the stairs. Roy led the Heels to victory over Long Beach State that night after trailing by five at intermission.

The Carolina men's soccer team won its second national championship against in-state rival Charlotte the next evening. Before the game began, I read a national sports story that was most uniquely relevant to me.

Former Carolina quarterback T.J. Yates led his Houston Texans on a fourth-quarter comeback to defeat the Cincinnati Bengals and clinch the franchise's first playoff berth with a last-second pass to wide receiver Kevin Walter, an alumnus of my alma mater Libertyville High School. Yates has been unexpectedly under center for nearly three games after the starter and backup went down with long-term injuries. The media seemed to write off the Texans, but Yates has proved them wrong with an unblemished record. Yates is the first ever Tar Heel to be a starting quarterback in the NFL. I was eager to spread the news to my friends until I realized that nobody in the world could appreciate the news as much as I did.

Go Heels. Go 'Cats.

The doctor and the accountant

My friend Ryan is a doctor. He is also a brother, but I rarely see him in this role since he and his only sibling, Chris, live many miles apart. Each time I see them together I am struck by their similarities: tall, athletic, intelligent, talented, polite, humble and kind. They both seem to be the first to listen and the last to speak with confident, knowing voices. They treat each other with at least as much respect as they treat their friends.

Years ago I was walking with the two of them and a friend to downtown Chapel Hill. I must have been focused on the friend because I remember turning back to the brothers and finding them tangled like rabid shoelaces on the ground. The other friend and I halted to gauge the circumstances of the bizarre image. They threw no punches and said no words. They were not upset, but they grunted every few seconds like Greco-Roman wrestlers as they rolled along the paved road, over the curb and onto the grass. With their knees settled on something soft, they gave each other a long moment of rest until Ryan lunged for a temporary advantage. They continued like this for another four minutes until they rumbled dangerously close to the hood of an unknown parked car. They separated without a word to each other and seemed indifferent to the reactions of their company. They were hypnotized.

"I don't have a brother," I stammered.

After a few minutes of limping off their nicks and brushing off the dirt, they explained that they wrestled on a near-regular basis without any provocation. Their simple explanation was wholly consistent with their honest personalities. I did not press with questions.

Ryan returned to Chapel Hill this weekend from his medical residency in Brooklyn for the Carolina-Louisville game, and his brother did the same from his accounting job in Charlotte. We partied enough Friday night to postpone the tailgate until after the noon game. We cooked hot dogs, burgers and sausages and drank home brews while we listened to Wake Forest upset Florida State on my car radio, which fell silent after the game ended. I checked to see if my battery was dead. It was. I called AAA, and we began an hour-long wait. Ryan took a trip to the dormitory bathroom. We found a flying disc in my trunk and threw it around.

"I wonder if I can hit Ryan from here," Chris said as he eyed Ryan's return from 240 feet away. He threw a wide-arcing backhand toss that flew for at least five seconds before plunking an unsuspecting Ryan, whose eyes were directed downward at a set of stairs, square in the stomach. Ryan picked up the disc and ran at Chris. Had I known what would happen for the next five minutes, I would have begun recording immediately. I got the hint minutes later when I saw the two tangled again in the mulch beside the parking lot. Ryan freed a hand to grab a littered, plastic salad tray with lettuce and tomatoes, dumped it on top of Chris, and whopped him on the head with it until it snapped into pieces. An elder fellow tailgater walked by with a concerned look.

"They're brothers," I said. "One's a doctor. The other is an accountant. They'll work it out."

He nodded. I will embed the rest of the skirmish below.

Needles and courage

I used to be afraid of needles. Actually I was afraid of something more specific: blood leaving my arm through a needle. I warned all my pediatric nurses that I experienced an inexplicable light-headed reaction seconds after they drew a few milliliters of blood from my arm. I also told them I could handle shots, which was the truth, in case they thought I was a wimpy ass kid they could complain about at lunch time.

"But you seem so calm," they each said, laughing to themselves. Then they drew the blood, sometimes without reclining the chair or putting up my feet, and it was lights out. I typically spent the next 15 to 45 minutes wrapped in a fleece blanket and hung upside down in a dark room while a nurse practitioner held a Capri-Sun to my lips. Then my mom and I walked on eggshells to the family minivan in oppressive heat. Sometimes I stopped halfway to lower my head and burned my palms on the hot blacktop pavement. I returned home dazed, punctured and burned. At least that is how I remember those episodes. I could have made a dozen bucks each time if the law allowed for petty pediatric malpractice. But I wouldn't have if it did. As bad as I felt for myself, I felt almost as bad for the nurses.

My mom told me I inherited my fear from her. I cannot remember seeing my mom have any similar problems, but I doubt I was with her when she might have had them. I told her that I was not afraid and that what happened to me was a knee-jerk reaction. But she insisted I was afraid.

Decades later, or admittedly a few years later, my mom tackled chemotherapy and multiple bone marrow biopsies, accomplishments that I am embarrassed to write in only one independent clause. But that was sort of how she did it: quickly and with grace. She asked a lot of questions and requested plenty of drugs that might have lessened the pain, but I don't remember any complaints. And the drugs did not lessen the accomplishment because fear is always justified.

"I love my doctors," she would say after she was alert enough to lift her head off my shoulder. "I couldn't feel a thing." My high school teammates who used to brag about trying to drink a gallon of milk in one hour would have described my mom with a word: gritty.

My mom received dozens of blood transfusions before her stem cell transplant last October, so my fiancee and I met at the Dean Dome one summer evening to donate at the UNC blood drive. I was less afraid than I was years before only because my mom seemed to handle things a hundred times worse with ease. I should have been more worried for myself.

I shook like a leaf and sweated like a pig for an uncomfortable hour-long donation. My body temperature seemed to rise, fall, and rise again in mere minutes. The pain of the needle was only slight as always, but my body still winced at the drawing of blood. The nurses explained that I neither drank enough water nor ate enough food. I explained I was just a wimpy ass kid. I continued to shake in the canteen afterward, but I was happy. I could not wait to tell my mom what we did. She was surprised and concerned for my health. The sick caring for the healthy must be nearly exclusively human, and it showed me, like many other things did that long summer, that my mom was still my mom.

Needless to say, the American Red Cross was not eager to have me back and neglected to call me for a year. But late last June, a bit more than a year after I watched donated blood from anonymous strangers keep my mom going on her way to her transplant, they called me to ask whether I would donate again.

If only you knew I used to hang like a bat in pediatric storage closets, I thought to myself. "Sure."

And so I drove to Durham on July 6 to donate again. I drank so much water that I had to stop at a gas station on Durham-Chapel Hill Boulevard to take the longest pee of my life. I ate so much food that, well, you can imagine. I farted razorblades.

It was worth it. My donation lasted eight minutes, and I did not feel anything but a brief needle prick. I contained my stupid pride in the canteen while I flipped through the future appointments book and made small talk with other bandaged North Carolinians. They gave me a free T-shirt as a trophy. I called my mom.

Today I returned for my third donation and quickly learned that a nurse in training would administer for me. I knew I had to give more this time. I told her I preferred to use my left arm, but she quietly asked me if she could use the big vein in my right instead. I consented. She asked a billion questions of her supervisors and told me she was nervous. She tightened my arm band, loosened it, tightened it, took it completely off and put it on again. She taped a plastic tube to my wrist and told me I was hairy. She poked a slow poke. She and her colleagues decided to forgo the needle guard for reasons I was unwilling to see. I must have grimaced.

"Are you OK, sir?" she asked as much for the nurses breathing down her neck as for me.

"I'm fine," I said as convincingly as possible. She was a momentary model of my mother. Deliberate, nervous, poised, transparent. Steadfast. I called my mom.

"I donated blood again," I said.

"What?" she blurted. "Are you OK? Are you driving? I would have come to get you."

"I'm fine, Mom," I said.

"Next time I'm going with you," she said.

I thought that was a great idea.

Quinton Coples makes public statement on sack lunches

I was browsing Carolina football news this afternoon when TarHeelBlue.com hosted a public chat room with star defensive end Quinton Coples. The room had been going for awhile, so I wrote my question with speed and failed precision. My contribution to the transcript is below.
  
Me: Which do you like better: eating a sack lunch or giving one? Or both? 
QC: Sacking someone. It's a different feeling.

Slamming a grown man on his face with a jolt to the lower spine and eating bologna and cheese on wheat are different as Coples described. Of course spicy brown mustard with avocado can narrow the gap. Given some grapes, an apple and cookies for the hungrier of days, and the two approach equivalency.

But Coples did not reveal such a thought with his decisive answer. The guy might eat four gourmet buffets each day at the Loudermilk Center for Excellence. Would he stir to the sound of a crumpling brown paper bag or the sight of delicately sealed homemade sandwiches? Evidently not. 

Nom nom nom nom nom.

The tortoise and the hare race at last

Years ago my friend Daniel told me he could beat me in a 40-yard sprint. His assertion surprised most people for reasons I have already written, so I will be brief in describing them again.

In 2001 Daniel was a South Davidson High School all-conference offensive lineman, a distinction that typecast him to me as a strong athlete who lacked finesse and speed. His commitment to exercise peaked in his college years, but his confidence waned when he fell out of a water polo inner tube and failed to remount for the remaining seven minutes of the match while both teams watched with awkward intensity. Months later he missed four consecutive uncontested layups in as many seconds in an intramural basketball game before I ended his misery. These insufficient motor skills surfaced again many years after college when we played basketball for the second time.

"I don't think I've ever seen him jump off one foot," I said.

"I think he figures he has two feet and might as well use them both each time," a friend reasoned.

We planned to race a couple years ago the night before the Carolina football season opener, but I could not show for a reason I cannot remember. My absence tilted the odds in his favor.

"Daniel will win," many of my friends said. Over the last two years I let them say what they wanted while I enjoyed fast food, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and beer. I liked the competitive banter and thought racing would end it with a decisive win. I finally agreed to race tonight on the eve of the 2011 football season.

"Will you train?" a friend asked me a week ago.

"Not gonna train," I said. "Gonna win."

The banter will continue at the football tailgate tomorrow. No, I did not exactly lose, but I certainly did not win. And all of you who thought I would miss work next Tuesday with two strained hamstrings, know that my legs are fine. I ought to thank Daniel for that.

Daniel announced he would execute an "active warm-up" alongside my knee touches before the race and pranced around Hooker Field like a ballerina, swiftly thrusting his knees to his chest before extending his toes into graceful, soft-landing leaps. The sight was as memorable as the inner tube incident but without an ounce of self consciousness. I watched dumbly with my unused camera in hand and strained to reach past my knees.

Daniel wanted to win and look foolish before doing it. I wanted to win and look foolish after doing it. I am glad I forgot to buy the cigar.

We naturally tried again. Please note Daniel's post-race trot.

Half Dome hike at Yosemite

My girlfriend and I spent three days with her father and brother in a camper in the Sierra Nevada mountains near Mammoth, Calif. Her father is an experienced outdoorsman who asked us to pick our activities upon arrival. We hiked to the modest waterfall near our campsite, visited a vacant bear den, watched a couple movies, drove to the many mile-high lakes and more impressive falls, observed a boiling hot creek from an elevated cliff and hiked into the snowy-bottomed San Andreas fault and one of its dark caves.

All this sounds post-your-pictures worthy, but none of it compared to what we barely accomplished on our last full day in the Sierras.

"We could hike Half Dome at Yosemite," her dad suggested on our first day in the mountains. "But I'm not going to lie to you; it's an intense, 12-to-14 hour hike."

My girlfriend and I glanced at each other for less than a second. "Sure."

I had never heard of Half Dome since it is a continent away from where I live, so I judged it as easy. It was not even a whole dome by name. I should have researched Half Dome on my phone after my blind consent for reasons you will learn. Here are two of the least compelling reasons: The Half Dome hike is 8.6 miles one-way with a 4,800-foot ascent.

"We'll have to get rolling at 5 a.m." he said. We did exactly that 36 hours later. The truck ride to the hike's launching point lasted a bit more than two hours. We slept most of the way.

The first part of the hike was a steep, paved trail along a whitewater. My girlfriend struggled with altitude after a matter of minutes. I was worried. We stopped for a snack break at a bathroom with running water and drinking fountains. Energized and optimistic, we chose to start on a set of mountain switchbacks instead of taking the shorter but steeper Mist Trail, a path that sprayed mist onto hikers from the majestic Vernal and Nevada Falls.

Park officials had posted sad reminders of three hikers' deaths from one week earlier around the bathrooms. The hikers took the Mist Trail and swam between the two falls in the Merced River, which had unusually dangerous currents because of extensive winter snowfall. They went over Vernal Fall.

Despite our more distant approach to the top of the higher Nevada Fall, we still got a great view at the end of several switchbacks. Here is one of them.



Here is another looking down from the top of Nevada Fall.



The trail eased into a flat, sandy path after the top of the fall until we reached a sign that advised hikers on bear encounters. The bears that inhabit Yosemite and most of the 48 states are black bears, the kind you would most like to have visit your campsite. Black bears are only interested in hikers and campers for the food they carry or store. A mother black bear is also mean if you get near her cub. Besides these instances, they would rather avoid the hassle of a human encounter. Hikers are supposed to hold hands and act ferocious if they see a black bear. I was not worried about bears, but I should have been worried about something else.

The hike's incline increased until we reached the base of a rock dome just below Half Dome. Several hikers on their way down told us the smaller rock dome's stone steps were the hardest part of the hike. We were woefully behind pace to make it back to the truck with daylight, so we had to decide whether we would continue to the summit or safely retreat.

"I am not going this far without making it to the top," my girlfriend said. I agreed.

The steps themselves were not difficult for me, but I did feel afraid of height for the first time in my life. The steps were secure enough, but a dehydrated hiker could easily slip and slide down the smooth rock face for hundreds of feet on either side. My girlfriend lost her breath in the middle of this smaller dome, but we were fortunate to sit and collect ourselves for a few minutes before reaching the base of Half Dome.



Seeing the final 400-foot rock climb in a glance was more terrifying than gratifying. The summit was deemed impossible in the 1870s. Somebody must have hiked it because the park drilled two lines of poles into the rock dome and threaded parallel cables through these poles so that lay hikers could use four contact points during their ascent. Traffic between the cables always goes both ways, so hikers' lives depend on communicating with each other. Many hikers get this close only to turn around because of height, steepness and traffic. Not seeing this arrangement until I was there was a mistake.

I would have turned around like so many do, but the descending hikers insisted the cable ascent was easier than the stair climb. So up I went with my girlfriend 15 feet in front of me.

This final climb up Half Dome is squeezed on either side by a 4,800-foot drop to the Yosemite Valley floor. I wisely decided not to look and kept my eyes directed at my feet and hands. I figured I could not fall if I moved one limb at a time and avoided panic. I missed a right-hand reach for a cable but maintained my balance. I waited a few minutes to collect myself and continued to the top. I laughed at myself for thinking an hour before that I could focus on my girlfriend's progress in addition to my own.

I felt lucky to be at the top for a spectacular view but unlucky to have to go back down. Half Dome is named for the way it looks. Those who reach the summit can crawl to the edge and stare straight down to the valley nearly a mile below. I would have tried to capture that image, but either my phone or myself might have gone over the edge.



Our summit rest was short because we wanted to cover as much ground in daylight as possible. I quickly discerned that descending the Half Dome cables was almost twice as difficult as ascending them. I chose to go with my ass facing the valley floor. My girlfriend followed me in similar fashion. I thought I would warn her of cracks and other rock oddities before she reached them, but I quickly found that I needed to handle myself.

My shoes were not fit for the descent. Instead of firmly placing my toes into the rock, my shoes helplessly slid down Half Dome while my knuckles whitened with importance. My girlfriend saw this but maintained her composure for me. I rested on the two-by-fours that connected each pair of poles between each shoe slide. I prayed a little.

"Try leaning back a little and using your arms more," she suggested. Leaning back did not sound like a healthy choice, but I trusted her. I stood more perpendicular to the rock instead of leaning into it and pulled hard on the cables. My shoes stopped sliding. My fear of heights might be talking, but she might have saved my life.



The hike down the stone steps was easy. We knew we needed to hurry to use the daylight. We leapfrogged back and forth with a man and his young son who had climbed the cables ahead of us. Darkness fell when we reached the top of Nevada Fall. We waited for the man and his son to get better numbers. Using two flashlights and two headlights, our group of six followed the beaten switchback path looking for bears, cliff edges and misplaced rocks in no particular order.

We made it back with nothing worse than sore knees and blisters. The man's wife was waiting for us with SUV headlights shining. We had almost agreed that one of us would ride in the family's SUV to our truck and return to pick up the other three when the man's wife interrupted us.

"The ranger and I saw a bear walk in my headlights across the road."

So in we piled, the man's son in his lap and my girlfriend in mine. A vehicle transfer, one missed turn and two hours later, we arrived back to our camp at 4 a.m.

We are proud we hiked Half Dome. We will never hike Half Dome again.

Note: Yosemite reports that "relatively few" people have fallen from the cables and died since 1919. Most deaths occur during or after inclement weather when the rock face is wet. Californian Hayley LaFlamme fell from the cables and died on the day I started writing this post, Aug. 1, 2011, less than one week after my own Half Dome hike. Four have died on the Half Dome rock climb since 2006.

Davis should have stayed

Fact
 
UNC Chancellor Holden Thorp dismissed head football coach Butch Davis last week a mere nine days before the first day of practice. Athletic Director Dick Baddour stepped down a day later, ending a long career that would have reached retirement next summer. Hours later they announced that former UNC defensive coordinator Everett Withers would be the interim head coach for the 2011 season.

The Davis dismissal surprised almost everyone since Thorp emphasized his support of Davis last fall after news of improper benefits, academic fraud and a relationship between assistant coach John Blake and NFL agent Gary Wichard surfaced. The academic fraud involved a tutor who was under the employ of both UNC and the Davis family. Thorp explained that Davis knew nothing of any of the infractions. Both men pledged to improve the situation.

Thorp said that "what started as a purely athletic issue [had] begun to chip away at this University's reputation." Besides this, he claimed the scandal had no new developments. He also said he still believed that Davis was not involved with the infractions.

Really two significant developments occurred in the last 45 days. The NCAA released its notice of allegations, which condensed the aforementioned infractions into nine major violations. Davis did not appear in any of them. The notice did not provide any new information, but it did put everything together into one document. It was an exclamation point. The NCAA will deliver sanctions in October after UNC formally responds.

The second development was Michael McAdoo's failed lawsuit, which sought to restore his eligibility after the NCAA dismissed him from college athletics for what appeared to be help with citations in a paper. McAdoo released the paper to the public as part of the lawsuit, and a couple N.C. State fans discovered that McAdoo plagiarized his paper from the Web and another source. And this happened after high-ranking UNC officials defended McAdoo's paper as his own work. The scandal had reached beyond the athletic department to tarnish the honor system, the compliance office and others responsible for protecting the University's academic integrity.

Opinion

Public reaction to the dismissal was varied and strong. Columnists both praised and criticized the decision. Everyone agreed that Thorp's timing was awful, but some said better late than never. WRAL released Thorp's e-mail records, which showed he received support from the faculty and varied reactions from alumni. Some called for Thorp's resignation.

Thorp claimed to reach the decision on his own in recent weeks, but evidence exists to suggest otherwise. The UNC Board of Trustees played an unclear role in the decision. The BOT welcomed two new members and changed its chairman on the day Thorp dismissed Davis. Thorp met with the Board of Trustees behind closed doors before the dismissal.

This change in membership was the only reason I could see for the timing of the decision. Perhaps Thorp wanted Davis out last fall but could not remove him because the old Board would not consent. Perhaps Thorp wanted Davis to stay but could not keep him after the new Board told him he had to go. The Board and Thorp might have an agreement of forced unanimity through Thorp's lips. Thorp did not explain this if either of these theories is correct. Maybe Thorp was in charge all along.

Writers will try to show that fans hate the dismissal and alumni love it. I disagree with the latter. I do hold the academic integrity of UNC in the highest regard, and that is why the McAdoo situation was devastating to me. University officials defended a phony paper for the world to see; it was the only situation of its kind since I came to Carolina in 2003. I know McAdoo stole someone else's work and other football players cheated. This upset me too, but students cheat at every institute of higher education. The best universities have an honor system in place to handle these instances. UNC has one that needs improvement. I give credit to Thorp for recognizing this. I also recognize that educators, including myself, cannot catch every instance of cheating. But they ought to try if the case is nationally prominent and time is relatively unlimited.

This major misstep was not primarily the fault of Davis. I doubt Davis even had access to the paper. You can blame Davis only if you think he alone should have better led his players in matters off the football field. You might say he alone should have taught them about honesty and dignity. But as Everett Withers explained in his press conference, it takes a village to raise a child. And it takes a lot more to raise 100 of them. A head football coach cannot give off- and on-field direction to each player. A head football coach has to surround himself and his players with people who can collectively accomplish such a task.

Yes, Davis hired John Blake, a man who knowingly violated NCAA rules. Blake was also known as a player's coach, a man who educated young men while teaching them the game. Nobody thinks about him in this light any more because of what happened. He was perhaps a good man who did not follow the rules. He needed to go.

But Thorp said Davis did not violate any rules. His leadership was a mutually acknowledged work in progress at the end of last season. Firing him Wednesday was not only unfair to the football team; it was unfair to Davis. Whether he deserved another shot last fall is still debatable, but Thorp gave it to him and then took it away this week without evident explanation.

Expressing my opinion on this issue is not my obligation. I am an alumnus first and a fan second. My job is to support the University with my presence and money, and I will continue to do exactly that. Withers handled his press conference like he is ready for the job. I will buy an Everett Withers T-shirt if the bookstore has one to sell.

Let's not forget that September will bring football back to Chapel Hill, and football is fun. Whether you loved or hated Davis, Baddour and Thorp through the scandal's drama, you no doubt had those feelings because you loved UNC.

Get 'em, Everett. Go Heels. Win them all.

McAdoo about something

Former Carolina football player Michael McAdoo lost his reinstatement-seeking lawsuit last week after the NCAA ruled him permanently ineligible last fall for receiving improper academic assistance and benefits.

That was the lead in most North Carolina papers, but the disturbing part came in the middle paragraphs and moved up to the lead a few days later. The News and Observer nailed it with a Sunday headline: UNC honor court failed to find McAdoo's obvious plagiarism.

I thought the same thing when I read that McAdoo's paper, which the Honor Court found problematic last fall only because of a tutor's help with citations, was actually splattered with undetected plagiarism. And who discovered this? No, it was not the University nor its Honor Court, both of which had access to the paper for almost a year. McAdoo's lawyer published the offending paper in his lawsuit, and a few N.C. State fans spent the two minutes it took to understand the real scam of the paper. State fans figured it out.

The Charlotte Observer reported that free online plagiarism detectors showed McAdoo lifted 39 percent of the paper from uncredited online sources. Further, unattributed quotes from a nearly century-old book appeared throughout. I do not know McAdoo personally, but I know a few things about him. He thought he would get away with cheating. He sort of did. Then he and his lawyer published the undiscovered evidence of his plagiarism for the entire world to see. You draw your own conclusion about Michael McAdoo given these facts while I dispense my thoughts on the honor system.

I never had any direct experience with the honor system while I was a UNC undergraduate, but I was naturally curious about how it prided itself on peer judgment. I knew a couple good people, both Morehead scholars, who sat for the Court. One of them explained that cases were confidential, but I knew most of them ended with guilty verdicts. It sounded legitimate. I still wondered how high-achieving undergraduates could find the time and training to prosecute, defend and judge these numerous cases. Were they really capable and dedicated to such a significant task?

The McAdoo case might pull the curtain open to answer this and other questions. The University stated that the Honor Court does not use anti-plagiarism software, a duty reserved for professors and teaching assistants. These faculty members refer cases and evidence to the Honor Court and wash their hands. The process leaves a rickety bridge between investigation and prosecution. In fact, the Honor Court "rarely" investigates at all. The Honor Court simply presents the faculty's evidence.

The aforementioned circumstance is not specific to McAdoo's case nor the cases of other student athletes. It is true for all cases. The Observer did report one problem specific to student athletes. A faculty member wrote on a survey that the athletic department had intervened to keep a student-athlete's case out of the Honor Court. I have no words.

As an educator and proud alumnus, I take these issues to heart. A couple years ago a student cheated on one of my tests and immediately admitted that he cheated. He understood he would get a zero on the test and I would call his parents within minutes. Later that semester he appeared to cheat again, but I noticed only because I looked at his test more carefully than the others. He was displeased with me when I mentioned this to him, but colleagues defended my practice as "prudent." I agreed with them.

This nearly brings me to my big question. First, consider these facts. The Honor Court found McAdoo's paper slightly problematic last fall and dismissed him from the team for one season. UNC launched an internal athletic investigation, the most significant in its 200 years, that lasted for nine months and attracted more sustained media attention than actual football games. Most notably, UNC defended McAdoo after his dismissal by appealing the NCAA's decision. And through all of this, nobody bothered to use this thing called the World Wide Web to check the rest of the paper? Not the chancellor, the athletic director, the compliance office, the academic support staff, the Honor Court, the professor, a teaching assistant?

Nobody can fault any one person, but everyone can fault the system. I am beginning to think that we will never know most of what we want to know about the UNC football scandal.

Cheers

Tonight I came home from Linda's, my favorite bar in the world, and looked for something on Netflix to watch as I fell asleep. I found the pilot episodes of Cheers, a show I knew I ought to respect but had never paid enough attention to. Sam's rotating women, particularly Kirstie Alley, scattered my interest away from the television in my preteen years.

The opening chords of the theme song sounded better tonight than before. It might have been the beers. It might have been that my long love affair with Linda's only recently became a two-way street, a place where some of the staff knew my name as the song describes. The few who did not knew to pay attention when I addressed them by name. I go in and out of the place with a degree of informal familiarity.

It's become important these days. Life and ambition have strewn some friends up and down the coast. I already wrote about how Linda's was a good place to say good bye because it was a good place to say hello. Blah, blah, blah. What I did not write and probably failed to understand was that Linda's personifies itself as another friend who might not leave. And no, it's not about the beer, the televisions nor the proximity to campus although all those things are very nice. To be honest, I do not know what it is about. I was thankful that Cheers gave me some hints.

The second episode illustrated the first hint when a customer walked in to talk to the supposedly late Gus, a previous owner of the bar. The bartender Coach tried his best to fill Gus's absence.

Man: Get me Gus! I came all the way from Seattle just to talk to him. Gus is the man. You got troubles, you take them to Gus and he straightens you up just like that. I gotta be back in Seattle Thursday night. What am I gonna do?

Coach: Take it easy, will ya? Listen, I managed in the minors. I coached in the majors. I've been a bartender for five years. I've had my share of people with problems. Why don't you give me a try?

The flustered man explained that his son brought home a black, male fiance from school. Dim Coach was at a loss to help, so the man talked himself to the obvious solution and gave Coach all the credit. Of course these social therapy sessions were overblown in the show because the show was a show. Not even Linda's bartenders can create such a niche, but sometimes they try.

I suppose high school teachers like myself try to do the same thing. They should listen, think, advise and teach each child every day. The trouble is that they serve 20 at a time instead of one. Cheers was never too busy for this thoughtful process. Of course I have only seen the first few episodes. Maybe the Red Sox go deep in the playoffs in a later season and bring hordes of customers to Sam's counter. The Sox are in the playoffs every day at my workplace.

My adolescent clients have little tendency to tell me their problems, and it disappoints me to say I am glad they don't. Ninety percent of the girls who cry in my classroom do so for the missteps of a boy. I can't do anything with that. I doubt I even notice when a boy is upset. Cheers and my work experience suggest that emotional maturity occurs sometime after high school but before the legal drinking age. Phew.

This might be oversimplified since each high school hires counselors to do the dirty work. Teachers teach content so that students can advance their learning and, seemingly more importantly, pass state tests. This separation of duties is necessary because of the challenging clientele.

A bar does not have to teach anything nor counsel anyone. All a bar has to do to survive is be a profitable business. I know bars that profit on things besides the personal touch of good bartenders, but they are not the ones I like. I wonder if scantly watching Cheers as a child had something to do with this preference.

Something tells me I would be good at owning a bar. Years ago I thought I would be a great teacher, but that prophecy has been slow to develop. It is not yet truth. As ever, who I think I am taunts who I am with room to grow.

Making your way in the world today
takes everything you've got.
Taking a break from all your worries
sure would help a lot.
Wouldn't you like to get away?

Brew

A few of my friends started brewing their own beer late last year. I began to appreciate the number of breweries in the North Carolina Piedmont at about the same time. My girlfriend took the hint and gave me a two-gallon brewing kit for the holidays, so I brewed a modest golden lager to share with my friends.

I later learned that most home brewers use a standard five-gallon brewing kit that is compatible with local and online home brew vendors. My girlfriend tipped my mom to upgrade my brew kit for my birthday; I brewed my first five-gallon batch a couple months later. Today I enjoyed my first taste of the India pale ale with my family.

Brewing beer is cheap and easy. You can brew 45 bottles of any style of beer if you can clean and boil water. The process is only as exciting as knitting a sweater, but you get quality beer instead of the sweater at the end. Tell me if you start to brew in Durham or Chapel Hill so we can trade six packs.

Belated videos; Woody leaves post

The Carolina basketball team recovered from a down season to win the 2011 Atlantic Coast Conference regular season championship with a winner-take-all victory over the Duke Blue Devils at home. I did not write about it when it happened because it was only the beginning of March Madness; the story of the season was not complete.

I really should have written about it. My dad, sister and friends went to the game with me. It was one of the best wins I have witnessed in the Dean Dome. My dad rushed Franklin Street with us. We got there just in time to watch the cops clear the street of students, so we went to Linda's to celebrate instead. It was magical.

In more recent news, Woody Durham unexpectedly retired after 40 years at the microphone as the radio voice of the Tar Heels. Durham cited declining performance as his reason for leaving the post. His retirement press conference was a portrait of an aging man leaving the profession he loved before someone else asked him to. Some of you might remember me expressing the same sentiments about his performance without the nostalgic mercy of a lifelong Carolina fan. Those who were born here since 1971 heard his voice before they could understand speech. I understand their loss and consider it my own as well.

CBS Carolina vs. Duke highlights from March 5, 2011


Daily Tar Heel Carolina vs. Duke highlights from March 5, 2011


Carolina vs. Duke time lapse video from March 5, 2011


2010-2011 men's basketball season highlights

Woody Durham's retirement press conference

Woody Durham's greatest calls

Pictures of Carolina

Today I had a significant block of time to waste on campus, so I strolled through McCorkle Place. Not much happened, but I photographed a few things with the intent to post them here. I doubt photographs will be a lasting feature on my blog, but I want to try this once.

Scream 4 and fond memories

This post has no spoiler.

Scream 4 arrived in theaters this weekend to end the witty horror series' decade-long hiatus. I was a big fan of the films in the late 1990s because Scream was my first horror flick, one that thrilled me from beginning to end when I watched it by my 12-year-old self in a dark room. 

Most of the original film's rich and witty references escaped my young mind, so I watched it again last week, this time with friends, to prepare for the fourth installment. The original was not scary anymore, but its humor and entertainment value retained its classic status.

I might have watched Scream back in 1997 only to prepare for the theater release of Scream 2, which was a momentous occasion for those fortunate enough to have been in middle school at the time. My classmates talked about the sequel for weeks before its release. The film was rated R, but underage middle and high school students filled the sold out theater on opening night; a handful of willing parents had done the box office deed.

You can only imagine the atmosphere in a movie theater filled with such a demographic, but I can remember it. Boys shouted over the previews. Girls screamed only to attract attention. Both sexes swooned next to crushes. Students in the front stood up to carry conversations with students sitting in the back. To a child, it was historic.

All this commotion might have continued through much of the film if the opening scene was not an exact reflection of our own pandemonium. Scream 2's first unfortunate victims, Jada Pinkett and Omar Epps, attended the sneak preview of Stab, the film-within-a-film based on the events of Scream. Their fellow audience members differed from ours only in age and appearance; many of the college-aged Stab viewers wore the killer's disguise. Of course one of them was a killer who murdered Omar in the bathroom and poor Jada in the middle of the theater. That got our attention.

Scream 2 was delightful. Many critics and fans thought it had outdone the original while staying true to the story. Scream 3, the self-proclaimed finale, came out a few years later to much less acclaim and box office success.

Scream 4's limited marketing brought back some of those memories. I decided I would watch the film on opening night to capture some of that same magic from 1997. Not knowing quite what to expect, I bought two tickets the night before in case of a sellout. I figured the opening night crowd would be folks of my own age who grew up with the trilogy, but I did not want to discount the new generation of teenagers.

My girlfriend and I arrived at the theater 40 minutes ahead of the curtain to get good seats, but we were the first to arrive. Only a couple dozen adults were seated when the lights dimmed, but that was the only disappointing part. Scream 4 was a tribute to the original while staying fresh with the times, and the ending was awesome.

A family of five or six walked in 30 minutes late and sat behind us. They began to talk like they were at a rock concert. My girlfriend gave a brief glance along with a middle-aged fellow sitting directly in front of me, but the family continued to talk. Finally, the guy in front of me stood up, turned around and delivered.

"Yo! Shut up! Really!" he shouted with outstretched arms.

"Now it's a Scream movie," I whispered to my girlfriend.

The embedded YouTube video below is the Scream 2 opening scene. It contains violence and foul language.

Heels hoop it up with students; Ryan joins them

Carolina basketball players have taken to playing pick up games with Carolina students at various campus courts a week after their elimination from the NCAA tournament. The team uses Twitter to attract hundreds of student players and spectators to the afternoon games.

The Daily Tar Heel published a video feature of Tar Heels, student athletes and students alike, playing basketball at the Cobb basketball courts on the day of the national championship between Butler and Connecticut. You might say the players did it to show their appreciation for the fans; you could also say the fans went to show their appreciation for the players. This is the symbiotic relationship that represents what college athletics should be.

The games might not be big news at all schools, but they are at a Division I powerhouse like Carolina. Half the student athletes on the basketball team could make millions in the few seconds it would take to flick a pen on a dotted line. Their days are filled with college classwork but also training, practice and game film study. These guys work hard because they are competitive. Their distance from the student body is only natural. And yet, as point guard Kendall Marshall put it, the student athletes want students to interact with them and see that they are "just like them."

"This could only happen at Carolina," my mom said. Maybe. To be fair, not all Carolina teams could perfect such a community integration, but this team is different. The players enjoy each other and their peers. This season was something of a college sports eclipse.

And where better for it to happen? Carolina was the poster child for breaking NCAA rules last autumn when the football team imploded under an illegal benefits and academic integrity scandal. The fans supported the team more than ever, but this fan could not help but feel that some of the student athletes who were not allowed on the field did not return the favor.

My colleague Rachel informed me this afternoon that the basketball players would again play with students at a new campus location. I know I am somewhat removed from being a student, but I wanted to go anyway. So I did. My friend Ryan, a fourth year medical student and former junior varsity basketball player at Carolina, also wanted to meet me there.

"Will you suit up?" I asked.

"I was thinking about it," he said. "I think I will just see what is going on."

I arrived at the specified basketball court a half hour after the scheduled starting time and found nothing but two students playing a game of one-on-one. A couple pedestrians informed me that the event moved to another court while pointing at one of the backboards.

"They snapped off the rim," one said. Sure enough.

I strolled down a hill, turned a corner and saw the same scene I saw in the DTH video. Hundreds of students had gathered around the court and along the dormitory balconies to watch Kendall Marshall, Dexter Strickland, Leslie McDonald, Harrison Barnes and an unknown fifth take on varying teams in games to seven points each. As soon as each game ended, dozens of students raced to one free throw line for a chance to be one of the first five students to make a 15-footer and secure a spot on the court with the Heels.

Five sorority girls averted the selection system with screen-printed team T-shirts. After playing most of the game with a lazy zone defense, a trio of Tar Heel guards triple-team trapped one of the tiny girls in the back court. It was all over then.

"Where are John and Reggie?" I asked. A stranger pointed 20 feet to my left. They had just arrived and were appreciating the game like the rest of the crowd. I never would have noticed them if I did not ask; they were two of many.

The games entertained not because of the world class talent but because of the novelty of it all. I will remember the afternoon for the rest of my life. Afterward I imagined a Nike commercial with Michael Jordan playing one-on-one with a middle school midget. But this was better because it was real and genuine.

And I thought all this before Ryan hit his qualifying shot. He pretended to be content with watching on the sidelines but eventually threw his sweatshirt over my shoulder.

"I'm going in the next one," he said as he worked his way to the sideline for the free-throw dash. Ryan thought the previous game's seventh point was scored at least twice and looked like a maniac dashing in and out of bounds. I did not think to have my camera ready for that.

So he hit the shot, and I recorded what followed for posterity. If you don't know Ryan, he is the bespectacled guy in the white V-neck undershirt pushing an unexpected transition offense, scoring a tip in and playing the middle of a reasonably effective zone. I had no reason to worry about the student athletes sustaining injuries; Ryan will be a doctor in a month. Oh, and when he came off the court, he had something to say.

"Did you see," he said and paused to hack a few coughs, "did you see me pop a J without hesitation?"

I did, Ryan. And now so will everyone else.









Addendum: Click here for the Wall Street Journal story.