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.