OT: Roy Williams responds to McCant's allegations, predictably denies everything
Williams unsurprisingly denies every allegation.
Since sports scandal and gossip is super fun when it doesn't affect Michigan, anyone want to engage in some baseless speculation? Do you believe Williams? Do you think he's blatantly lying? Will it come back to bite him?
Discuss if it interests you...
He is lying his ass off.
is nothing new for UNC, so I don't think its unreasonable to believe that this might be the straw that breaks the camel's back. Unless Roy Williams has some kind of explanation for why McCants would make this up, he should be in some hot water.
He has two options:
1) Accept the allegations and lose his job
2) Deny and keep his job
Doesn't take a genius to figure out which one to choose 100% of the time.
it's pretty sad when the bureaucracy is so stupid that the equation is that simple and backwards.
The problem with that simple logic is that the court of public opinion is probably the opposite of that equation. It was the same way with steriods in baseball, Lance Armstrong, Tressel and extra benefits, the list goes on and on. Granted, he may keep his job for now if he denies. But, everyone outside of UNC will hate him for it and he'll probably eventually be found out after an investigation. It's so hard to hide things in todays world of the internet, smart phones, etc. Especially if others also come out to corroborate McCant's story. He's better off accepting responsibility, apologizing for it, and moving on if in fact he did it. Either way if there's any truth to it his job and legacy is done.
Do you believe Williams? Do you think he's blatantly lying? Will it come back to bite him?
No, yes, and probably not.
Sounds like a guy that didn't give a shit but still found himself on the court to me.
To be honest with ya, all of that kinda supports McCants claims to me. "Head cases" that feel that class is like prison, would be likely to need that sort of help to make it through three years at that sort of institution.
certainly not!
that's about how i see roy williams and the joke of a school that is unc. he knew, he knows, it's predictable, and i suspect easily provable. remember too you have what by most accounts is a credible whistleblower in that female tutor who initially called 'b.s.' on the alleged classes these idiots were taking.
At my university, I went to class with some athletes that should have never been in college in the first place. They somehow always ended up with low B's on most assignments. I'm talking individuals who think Courtney Upshaw speaks eloquently.
The student athlete bears some of the responsibility. If you know you're getting a phoney education and say nothing, you are complicit. It's not like he didn't know what was happening. He's indicting himself as much as anyone.
With the permission of a Dean, you can pretty much do anything. Not an exaggeration at all.
UNC got him into the NBA, even if (allegedly) he got a free ride in the classroom. Count your blessings and move on? Nope, not this time. Not sure who/what he wants to bring down and why.
Maybe he's not ok with the sanctimony and hypocrisy of the NCAA. Is that so hard to believe?
Whatever the cause, it seems like McCants and his family have had a strong dislike for Williams for some time. Most notably, his dad made this oft-quoted statement a few years ago:
"THE CURRENT COACH IS A PIECE OF (EXPLETIVE) (EXPLETIVE) AND i DON'T RECOMMEND ANYONE GET RECRUITED BY HIM HE WILL WRECK YOUR CAREER IF YOU ARE NOT AWARE OF HIS UNDERHANDED TACTIC AND INSINCERITY. BEWARE!!!!!!!" [all-caps in original]
I don't make any claim to knowing the backstory here. But the fact that just about everyone who has ever come in contact with McCants has a pretty low opinion of him is enough to provide me with some priors...
I don't feel sorry for mccants but Roy Williams is dirty piece of slime. I respect Calipari more than him, tbh.
Another of Williams' recruits (at Kansas) had only a 450 SAT score in Calif, then went to NC to take the test and got 1150, good enough for admission to the school. When the score was questioned by the educational testing company, Williams said it was because he had worked hard and shown a dramatic academic improvement. (reminsicent of McCants going from failing grades to straight A's, but even more implausible since it was an aptitude test--in fact, more reminiscent of the way Bull's star, Rose, got into Calipari's program).
Unsurprisingly, when the kid had to retake the test a third time, he scored below 650. So, he could not join Williams' program and went pro.
http://www.oregonlive.com/spor...eaches_the.html
Hasn't what most of McCants saying already been alleged (and in some cases confirmed) by what others have been saying?
To a much lesser extent this sort of thing goes on at just about every school. It's just usually not as blatant and extensive as what was going on at UNC. There are always going to be certain professors, TAs, and administrators who bend over backwards to give athletes every break possible, sometimes bending or breaking rules along the way.
In fact, the actual report of an external commission cited, at UNC cited
-serious breaches of academic integrity
-fake courses and unauthorized grading practices, which extended over a 14 year period without the university stopping them
and
-potential ties with the athletic department (AD)
They said they were not authorized to investigate many areas and urged further forensic review to see whether the AD promoted these practices to keep kids eligible .
Evidence on vocabulary tests cast serious doubt on the whether a substantial percentage of the athletes belonged at UNC in the first place. Such tests may provide only an imperfect clue regarding the actual grade level of students. But when you have enough such cases, the evidence starts to pile up. And while the exact number of such students was disputed by UNC, it far exceeded the expected admission rate of learning disabled students.
Granted, there are likely to be other serious violators, like UNC out there. There are also probably pressures at many schools to give athletes an easier time in grading. But such pressures a far cry from what seems to have gone on at UNC.
http://www.unc.edu/news/12/THE...ANEL-2_7_13.pdf
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-02-27/in -fake-classes-scandal-unc-fails-its-athletes-whist le-blower
They also feel the administrations original approach of cooperation with the NCAA was a huge error in light of the above information. At this point I don't think there is much evidence that can come out that will convince them there is/was a problem. This belief may include individuals beyond the alumni base and include members of the administration. I would not be surprised if UNC becomes more focused on a strategy of denial and obstruction moving forward.
Andrew Perrin, a sociologist at UNC and a contributor at a fairly prominent academic social science blog, wrote a few weeks ago on his experience as a member of the UNC faculty group that sought to investigate and reform academic misconduct. http://scatter.wordpress.com/2014/05/06/the-unc-athletics-scandal-in-context/
Give the post as much credence as you'd like, but it certainly appears as though the university as a whole took the scandal seriously; there have been concrete actions to improve institutional oversight, and the people in charge of the most grievous failings have been fired and in one case prosecuted. (Perrin provides a bit more detail here, focusing more on the nature of the media coverage of the scandal. As Michigan fans, we might not be surprised to see the local paper erring on the side of sensationalism in the scandal's aftermath.)
[Full disclosure: my girlfriend is a UNC grad]
"In March 2012, the NCAA hit the UNC football program with a one-year bowl ban and docked the Tar Heels 15 scholarships over three years for previously discovered improper benefits, including cash and travel accommodations. The NCAA also hammered Blake, the ousted defensive line coach, with a three-year show-cause punishment for failing to report $31,000 in outside income while he was "either employed or compensated by" a sports agent.
Another independent investigation, led by former Gov. Jim Martin, investigated irregularities in the African and Afro-American Studies department after an earlier campus probe found 54 problem classes between 2007 and 2011. Martin determined the problems in the African studies department began in 1997. "This was not an athletic scandal," Martin said. "It was an academic scandal, which is worse. But it was isolated. There was no coach that knew anything about this. They didn't need to know. That was not their job.""
Sound familiar?
"UNC’s Vice Chancellor for Communications and Public Affairs, Joel Curran, has released a statement in response to the HBO ‘Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel’ piece that aired yesterday, March 25, 2014. In that piece, two former UNC football players discussed being steered to fraudulent “paper classes” by academic counselors in the academic support program for student athletes. They also claimed that their majors and the courses for which they registered in their first semesters on campus were chosen for them by counselors. Given the broader context of the HBO presentation - reporter Bernie Goldberg focused on the way that eligibility concerns trump education at big-time sport universities – the testimony of Michael McAdoo and Bryon Bishop was damning. The players claimed, in effect, that the university did not take its educational responsibilities seriously. The powers that be cared only about keeping players on the field, at the cost of academic shortcuts.
Curran’s comment on the HBO show deserves a careful deconstruction, because in its dishonesty, it provides a useful display of the university’s long-term strategy of obfuscation and denial.
1. It cites…the politician’s tactic of claiming that embarrassing revelations represent no more than “old news” when new testimony from athletes confirms not only the existence of fake classes but that .. they were steered to fraudulent classes by athletic department personnel, ..that their courses and majors were selected through eligibility calculations rather than for educational reasons
2. It notes the university habit of citing the number of reforms already implemented and the number of reviews conducted. If each university review was so limited, so partial, so flawed, so inadequate that it required a follow-up, why bother to draw attention to this serial failure? Does Curran actually believe that (he can continue to deceive the public into believing) that UNC (is the) honest and hard-working victim of media persecution?
3. As for the reforms that have been implemented, some of them positive, critical thinkers long ago noted the paradox that UNC repeatedly claims to have fixed problems it never had.
4. .. with a classic, and perfectly typical, exercise in obfuscation, Curran notes that “the 201 first-year student-athletes enrolled in 2013 earned a collective B [2.9] through their first semester”. (His) use of aggregate figures is a transparent ploy to disguise the academic performance of the weaker students at the end of the chain…the average GPA of a UNC undergraduate is 3.2 or better; a collective 2.9 is therefore nothing to crow about…(He does not discuss the players at the heart of the issue i.e., the) twenty-five or thirty..who play in the revenue- (or profit-) sports (i.e., in FB or BB)…those most likely to be academically challenged, most likely to be subject to eligibility pressures of the sort highlighted in the HBO report, and most likely to have weighed down the aggregate GPA of the 201 students in question. (Curran’s sly obfuscation of the real issue)….tells us all we need to know about the game of misdirection that UNC-Chapel Hill has now been playing for years.
5. (Curran suggests that) those who fail to take (the quality academics that UNC) “offers” have only themselves to blame. This is hogwash. Ignoring UNC’s complicity in a system that is structurally prejudiced against athletes in the profit-sports, and stacked against any athlete who gets identified and labeled as an “eligibility” case, is the most offensive form of denial in which the university has engaged. It’s time to acknowledge the Bryon Bishops and the Michael McAdoos, it’s time to apologize to them. Dismissing them as “old news” only adds insult to injury. Surely, UNC-Chapel Hill can do better."
http://paperclassinc.com/jay-smith-counters-uncs-response-hbo-real-spor…
I don't mean to come off as a reactionary defender of UNC (I really don't have much at stake personally), but I'm not overly persuaded by the arguments layed out here. They basically attack a press release for...being a press release. It's not clear to me that the absence of scathing, public self-critique in such a communication is any evidence at all that the university hasn't taken misconduct seriously. Further arguing from the presence of multiple committees to the necessary failure of each committee also strikes me as weak, as does their attack on the use of aggregate GPAs among student athletes.
There also seems to be a lack of attention to factual detail in the piece, referring to [James] Michael McAdoo a football player. While this might be a meaningless typo, it seems congruent with a general carelessness with facts that might be characteristic of the arguing parties. The people responsible for the article, Jay Smith and Mary Willingham, were called out specifically by the sociology professor Andrew Perrin in the 2nd link I provided above http://scatter.wordpress.com/2014/04/28/media-sociology-from-the-other-side/:
"Early on in the scandal, the paper — mostly through the work of Dan Kane, who is the main journalist working on this set of stories — has developed a viewpoint that believes the University is monolithic, defensive, and evasive. This viewpoint isn’t particularly amenable to evidence; rather, it seems to structure the way Kane approaches each element of the story, assuming and expecting malfeasance. This is facilitated by the active work of Jay Smith and Mary Willingham, who are fostering that narrative and viewpoint.
I don’t believe that viewpoint is accurate; in fact, I think that the university administration has been remarkably methodical and transparent in its approach to the situation, has provided lots of information, and has been unusually open to involving faculty in the processes of investigation and reform. Despite there being ample information available on these processes, the N&O has not reported on any of that, preferring instead to focus on sensationalism. Examples include the focus on Ms. Willingham instead of investigating the substance of her claims; the recent article essentially reprinting an evidence-free claim of “bullying” by the Government Accountability Project; and a news story in yesterday’s paper about the fact that a group of retired faculty wrote an op-ed in the same paper. In each of these cases, there is no serious attempt to assess the situation."
...
"CNN has gleefully reprinted, with no skepticism whatsoever, claims that have turned out to be either factually untrue or highly questionable, such as the content of Mary Willingham’s MA thesis, the number of very-underprepared student-athletes at UNC, and the actual character of a now-famous “paper” she insinuated was a final paper that received an A- grade (it wasn’t, and it didn’t)."
Given their history of sensationalism and carelessness with factual argument, I'd at the very least treat arguments orginating with Smith and Willingham with a healthy dose of care.
The critique of UNC's response just references these, and shows how they mislead. That seems pretty reasonable to me.
Granted, the press release is just a press release. But you can also say that a news article is just a news article, an HBO show is just a TV show...and so and so on. Sure, they all have limitations.
Like you, I do not have any stake in the fate of UNC. But I do care about what seems to be happening in college athletics. Because of that, I was interested to read the original summary of the UNC investigations. It acknowleges that some real questions about UNC have not been adequately addressed.
Do I think there is a smoking gun that proves the involvement of the athletic department? Probably not yet. But I also do not believe that the BB coach knew nothing about what was going on. Also, UNC can call the claims of Willingham sensationalist. As they are presented in the press, that is probably correct. Yet the arguments of UNC that they prove nothing seems to collapse under the weight not only of documented tests but grade transcripts and testimony from multiple athletes.