The “everybody does it” sentiment is so widely held when it comes to academic fraud and big-time college athletics that it’s almost impossible for any individual instance to shock or even register with the national public anymore. It doesn’t matter that UNC athletes received a collective GPA of 3.61 in their “paper” classes and a 1.91 in their “real” ones; this isn’t the type of cheating that grabs attention these days. Show us some money changing hands or a star player getting caught stealing something funny from an easily mockable location. Give us something we can turn into a joke that will make our co-workers laugh.
Eventually this country will begin ranking colleges exclusively in terms of how academic their sports scandals are. The more scholarly content in the scandal, the higher the college’s academic rating.