Post-Penn State, everyone’s talking about sports culture and how we have to understand it and control it and all. The beginning of my tutorial on the subject (this whole blog can be seen as a tutorial on the subject, but let’s go with our most recent stuff) is here.

Drawing upon the growing University of North Carolina Chapel Hill academic fraud scandal (which this blog is following closely), we take our next step:

Joy Renner, [UNC] athletics committee chairwoman and associate professor and director in the Department of Allied Health Sciences, does not believe the [athletes’ academic] advisors had ill-natured intentions.

“I don’t think there was anything malicious,” Renner said. “I don’t think there was any surreptitious types of activities going on. I think it was truly people trying to help our athletes be able to compete on the field and also in the classroom.”

… The findings [of a university report on the situation] present a continued sense of secrecy coming out of the athletics department and the subcommittee’s report calls for more transparency throughout the university. Renner said that must happen if UNC is going to move forward.

“I’ve not gotten one shred of feeling of someone not being transparent or wanting to get to the bottom of this,” Renner said. “Trust me, is there anyone on this campus that doesn’t want this to go away? Things don’t go away until you get to the bottom of it, until you know what actually happened and didn’t happen.”

Confused? The report describes “a sense of secrecy” and “calls for more transparency throughout the university.”

But Renner says nothing “surreptitious” was going on.

But Renner says more transparency “must happen.”

But Renner says the advisors and professors were “truly people trying to help our athletes be able to compete on the field and also in the classroom.”

But Renner says we need to “get to the bottom of it.”

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Joy Renners abound at all sports factories; they are the joy of sports factories. Without people on the faculty, and on important committees, willing to say the shit you just read, the culture couldn’t thrive.

Joy chairs the athletics committee and so there’s a lot of press attention coming her way. UD recommends that Joy get her story straight or do the no comment thing.

Meanwhile, as we build our knowledge of university sports culture, we keep front and center the pivotal value of the useful idiot.