WAY big shocker. Maybe I’m reading this wrong. You’re telling me basketball players – not just football players – at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill took bullshit classes? I mean, football, okay. But basketball? What’s next? Badminton?
Who knows why Rashad McCants suddenly felt the need to confess. Maybe he’s spent the last nine years trying to figure out how you can make Dean’s List at Chapel Hill by not attending any classes.
But see this is the thing – in the annals of crime – this is the thing that often trips people up. If his professors had simply passed McCants through with the B grade that’s considered … plausible… for athletes taking bogus courses, all would probably have been fine. But they made a mistake. They got a little cocky. They got pleasantly shitfaced together one night – his professors, his tutors, his coaches – and began giggling about how I mean you know long as it’s all made up why don’t we make him a goddamn Dean’s List student? And ever since then it’s been rankling McCants… he feels a little put-upon… because it’s one thing to pass a guy through, and another to, uh, sport with him like that…
**************
You can just hear the conversation in the president’s office this morning at UNC:
Where’s that guy who ruined Mary Willingham’s life? Get him on the phone!
**************
UD thanks Ralph for sending her this article, which includes a soon-to-be-famous statement from McCants:
“I thought it was a part of the college experience, just like watching it on a movie from ‘He Got Game’ or ‘Blue Chips… [W]hen you get to college, you don’t go to class, you don’t do nothing, you just show up and play. That’s exactly how it was, you know, and I think that was the tradition of college basketball, or college, period, any sport. You’re not there to get an education, though they tell you that… You’re there to make revenue for the college. You’re there to put fans in the seats. You’re there to bring prestige to the university by winning games.”
June 6th, 2014 at 1:59PM
Basketball at UNC Chapel Hill has historically been a far more important sport than football. They have multiple national championships in basketball, but are never really in the national championship picture when it comes to football. (When I first read about the phantom classes and so forth, I was surprised UNC went to all that trouble for football players.)
“The North Carolina Tar Heels men’s basketball program is the intercollegiate men’s basketball team of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The Tar Heels have won five NCAA Tournament Championships (1957, 1982, 1993, 2005 and 2009).:
“They have also won 17 Atlantic Coast Conference tournament titles and 29 Atlantic Coast Conference regular season titles (including an Atlantic Coast Conference record 19 outright Regular Season Championships). The program has produced many notable players who went on to play professionally, including Michael Jordan, and many assistant coaches who went on to become head coaches elsewhere.”
“The Tar Heels are currently #3 on the Division I all-time wins list. From the Tar Heels’ first season in 1910–11 through the 2012–13 season, the Tar Heels have amassed a .737 all-time winning percentage (second highest all-time), winning 2,090 games and losing 745 games in 103 seasons.”
Just sayin’…… 🙂
June 6th, 2014 at 2:22PM
Marcie: So the system has worked well for decades.
June 6th, 2014 at 10:13PM
Oh, yes — and they have the championships to prove it, not to mention Michael Jordan! One wonders what help he may have received…..