I am pleased this morning that finally some adults stepped forward in Chapel Hill yesterday, albeit the timing could have been better, but at least the adults stood up and did the right thing. Yes, the best time would have right after the season was over last year since the players in the football team will be needlessly punished due to waiting until now to fire Coach Davis. The problems with the management of the football program goes right to the head of the program and that means Butch Davis. Does not matter if he participated in or even knew of any of the problems, but at $2 million dollars annually you should know. As they say when the train jumps the track, people only are interested in who was running the train at the time, Butch was running the train.
However this goes deeper than Butch Davis and the football program. This is a problem we have nationwide now, where end results are more important than doing things the correct way and not the politically correct way. We are teaching a generation of young people that it is ok to cheat, lie, steal, etc if the results in the end produce what we wanted all along. I expect some of this change at Carolina started in the grass roots so to speak when the professional school graduates and other graduates told the people in charge that the institutional ACCEPTANCE of wrongdoing at Carolina was tarnishing their hard earned degrees and reputations that they went to school at the University of North Carolina for in the first place. Like it or not, having a degree from UNC is much better in the marketplace than having a degree from NC State, East Carolina, and most other schools in this state. I expect some of the comments to the leaders of the university went something like this, "if you guys do not do something about the football program problems the advantage I got from going to UNC means I just have soon had gone to State or ECU" or you name the school. Trust me there is a reason that UNC and Duke or intense rivals unlike any other athletic programs in the state, they are considered the top ACADEMIC schools in the state. Besides the 100 or so people who participate in the football program there are hundreds of thousands of people who graduated from UNC and those graduates and their contributions to society are more important than any win on the football field.
As I opined in an earlier posting there are those who live and breathe this sports fan stuff and that is also the problem. Winning is nice, but it does not feed or cloth you, it does not change or effect the most important things in life. If you think colleges and universities are for football teams my friend it is time for you to realign your priorities. It is a Saturday event and that is it.
Fortunately as I mentioned above the adults have again taken charge in Chapel Hill and are looking after the students there above all again. I am also happy that John Swofford stood up this week as well and made similar comments towards leading the ACC that way again. Duke University made the decision years ago to place academics before football and their graduates are accorded high respect due to that decision. North Carolina officials made the same decision yesterday to keep the respect they have earned over the years. Maybe, just maybe we are finally moving in the right direction. Now are the adults in Raleigh, Greenville, and other schools in this state listening and will begin to put the athletic programs there in the proper perspective as well? If they are then the hopes that William Friday of academic excellence at all our state schools, both public and private, will become a reality. Who knows maybe we can find some adults in Washington DC as well:)
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