Academic Fraud Isn’t Only Happening at UNC

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We can relay the details to you, but the News Observer does a much better job. Now we know for a fact that academic fraud was wide spread in Chapel Hill. There’s no doubt alums are embarrassed about this news. That said it would be naive to be believe that UNC is the only school where this is taking place.

Major college athletics has become such a big business that as a result the concept of a student athlete is not what it was say 30 years ago. The landscape has changed and in order to compete schools are doing what they have to do to compete. UNC is an example where they lost complete control of their clean up effort. They were used to covering basketball which is a small sample size, but football is a completely different animal. At other institutions they are doing what they can to get some of these young men by academically. If that means arms are twisted for grades so be it. You need your players to be eligible to play and until the charade the NCAA plays with academics ends don’t expect the cheating to stop.

Am I condoning what North Carolina did? Not at all. Cheating and lying are bad qualities. What the UNC case once again proves is that the real fraud is the NCAA. Let’s stop pretending most of these young men are going to school for  an education. If a degree is a byproduct of a four year cycle of feeding the beast, that’s great for the individual. But don’t let the smoke and mirrors fool you. The better the football team does, the more money the school generates and the better enrollment will likely be.

The better the enrollment, the easier it is for schools to charge more for out of state students. As those prices go up, so do salaries on campus. This ordeal at UNC is deeper than just the football team. There’s a reason why school presidents keeps hiding behind the NCAA. It masks the real scandal. High level school execs ride the gravy train with no risk. They get to shuffle around from school to school, getting paid rising salaries with many of their living expenses covered by the institution.

As more of the regular student population goes deeper into to debt just to attend as the cost of going rises, the same institutions are making a killing on the field. Will the media dig deeper to uncover an NCAA connection? There’s is almost no chance, even though this UNC story provides a great opening. Trust me, UNC isn’t the only place where these types of shenanigans are taking place. They just got sloppy and lazy. It would take an epic journalistic effort to get to the bottom of this, but most of the effort is going to go to chasing the Nevin Shapiros of the world. All the better the NCAA gets to keep the status quo and school presidents can ride around in their Bentlys.

Ari Russell
As a college sports fanatic, Ari Russell leverages 15 years of experience and irony to bring you an unrivaled experience. Ari provides unconventional insight with his in-depth college sports knowledge. He is the former Executive Producer of College Sports Programming on Sirius XM Radio.