Discredited: The UNC Scandal and College Athletics’ Amateur Ideal

Abstract

This second book on the early twenty-first century athletic-academic scandal at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill follows that of UNC history professor Jay Smith and whistleblower Mary Willingham, who in 2015 published Cheated: The UNC Scandal, the Education of Athletes, and the Future of Big-Time College Sports. Discredited: The UNC Scandal and College Athletics’ Amateur Ideal is authored by journalist Andy Thomason, a Chapel Hill graduate, a former editor of the UNC student newspaper, and presently an assistant managing editor at the Chronicle of Higher Education. Both books focus on the fraudulent African and Afro-American studies program used to keep athletes eligible principally in the two profit-making sports, football and men's basketball.Using a variety of archival records made available since the Smith-Willingham volume, Thomason forms the book around the myth of North Carolina athletic amateurism in three acts—how the myth came about, how it unraveled, and how it came to life again. The lie of amateurism lives on, he concludes. Unfortunately, from a historical standpoint, Thomason claims that, early on, amateurism in America was a “patrician idea of the amateur sportsman who dabbled in multiple pursuits [and] was eagerly embraced” (5). That amateurism was never “eagerly embraced” in America, as has been shown by several historians, including in my own recent work, The Myth of the Amateur: A History of College Athletic Scholarships (2021). Intercollegiate athletics in America has been commercial and professional since the first contest in 1852.But when Thomason gets into recent history, he has it right with his well-researched Discredited. Thomason creates a flowing story of three principal and dishonored characters in the scandal. They include Julius Nyang'oro, head of the North Carolina African and Afro-American Studies program, Deborah Crowder, a student services manager in the program who becomes the “executive director” of the program, and Jan Boxill, who as an untenured professor of ethics displayed questionable actions in support of the “shadow curriculum” intended to keep athletes eligible.Then, along comes a disenchanted advisor for athletes, Mary Willingham, who becomes the hated whistleblower and finally reports the collusion between the athletic program, the African and Afro-American Studies curriculum, and a variety of administrators who cover up the suspect actions, which included admitting athletes with few academic credentials. Thomason offers added criticisms of Chancellor Holden Thorp and his replacement Chancellor Carol Folt. Thomason is also critical of an early investigation by former North Carolina governor Jim Martin. He fails, however, to discuss an earlier report by two of the university's deans, Jonathan Hartlyn and William Andrews. The unacknowledged Hartlyn-Andrews Report glosses over the scandal, something that Smith and Willingham reveal in their book as significant because it did not employ the words “athlete” or “student athlete,” thus benefitting North Carolina in an early NCAA investigation.Thomason, to his credit, was not sympathetic to the work of former federal prosecutor Kenneth Wainstein, who was commissioned by the university to investigate the entire episode. Wainstein questionably concluded, “We found no evidence that the higher levels of the University tried in any way to obscure the facts or the magnitude of this situation” (p. 95 of the Wainstein Report). The Wainstein Report was similar to the Penn State–commissioned Louis Freeh Report of the 2011–2012 Jerry Sandusky Scandal. Both the Penn State and North Carolina investigations contained questionable facts and interpretations of events. And instead of treating the Wainstein Report as a source of truth, Carolina officials used it strategically, casting doubts on Wainstein's investigation when it was an advantage to do so in dealing with the NCAA but accepting the report's findings in decisions about firing the university's own employees.The NCAA decided not to punish the Chapel Hill institution for fraudulent actions to keep athletes eligible for a period of about two decades. Why, Thomason might have asked. Was it because President Mark Emmert and the enforcement arm of the NCAA did not want to again break their own constitution and bylaws by punishing an institution, such with Penn State, for something not found in NCAA bylaws? Thomason states that the NCAA had broken with its own regulations when it punished Penn State by bullying or “bluffing” Penn State's president to sign a consent decree to prevent a “death” penalty (122). He concludes that the NCAA's infractions committee had ruled that Professor Jan Boxill and North Carolina had not broken any rules, and thus there would be no sanctions. Thomason also notes the hypocrisy of the Chapel Hill administrators. How could the university “deny that academic fraud occurred when it had made public statements saying it had?” (132).Thomason's volume is a good read and could be effectively used as a case study of academic-athletic malfeasance that continues to plague intercollegiate athletics.