The local media organizations, which previously brought lawsuits against UNC to gain access to various records associated with the NCAA investigation into Tar Heel football, have now set their sights on former coach Butch Davis subpoenaing his much talked about personal cell phone records. As you might recall, during his tenure at UNC, Davis was issued a cell phone paid for by the university as was the case with his entire staff. Davis opted to not use that phone and instead continued to use a personal cell phone which had a 216 area code. That area code is from Ohio which means Davis probably acquired it during his stint as head coach of the Cleveland Browns. After he left the Browns he simply never changed the number for obvious reasons, the foremost being changing your phone number is a huge pain.

During the course of the NCAA investigation, the issue of Davis’ personal phone a hot topic. Since it was a personal phone, it was not open to the same public access laws the UNC issued phones were. Since UNC was not paying the bill(as far as we know) they had no access to the record of calls. Davis did eventually provide them access but the records were reviewed by outside counsel retained by UNC who then reported back. This is speculation but I am guessing UNC provided counsel with a list of numbers to check for or a period of time to look at. According to UNC the review revealed nothing out of the ordinary. UNC never had the records for review themselves nor did anyone on staff at UNC see them effectively isolating the records from any public access claims. The one bugaboo in all of this is Davis said he would release the records to the media but a few days later was fired by Chancllor Holden Thorp. In short, the way the review was handled, the fact UNC said the records were clean without showing the records and Davis getting fired shortly after he said he would released them thus stopping their release is a Golden Corral buffet for the ABC Conspiracy Monster that lives in an abandoned warehouse just off the NC State campus.

Now the media has decided to go after these records having served Davis with a subpoena. No word on if said subpoena was served to Davis in the Blue Zone on Saturday. The question now is why? Here are a few possibilities:

1. UNC engaged in a cover-up and lied about the results of the outside counsel review of the 216 records.

This is really what should worry UNC if it turns out to be true. UNC says the records were reviewed and nothing the NCAA would care about was present. The question the media is after here is whether UNC lied about it. If so, that would constitute a “big deal” to have officials of a public university lie to everyone about what was in Davis’ records. Granted this is not Watergate here but it would smack of a cover-up on UNC’s part and set off a PR firestorm that would be incredibly difficult to control. In that respect, the media is doing their job in investigating whether a school is being forthright with the taxpayers who foot the bill.

2. The story is dying and needs new life

Let’s be real. This story has been slowly moving away from the public eye since the season started. Only two more significant events will bring it to the forefront again and those only briefly. Despite Dan Kane’s best efforts, there really isn’t much left to talk about here. However, getting the Davis’ 216 records might reveal a burgeoning scandal at best and at worst gives the local media another piece or two filled with inference and implication while proving nothing.

3. The media is out to win precedent on access to public records

The media wants as much access as the law will allow them. In one sense some of these legal actions are not about UNC football nor has UNC stonewalling been about protecting the football program. Both the media and UNC have engaged in their respective sides. In this case, the media would love to get a State of North Carolina judge to rule a personal cell phone on which “state business” was conducted is subject to public records laws. Not because they care about Davis’ phone calls though that could provide something juicy. This is about getting a state official’s cell phone records or something along those line. The media is suing to expand the law and when it was against UNC, the administration was suing to reduce the scope of the law. Both are protecting their own interests and for the media there is a bigger agenda at play.

In addition to what the media is after, the other pertinent question is what does this mean for UNC and the NCAA investigation. The answer is not much as it pertains to the current proceedings. The current probe will play out on October 28th at the Committee on Infractions hearing and then the final report. What may or may not be in the 216 records will have little bearing on the current process. Could the records create future issues for UNC assuming they come to light? Possibly but it is important to remember a couple of things. First, the 216 records have been a topic of discussion for months now. Even before the notice of allegations were delivered, interested parties have had Davis’ phone records on their radar. Likewise the NCAA was also aware these records existed. All indications are, based on what UNC said in the days after Davis was fired, is the NCAA never saw the records either but UNC did a review which produced nothing out of the ordinary. From that I am assuming UNC told the NCAA the same and the NCAA chose not to pursue it further. Also factor in the fact the NCAA does indeed ask for personal cell phones. They did so in their recent action against LSU and hit an assistant coach with a one year show-cause over ethical conduct violation for not producing a personal cell phone when asked.

That leaves several possibilities: The NCAA didn’t kn0w(unlikely), didn’t care(also unlikely), did know and relied on UNC’s report(probable) or saw the records themselves and no one has said so(maybe.) My point is, the 216 records should have already been factored into the equation. That is unless the NCAA, who was willing to dig into Robert Quinn’s text messages, all of sudden decided to ignore the fact Davis was making all his phone calls on a personal cell phone. I would be surprised given how much UNC turned over and how much the NCAA looked into the principals involved that the 216 records were not fully accounted for in the investigation. If they weren’t and something does turn out to be there, then it could certainly spell additional trouble but how much? Davis has already been fired. The AD is likely going to be replaced at the end of the week by a guy named Bubba. UNC has/likely will clean house by the time the penalties come down so unless the NCAA wants to tack on LOIC for the heck of it, I think the impact here is minimal unless the records show some really egregious activity.

As for the legal issues here, this is clearly a case between Davis and the media. If UNC had no hand in paying the cell phone bills for Davis then the phone belongs to him alone and the media’s fight will be with him should he attempt to have the subpoena quashed. The media will argue that Davis conducted “state business” on his personal cell phone which makes it accessible to the public via the pubic records laws. However the phone is still privately held and under normal legal interpretation not open to such queries from the media. In June of this year, the Colorado Supreme Court held that the governor’s personal cell phone was not subject to public record requests despite state business being conducted on it. That could matter in how this case plays out or North Carolina law may have something different to say about situations like this. Then again Davis could simply release them with the personal numbers redacted which won’t satisfy the insatiable in all of this.

I do know if Davis does fight it, the NCAA and college coaches everywhere will be paying attention to the result.

As part of UNC’s First Amendment Day event on Tuesday, a panel discussion was held regarding the First Amendment, the Federal Educational Records Privacy Act (FERPA), and football reporting during the NCAA investigation. Highlights of the event were tweeted and video of the discussion is posted at the excellent site reesenews.org, UNC’s digital news project from the School of Journalism and Mass Communication. Members of the discussion panel included former football player Deunta Williams; Dr. Ruth Walden, journalism and media law professor; Jonathan Jones, senior writer and former sports editor of the Daily Tar Heel (who you should be following on Twitter @jjones9 if you aren’t already); and Dan Kane, investigative reporter for the News and Observer.

The panel discussion was lively, with Williams providing the insight of someone who has lived the NCAA unpleasantness as both a player and a target of the investigation. Jones spoke from the point of view as both a student and a reporter, and Kane added his opinions as a professional journalist. The range of discussion ran from FERPA (the reporters and the professor believed UNC, and in fact pretty much all universities, misuse the law as it was intended) to parking tickets (Jones suggested that parking tickets helped complete the puzzle and the entire room seemed to agree they were not educational records protected by FERPA) to the University restricting athlete’s Twitter accounts (a position emphatically supported by former player Williams, by the way). There was also a testy exchange between Williams and Kane, when Williams essentially said that reporters have a job to do in writing stories and selling papers and Kane countered that his job is to write and expose and not sell papers.

Williams, who has been doing solid analysis work for the Tar Heel Sports Network during this football season, also had the best line of the day in talking about Marvin Austin’s famous Club Liv tweet, wondering if the whole NCAA mess would have come about if he had put the “tenant rate” line in quotation marks and typed “Rick Ross” after it.

But the most interesting part of the panel discussion was the participation of Kane, a late-comer to the N&O’s coverage of the football investigation who has written a series of articles in the past few weeks specifically questioning issues in the Afro-American Studies department. Kane, who is billed as the paper’s investigative reporter, has been responsible for seemingly meaty stories that have turned out to be mostly gristle.

One of the issues brought up in the questioning on Tuesday was Kane’s article in August in which he raised the issue of how Marvin Austin was allowed to take an upper-level AFAM course the summer before his freshman year at UNC. Kane and the N&O somehow obtained a partial internal transcript that appeared to have been printed sometime in Austin’s sophomore year, raising significant questions about how the N&O could get access to that kind of information. On Tuesday, Kane declined to elaborate on that topic or identify the source and instead tried to shift focus from how the paper received protected student information to the questions raised on the transcript.

This article was the first of three in which Kane highlights significant issues and then is either unwilling or unable to follow through to the point of identifying actual wrongdoing on the part of UNC or its officials or professors. This is what is known as the “I’m not saying, I’m just saying” school of journalism. In this particular article, Kane sets up that AFAM seems to be a very easy course of study that caters to athletes, but is then forced to concede that it is only “a distant fourth” in popularity among majors of UNC’s football and men’s basketball teams.  He also offers comment from “a prominent critic of big-time college sports” to suggest Austin was enrolled in the 400-level AFAM class to protect his eligibility (which is a moot point anyway because as a first-semester freshman, he would have been eligible for the entire year) but offers no other proof from the partial transcript. Kane dangles the notion of easy courses for athletes and lets the reader draw a conclusion without offering specific support for his assertion.

Kane followed the Austin transcript piece with the revelation that sports agent Carl Carey was hired by AFAM department chair Julius Nyang’oro, the professor at the center of the Michael McAdoo plagiarism issue and the Austin approval for the AFAM 400-level class. Kane points out that UNC athletic officials warned off their athletes from taking Carey’s summer school class, but that doesn’t stop him from insinuating that his presence on campus was problematic. He further advances the idea that Nyang’oro’s hiring of Carey was less than above the board, but stops short of actually accusing Nyang’oro of any wrongdoing. Again, this demonstrates the “I’m not saying, I’m just saying” method of investigative reporting.

Kane’s most recent article exposed UNC’s looking into independent studies classes offered by the AFAM department. Kane notes that 20 percent of the enrollment of these courses have been football players (meaning 80 percent of them are not) and again quotes outside sources, one of which is  a five year-old New York Times article citing independent study course irregularities at Auburn. And again, after setting up statistics showing football player enrollment in these courses, seems to contradict himself by saying, “Anecdotal evidence shows the department is popular with football and men’s basketball players, but only a handful of them identify it as their major.” Anecdotal evidence? As opposed to actual evidence, Dan? And one more time, Kane offers up the idea that there is something fishy going on in the AFAM department but stops short of actually making an accusation against Nyang’oro.

And so the fine line that people in the Woodward and Bernstein division of a newspaper have to walk is exposed, as is the point Deunta Williams tried to make in the panel discussion but Dan Kane scoffed. The issues that Kane makes are legitimate ones: Who approved Austin’s enrollment in an advanced class and why? How was McAdoo’s plagiarism missed (or was intentionally overlooked)? Did Nyang’oro mislead UNC officials about the hiring of Carey? Are the directed studies classes being abused? In other words, what in the world is going on in the AFAM department? And yet we keep waiting for Kane to make an actual accusation of wrongdoing instead of just suggesting something and letting the reader draw their own conclusion.

But therein lies the rub (and Williams’ point): there would appear to be serious problems in the AFAM department at UNC, but the athletic connection to them is tangential at best, and the AFAM issues have little if anything to do with UNC’s NCAA troubles. If only 20% of the students in the directed studies classes are football players, that means 80% are not. And the fact that Austin was given a grade of B-minus in his summer school class is not an anomaly – every student in the class, athlete or not, made at least a B-minus. This is potentially a serious academic issue for UNC, but one that is not nearly as interesting if student-athletes are not involved. The fact that football players are involved sells papers, whether Kane wants to admit that or not.

The one thing in which UNC fans and alumni can take solace is that the school seems to be actively addressing the shortcomings raised by the NCAA investigation and the subsequent Honor Court and AFAM issues. But with so much out there regarding the football mess, it’s time for Dan Kane to stop with the insinuations and actually make an accusation against Nyang’oro or UNC.

If you will recall last week the N&O’s Dan Kane examined a fragment of Marvin Austin’s academic transcript which revealed he took a 400 level class with professor Julius Nyang’oro, the same instructor who missed the Michael McAdoo plagiarism. This week’s foray into the world of Julius Nyang’oro includes him hiring a sports agent to teach a class in his department. Yes, really. Oh and it is the same agent who is suing former Heel and current St Louis Ram Robert Quinn for dropping him as an agent just as the NFL lockout ended.

Via WRAL:

“I know I got a lot, that’s really irresponsible,” Little said. “I know everybody receives parking tickets. I paid them. I paid them. They came from out of my pockets.

Little also explained the five different vehicles that were cited, but was not sure how the license plates could be so varied.

“I drove my mom’s car, dad’s car, sister’s car and I had two cars, I ended up switching, so that’s where that came from,” Little said. “But the nine license plates, that’s got me baffled too.”

Little was also quick to throw his support behind Tar Heels head coach Butch Davis, saying that he should undoubtedly keep his job, never knew of any student-athlete misdeeds and the blame lies solely on the players.

“He did nothing wrong,” Little said. “If you send your child out to the movies but he goes to a party, you don’t have control after you step out of the picture. He had nothing to do with anything that went on. It was all me and Marvin’s (Austin) ill-advised mistakes.”

Um..okay. In his defense there has never been any kind of confirmed link between Little and Jennifer Wiley however based on the information I have gotten over the past several months from reliable sources the link exists. Little says he paid the tickets out of his own pocket which means he is lying now or Wiley helped a different student athlete with their tickets. I’ll let you decide on which it is and the license plate fiasco too. Little denies he had multiple plates even though a thorough search of the parking tickets revealed the same car being ticketed with different plates on multiple occasions. Again take the denial with a grain of salt.

Little did go as far as to deflect blame for the NCAA mess away from Butch Davis and onto Marvin Austin and him. Little asserts that Davis did nothing wrong and cannot be expected keep track of all the players, especially if said players are deceptive in where/what they are doing. Truthfully most of this probe has been player action driven and while UNC needed to do a better job of monitoring things like social media, it still comes down to players making good choices.

Little’s appearance creates an interesting PR sidebar to this whole ordeal. Like Austin’s recent tweets, Little holding court with reporters creates a headache for UNC. The administration would prefer scandal news be limited to actual events like the COI hearing. It also creates potential conflict with the narrative being pressed by UNC. Those in Chapel Hill would much rather have a consistent information flow about the violations coming from either the university or the NCAA. Former players speaking to the media on its own disrupts that but it is largely unavoidable. Since these are former athletes UNC lacks the ability to control them outside Davis calling them and asking they lay low as a favor to him.  In addition there are plenty of UNC fans who think Little, Austin and anyone else involved in this mess would simply go away.

Such is the great dilemma UNC faces going forward with these players who are part of the Tar Heel football program but carry a fair amount of unwanted baggage.

UNC did not include the names of the student athletes on the list which could be an issue since the ruling stated UNC had to turn over everything. At this point it is not known if that will create a whole other legal confrontation on whether  UNC violated the judge’s order.

As for the tickets themselves, there is nothing particularly earth shattering here, mainly because we have no idea which players are tied to which vehicles and who specifically owns or bought said vehicles. There are a total of 395 citations for 11 student-athletes which comes out to around $13,000 in fines over three and a half years. That is roughly $400 per student per year or as someone pointed out cheaper than paying for a parking permit in Chapel Hill. The media will raise questions as to whether the fines were paid and who paid them, but that information(i.e. the disposition of the citations) was also held back by UNC. Others will make a huge deal over the total sum of the fines which is stupid given the length of time, the parking situation at UNC and the fact college kids rack up parking fines on a regular basis everywhere.

With the release of the records, UNC included some background information which stated, among other things that, a review of the tickets by UNC showed all the vehicles cited were registered to a “student, parent, grandparent or fellow student.” So that should be the end of it right? UNC said it was all good so we can move on to watching the Heels play baseball. Yeah, not likely. First of all, ABCers are going to scream bloody murder at the lack of evidence shown to back up the claim. The media will react much the same way but instead use correct English and some form of acceptable logic.

One question I am sure they will ask is how did UNC link the student-athlete with the car? If tickets are issued to the registered owner then how does UNC know Player A was driving the car owned by Player A’s Mother if he is not present with it? I imagine the answer to that is the car was probably registered with UNC and that is the link. Of course the real goal for the media here(save one outlet who was only interested in parking abuses at UNC) will be digging down to find out where the car came from and who paid for it. Confirming that Player A was driving a car belonging to someone on the NCAA’s list of permissible benefactors(mother, father, etc.) is only one level of clearance. The next question is whether said car was bought and paid for by someone outside the NCAA’s list. In other words did Agent X buy a car for Player A’s mother and had it registered to her thus hiding his involvement.

That will be the direction the media goes with their investigation and it is safe to assume there will not be an answer to that query any time soon. At this point I am not going to say UNC is in the clear because that is yet to be determined independently of UNC’s statement. It is not a shock that UNC reviewed all of these and confirmed the registration information which explains why it was all ready to go for the media less than 24 hours after the stay was vacated. If what UNC has said holds up then this is much ado about nothing aside from the faux outrage that will arise over sum total of the fines. If the media digs down and finds some sort of Terrell Pryor-type situation where the cars came to the players via illicit(by NCAA rules) means, then this is obviously a bigger issue. At this point here is hoping UNC’s statement is the last one we need to hear about these parking tickets.

First up, via Bobby Frasor who retweeted it and WRAL Sports Fan who posted the audio. The Pacers, as part of a promotion for the Indianapolis Marion County Public Library, had Hansbrough read the children’s classic Chicken Little for people to call in and listen to. Why? I really don’t know. Maybe there is a rash of parents in Indiana who would rather have their kids listen to a story read by a professional athlete over the phone than do it themselves. At any rate, Hansbrough dropping “turkey lurkey” is priceless not to mention his “oh my goodness” is getting close to Woody Durham territory.

Hansbrough was a good enough sport to talk with Adam Gold and Joe Ovies on 99.9 The Fan yesterday afternoon. They discussed Chicken Little and Hansbrough’s second season in the NBA. However the money part of the interview was this:

Joe Ovies: “Has Colin Cowherd invited you on his show yet?”

Hansbrough: “Who’s that?”

Smack.

For those of you who don’t know. ESPN Radio blowhard Colin Cowherd once said Tyler Hansbrough would never score more than 20 points in an NBA game and if he did, Cowherd would do his show in his underwear. Cowherd’s mistake(other than being a complete jerkwad) is underestimating a guy with Hansbrough’s work ethic. I stated when he went to the NBA that I did not know how good Hansbrough would be but I did know he would work harder than anyone else so don’t count him out.

Having sort of broken through in his second season and free of the stupidity of Jim O’Brien being his coach, Hansbrough should be setup for a solid third season in the NBA…providing there is one.

Wiederer: I heard you say a month or so back that one of the things that was eye-opening to you here is that the coaching at this level is different. How?

Barnes: In high school, I was incredibly close with my coach and we were almost always on the same page. So if I spoke up and said we need to run this, 99.9 percent of the time, we ran it. Quite simply, I had a very active voice on my high school team. And it worked out great. But then I came here and you have to learn to be submissive. Coach Williams is a Hall of Famer. He obviously knows what he’s doing and what he’s talking about. And he’s running a system that he’s been using for 22 years. So you have to learn not to be stubborn. You have to listen to the things he says and you have to accept it and you have to remind yourself that he’s been doing this longer than you’ve been alive. He knows what he’s doing. And he’s going to make me better.

Wiederer: Your high school coach in Ames, Coach (Vance) Downs always said he gave you a voice and that he saw you as sort of like an assistant coach at times. And then when you arrived here, maybe that voice wasn’t listened to as much.

Barnes: I suppose that’s true. You can ask Coach Williams about that. But it’s not as easy as it sounds. It’s all about having enough confidence in your game and then the confidence in Coach that he’ll make the right decision to put you in the position to succeed. Once you get that figured out, the game becomes a whole lot easier, knowing that he’ll take care of that part and all you have to do is go out and play hard.

Contrast that, if you will, with a certain someone who is no longer on the team.

Wiederer: Obviously you got to see the bond and the unity within this program between players and coaches from different generations. Across college basketball, that’s pretty rare. Did that catch your attention?

Barnes: It boils down to something called the Carolina Way. I learned about that on my visit and even more so this summer playing with guys like Shammond (Williams), Sean (May), Marvin (Williams), Jawad (Williams), Ty (Lawson.) You could put together any five guys that had played at different times at Carolina and they could all run the plays, they could all talk, they could all play together. That’s something you could only get being here. That’s the Carolina Way. They were correcting me on little things. ‘We do it this way here.’ It’s kind of a loyalty, a dedication, a way about themselves they all had.

Interesting to note the pickup games are about more than basketball, they are about past players instill the values of the program in the next group of Tar Heels.

Wiederer: Your future is always going to be something that people wonder about. How long are you here and things like that. When you think about that, what do you want to accomplish before it’s time to move on?

Barnes: People ask me that question all the time. Growing up, I really never thought about it. I never really thought about the process of getting from point A to point B. I just knew that I wanted to become the best basketball player that I could possibly be. I wanted to be one of those guys who you’re always going to hear about when I’m done playing. So when people ask me are you going to be here next year, are you going to be here for three years, are you leaving this spring, it doesn’t really matter. I can’t really give you a straight answer. I just want to do whatever I need to do to make myself the best basketball player I can be. Maybe at the end of the day, that means I stay here for four years. Maybe I decide to go to grad school here. You never know.

So, Barnes might leave in May or he might be here four years. Or three. Or he doesn’t now nor would I expect him to.

If you would rather reserve brain cells for this weekend when copious drinking might be required, I will summarize most of the piece written by The Daily Tar Heel’s Jonathan Jones.

Last week on senior day at NC State, the Wolfpack opted to honor Russell Wilson along with the rest of the seniors despite the fact Wilson is technically a redshirt junior and has an additional year of eligibility left. Wolfpack coach Tom O’Brien said that they missed the chance to honor RB Toney Baker last season when he had a year left and did not want to make the same mistake with Wilson. Seems perfectly logical to me and since I don’t spend too much time(read: zero time) thinking about how NCSU runs their Senior Day activities for football games, I blew it off.

Not so for Mr. Jones who decides three days before a big rivalry game would be a great time to post something so absolutely out of left field and quite frankly a little offensive that I am sure it is hanging up in the home team’s locker room at the Wendell Murphy Football Center as we speak. Jones’ argument is it was wrong for NCSU to honor Wilson. Wilson was not technically a senior and he should not be rewarded if he choose to bail out on his team and play professional baseball next season rather than use his final year of football eligibility. Jones reasons:

Senior Day is a celebration meant for seniors, not just for those who may not be around next season. Hell, if that were the case, most members of a John Calipari team would take the court before the final home game.

and

If you aren’t a senior, you shouldn’t be treated like a senior.

Allow me to anticipate a Wolfpacker’s argument: Wilson already completed his degree, so academically he’s a senior and should be congratulated for such an accomplishment.

The point of Senior Day is not to applaud student athletes for their four years in the classroom. It’s to celebrate their four years in class and on the field.

First of all, why should anyone at UNC care what NCSU does on their Senior Day?

Secondly, seriously why should any Tar Heel patron care about this or quite frankly anything that goes on at NC State, Duke, St. Aug’s etc, etc, etc. At the present time I am pretty darn sure UNC fans have much bigger concerns than whether Russell Wilson is getting an applause on Senior Day as a redshirt junior. You know that whole business about taking care of the plank in your eye before worrying about the speck of dust in your brother’s? In fact I would think The DTH has bigger concerns such as stalking honor court proceedings or joining on a lawsuit in an effort to engage in a fishing expedition of your own school in an effort to dredge up something that could be used build a flashy bombshell story. Instead The DTH is rendering opinions on things no one outside of West Raleigh gives a crap about.

As for the Jones’ argument, I would say that it fails to recognize a couple of key points. First of all, Wilson is a redshirt junior which means he has been on the football team for four years. Yes, he has only played three years but his first year he did his share of hard work and contributing to the team the way most redshirt freshman do. Secondly, the current reality of college athletics means you will have players who leave early. Now I am not in favor of honoring players for one or two years, but someone who has contributed three years and has either graduated or is about to graduate, I have less issue with honoring them. In some cases juniors get to come back and have their jerseys honored which happened for Wayne Ellington and Ty Lawson. You could argue that was potentially a better route for honoring Wilson but even then there are possibly restrictions to what you can do depending on the player. Mainly, O’Brien felt they missed the boat with Baker and did not want to do it with Wilson. It doesn’t sound like a big deal to me.

Oh, just to piece the argument even further. On Senior Day for UNC basketball, all the seniors on the team are honored. Not just the four year scholarship players but the walk-ons who may have only played one year with the varsity. Interesting that Jones’ fails to mention that UNC is in the habit of recognizing players who spent less than four years on the court while lambasting NCSU for doing the same.

This piece strikes me as utterly pointless, exceptionally inflammatory in that bulletin board material sort of way and feels just plain wrong. I am not sure what purpose it serves other than bringing UNC and NCSU fans together in a week where we would much rather hate each other as much as possible. Not only is it somewhat disrespectful to Wilson but it is making it more difficult for me to let the hate flow since I have to spend time defending a rival during the period of time I am supposed to be breathing fire at them.

Hate week ruined.

A group of local media outlets including the News & Observer, WRAL, WTVD and The Daily Tar Heel have filed a lawsuit against UNC seeking the release of records related to the NCAA investigation into UNC football.

“There is evidence here of serious violations — UNC players accepting benefits from agents and academic misconduct,” said John Drescher, executive editor of The News & Observer. “UNC has said it wants to get to the bottom of these problems in its football program. The best way to do that is to release these records.”

Among the records being sought by The N & O, are:

– Phone numbers from bills of telephones issued to and used by Richard Baddour, the UNC-CH athletics director; Butch Davis, the UNC head football coach; and, Blake, the former assistant UNC-CH coach and chief recruiter who resigned under fire amid the probe.

– Names, employment dates and salaries of all individuals employed as tutors and or mentors for UNC-CH athletes since January 2007, including any documents mentioning Jennifer Wiley, the former tutor at the center of the probe.

– Any parking tickets issued by UNC-CH to 11 players.

– Any documents or records of any investigation conducted by the university related to any misconduct by a UNC-CH football coach, any football players, any sports agents, any boosters and any academic tutors.

– And the names of individuals and organizations that provided improper benefits to any UNC football players.

University officials have maintained that many of the records being sought are private, citing federal student privacy protection laws. The N & O and other plaintiffs believe these records are public under North Carolina law, which states that records, documents and other information generated by state agencies and institutions such as UNC-CH should be — with limited exceptions — made public.

First of all, I am not buying what Drescher is selling here. His statement comes off like all the media wants to do is help UNC “get to the bottom” of the issues facing the football program as though he has the best interest of UNC at heart. Not so much. This is the media digging into the story for their own purposes. There is no altruistic impulse here. The media outlets pursuing this litigation are chasing a story and more importantly trying to boost sales and ratings depending on the medium. In other words, they want to do their own investigation, draw their own conclusions then have the NCAA confirm it whenever that report comes down. Now, I fully understand this is how it works. I am not going to begrudge the media their pursuit of a story. I happen to have a philosophical disagreement with using the public records law in this manner but that is neither here or there. The media is exercising options completely within their rights so I cannot object too strongly to people essentially doing their job.

Having said that, I would probably have no objection at all if the ongoing NCAA investigation were finished and the report made public.  Now, I am less worried about what the records might reveal than maybe I should be. The main reason is I am fairly certain the NCAA has most, if not all of the information the media is asking for here. The only odd request which may not be on the NCAA’s radar is the request to see parking tickets for 11 players. Why would the media want to see those? Because parking tickets likely include the make and model of the vehicle. That information could be proof of players driving expensive vehicles or include ownership information which could be traced to an agent, runner, possibly a booster. The concern with this item is the specificity. I doubt the media is taking a blind stab here. It is possible they know something and the parking tickets would corroborate it. As for the rest of it, I imagine the NCAA has seen all the relevant phone records, investigation materials, names of people providing improper benefits and academic support staff records. As I said, after the NCAA report comes, knock yourself out going after the records. I have made it clear I think the NCAA should be more transparent with how it decided penalties so having the details of the case to go with the findings would be very helpful, then not now while the case is still being considered.

The problem for UNC, assuming the NCAA already has most of this information, is primarily in the PR realm.  When the NCAA issues its final report, it will be a summary of items not a truckload of raw data. The information coming from the NCAA will be filtered and packaged with interpretation of what all the evidence means. That will not be the case with a raw data dump of various records. Such a large cache of information will result in varying parsings of what it all means. Context will not be considered and critics outside the media will cherry pick the most damning facts to fit their own memes. In short, the information in raw form could look worse than what the NCAA actually concludes of the same data. As for Drescher’s point that UNC releasing the information is the “only way” to deal with the violations. Not so. By fully cooperating with the NCAA, which happens to be the authoritative body with jurisdiction over the violations, UNC is addressing the issue. Releasing the information directly into the public prior to the NCAA’s final report just muddies the waters even more than they are presently.

So what happens now? No one knows for sure. UNC has been dragging their feet and stonewalling in response to these requests of this type throughout the investigation. The problem now is a lawsuit pins UNC into a corner. Holden Thorp can continue to cite privacy laws but it is difficult to shake the perception UNC is withholding information.  In that respect UNC simply looks bad for holding out. Chances are UNC is not going to win in court. FSU faced similar requests and ultimately was forced to give up the goods. The same is probably true here. UNC’s only move left is to delay as long as possible and effect some kind of release of information on as much of their own terms as they can manage. It is also possible this leads to more negotiation which might be the whole reason the lawsuit was filed.

Whatever the case, all we can do now it wait and see how it shakes out which will undoubtedly be on a Thursday.

I don’t know the ins and outs of Butch Davis’ coaching career apart from the fact that he built the University of Miami machine that seemingly stocked the NFL draft for about a half dozen years in a row. But, if there’s a better coaching job in his past I’d love to see it. Yates has been better than anyone could have ever imagined, Johnny White has come out of mothballs to more than cover for the early suspensions of Shaun Draughn and Ryan Houston, Bruce Carter and Quinton Coples have been monsters on defense and Davis has gotten plenty out of a freshman class that wasn’t supposed to be major contributors in year one.

For all that, Davis receives and deserves very high marks. However…

Despite what so many want to believe, the mounting wins don’t make it more likely that Davis will survive the NCAA frying pan. Nine wins and a solid bowl invitation doesn’t make go away the fact that your hand-picked Associate Head Coach and Recruiting Coordinator was waist-deep in an unethical financial relationship with an NFL agent. Potentially challenging for the Coastal Division title and a berth in the conference championship game doesn’t change that the NCAA’s hung a shingle in Chapel Hill as they conduct an investigation that could be 18-months from conclusion. Rallying from an 0-2 start is great but, the people that will make the call on the status of Butch Davis — and potentially, Athletic Director Dick Baddour — aren’t interested in the recruiting bump from the Chick-fil-A Bowl.

I don’t know what is going to happen when this season comes to an end. I’ve heard all sorts of crazy rumors. I’ve heard that Davis and Baddour will both be fired for having this happen under their watch. I’ve heard that everyone is sold on Butch being the right man to see this clean-up job through and he has the 100% support of the entire university community. I’ve even heard that Carl Torbush and John Bunting will be fired again, just as a diversionary tactic. Truthfully, the rumor mill is almost overheating from the activity.

However, the one thing that I’m absolutely certain of is that the decision to maintain status quo or cut Davis loose will have nothing to do with the win-loss record and everything to do with whether or not the Board of Trustees feels comfortable holding on to a regime under which NCAA sanctions were levied. Make no mistake, there will be NCAA-related penalties. Still, for many, the decision is not an easy one. In spite of the potential punishment, and whatever blame should be assigned to the head coach, Davis has brought name-recognition and legitimacy to the UNC program that others didn’t – at least since Mack Brown’s departure for Texas. However, the scale will be tipped one way or another based on just how much value the university places on its reputation as a school at which these types of things don’t happen. If North Carolina chooses to hold on to Davis, they would be saying that The Big Time rates higher on the pecking order than The Carolina Way. My sense is that the people who make those decisions will have a hard time forfeiting that reputation.

There is this notion among a segment of Tar Heel fans that victories will somehow trump UNC doing whatever it needs to do with Davis in response to NCAA violations. These are the same fans who for some reason think the NCAA violations are happening in a vacuum and will not slow down the momentum Davis has built, that the direction of the program is fine, recruiting will keep rolling and a year from now everything will be a-okay. As I have stated many times before, I am not sure how that is supposed to work nor can I grasp how anyone expects the Board of Trustees, Holden Thorp or anyone else to give Davis a pass if major NCAA sanctions fall even if Davis is determined not to have known anything. As Gold points out, Davis hired John Blake and whatever happens with Blake is going to be the real show here. The reputation of the university means someone is going to die, figuratively speaking. While Blake was a nice sacrifice, I am not sure it was enough. As Doc pointed out, this is as much about conventional wisdom as anything else and the UNC administrators do not strike me as the kind of people who regularly buck that.