Scouring the interwebs for some pre-weekend fodder:
** UNC System president Tom Ross has called for a four-person panel of the UNC Board of Governors to oversee the university's investigation into academic issues in the African-American Studies department. While this is not the independent investigation that the ABC crowd wants to see, but Ross said if the panel is unhappy with UNC's progress on the investigation or with the results of the State Bureau of Investigation probe, then the BOG can step in. This is also not the full-blown Poole Commission treatment that our lupine brethren are hoping for, but then again nothing short of vacating every sport's national championship (including the 1924 Helms title), carpet-bombing the entire campus, closing the university and re-opening it as Orange County Community College, and naming Todd Turner athletic director will ever suit them.
** Another interesting detail to come out of the Board of Governors meeting was the revelation that Deborah Crowder, the former AFAM administrative assistant who has been accused of being the person who facilitated some of the illict grade changes and forging of faculty signatures, is apparently romantically involved with former UNC basketball player Warren Martin. The N&O's king of "I'm not saying, I'm just saying" Dan Kane noted in the article that Crowder is friends on Facebook with a number of former UNC football and basketball players, which obviously means that she advised them which bogus classes to take, right? (It is interesting to note that the Facebook portion of the original story has been scrubbed from the story that is linked above). Crowder is the Jennifer Wiley of the AFAM case in that she is the center of much of it but has refused to talk with UNC or investigators.
** On to more pleasant news, six UNC sports programs will be recognized by the NCAA for being in the top 10 percent nationally in academic progress rate (APR). The teams honored were men's swimming, women's volleyball, women's fencing, women's cross country, women's gymnastics, and women's golf. The men's basketball team's streak of six straight years of being honored for APR was broken as a result of the transfers of the Wear twins and Some Other Kid, as transfers are heavily penalized in APR calculation. UNC was 4th in the ACC in the number of teams honored, and the ACC is the only BCS conference to have every school have at least one team make the list.
** Junior closer Michael Morin was named as a National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association first-team All-American. Morin set a school record with 19 saves and posted 55 strikeouts on the season.
** A number of Tar Heel alums will be headed to London for the Olympics. Former Tar Heels women's soccer players Heather O'Reilly and Tobin Heath will be playing on the USA side, while Meghan Klingenberg has been named as an alternate. In field hockey, Rachel Dawson, Katelyn Falgowski and Amy Tran Swensen will be playing for Team USA, and Jackie Kintzer will be an alternate.
** Finally, more evidence that the new boss is not the same as the old boss: UNC football under Larry Fedora has embraced new media and the UNC media department been creating videos to build enthusiasm for the coming season. Like Fedora himself, the videos are nothing if not intense. The Tar Heels should be fun to watch this season if this is any indication: