Robert Willett - rwillett@newsobserver.com
Miami's Jordan Futch, top, stops UNC's Dwight Jones on Oct. 15 at Kenan Stadium in Chapel Hill.
CHAPEL HILL -- Dwight Jones messed up. He lent his name to a promoter selling tickets to a party celebrating Jones' birthday. The party is scheduled after Jones will play his final game for North Carolina, which is fine with the NCAA. The posters touting his involvement with that event at a Burlington nightclub were not.
In the big picture, Jones' transgression was unequivocally minor. Clemson's Sammy Watkins made a similar mistake and was cleared just as quickly. The NCAA's decision to let Jones play in Monday's Independence Bowl is just and fair. And under other circumstances, Jones' error in judgment may have passed nearly unnoticed.
For the university, though, it's the latest instance of someone who either didn't know the rules or misinterpreted them, long after the NCAA had started investigating the football program.
Quinton Coples' poorly thought-out decision to attend an agent's draft party last spring was one, Chancellor Holden Thorp's misstep in publicly discussing a recruit with a reporter was another and, now, Jones' birthday bash, which added the phrase "sexxxy casual" to the Triangle sports lexicon.
"We've been through this before," North Carolina wide receiver Erik Highsmith said, with a shrug. "Y'all guys know that."
Taken by themselves, these secondary violations mean nothing. For a school awaiting the NCAA's decision on potential sanctions, they paint a picture of an athletic department and football program that continue to struggle with the basics of compliance.
This shouldn't have any impact on the NCAA's thinking when it comes to handing down sanctions for the nine major violations committed under Butch Davis' leadership, but it certainly doesn't reflect well on North Carolina. And it raises questions as to how much North Carolina has actually learned from that harrowing experience.
It's one thing for a kid to make a mistake out of poor judgment. That happens - too often at North Carolina in recent years, but it happens. Jones should have checked with someone. He didn't. It's another thing when kids are making mistakes because they don't know or don't understand the rules. That falls squarely on the compliance office.
Is there any mission more central to the University of North Carolina than teaching kids the difference between right and wrong? Why isn't that happening with the football team?
Here we are, 18 months and two full seasons after the NCAA first arrived on campus, and North Carolina football players still have to be told that it's an NCAA violation to lend their names to nightclub parties, even one held after their final football games.
If that message isn't getting through at this point, after everything the football program has endured, the players clearly aren't the only ones to blame.
"Dwight was very apologetic," outgoing interim head coach Everett Withers said. "He didn't know it was a problem and he did everything he could do to rectify the problem."
This isn't about Withers. It isn't even about Davis. It's much larger than any one person. Why is it, when it comes to football, North Carolina can't avoid trouble? That's what the NCAA should be pondering, not Jones' nightlife.
