Robert Orr, a Raleigh attorney who represented UNC football players Quinton Coples and Devon Ramsay during the school's recent NCAA-related problems, said Friday that the firing of Butch Davis and hiring of Larry Fedora as head football coach would not fundamentally change the chances of similar issues cropping up at the school.
"I'm not aware of any circumstances that lessen the risk of problems occurring again," said Orr in an interview after delivering a presentation called "The NCAA and Athletes' Procedural Rights" to an audience of lawyers and academics at the Friday Center for Continuing Education.
Orr said that coaches can only affect players' behavior so much and that no matter how many rules are imposed, violations will still occur. In the UNC case, Orr said, "somebody's head had to fall, and it wasn't going to be the chancellor's, wasn't going to be anybody on the academic side. Butch Davis was the logical scapegoat."
Orr reserved his strongest criticism for the current NCAA disciplinary system, in which a school punishes athletes for infractions of NCAA rules in an effort to prevent NCAA sanctions on the school itself, calling it "broken."
Speaking of Ramsay's case, Orr said: "One of the real fallacies of the system is nobody really cares about guilt and innocence, except his mother. It's all about how quickly we can get him back on the field."
Ramsay missed all but the first four games of the 2010 season after being held out by UNC, despite eventually being found not to have committed any violations.
UNC and other universities have capable lawyers who could help defend students' rights, Orr said, but their first priority is to protect the institution from NCAA sanctions. "I hate to say schools are terrified of the NCAA, but there's a real element of truth in that," said Orr.
Orr also spoke about the imbalance in a system in which college athletes cannot make money off their own names and images, while the universities they play for can.
A former associate justice on the North Carolina Supreme Court and constitutional law expert, Orr said his association with the NCAA issues has "gotten more attention than anything else I've been involved with."
