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Fagg acknowledged that the Athletics Department had become less forthcoming with information as the reporter's questions sounded more investigative. He also acknowledged, as the story said, that the university has not monitored closely the number of athletes on wings or halls. "It's not extensively detailed because we haven't had a need to do that, because we're at 30 percent" for the overall building, he said.

State's recruiting coordinators for basketball and football would not agree to be interviewed about whether they use the College Inn as a recruiting tool. "Those people did not want to talk to them about that particular subject," said Annabelle Myers, assistant athletic director for media relations.

Head Football Coach Tom O'Brien told an N&O reporter last week that he had read the College Inn stories and had no problems or complaints. (Full disclosure here: The N&O is a contributing member of the Wolfpack Club and buys season football and basketball tickets.)

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HERE'S MY FEELING. The stories were justified. It is an unusual arrangement, worthy of newspaper inquiry, that a booster club owns a private dorm that houses lots of athletes. I want to know whether it's a jock dorm, used to recruit athletes, and whether it complies with NCAA regulations. The stories told me that.

As a taxpayer, I'm interested that an athletic booster club gets an exemption on a building used to house student athletes. (By contrast, owners of the privately owned University Towers residence hall at N.C. State and Granville Towers at UNC do pay property taxes. I wish that information had been in the story.)

But I did have problems with the way the story was handled. Perez said he "didn't see this as a gotcha story." But it sure looked like one, consuming three-fourths of the Sports front page, under a World War III headline, with a five-column picture of the College Inn. I also thought the reference to running the risk of violating NCAA rules was speculative.

Curliss said the big display was simply a matter of this being a slow season in sports -- there's not much else to put on the Sports front. He said the stories were not run deliberately on the day of the Red-White game, which irritated fans, but because that's when the package was ready to be published.

I asked Curliss whether this might be a case of aiming for one story and, when it didn't pan out, running it anyway.

"What's wrong with that?" he asked. Even if there's no wrongdoing, he said, the paper is providing a service to readers with new information on the role of sports on campus. "I view it as part of my responsibility to tell readers what these booster groups are up to."

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