Baron Adams: Not just a football problem

The academic scandal at UNC has been in the news for quite some time now. The consensus seems to have been focused more on the men’s football team. Yes, the basketball program’s participation has been reported on as well but cast in a lesser light of deviousness than that of the football program. In fact, the latest reporting is suggesting that the basketball program may escape sanctions.

In the Aug. 15 news article “It’s a tale of two UNC coaches,” there were graphs and numbers showing the total known infractions by the football and men’s basketball programs and for the women’s basketball program. For me, this data shifts the programs into entirely different lights. To my knowledge, no one has considered proportionality before.

The NCAA allows 85 scholarship players in football and 13 in men’s basketball. If we factor in this data, the rate of infractions by the UNC men’s basketball program was twice as high as that of the men’s football program in suspect independent studies enrollment and one and a half times higher for enrollment in lecture classes that didn’t really meet.

Should only the football program be sanctioned? I don’t think it would be a fair result of this long-standing scandal to put it all on Carolina’s football program. It absolutely was not.

This story was originally published September 7, 2015 at 12:23 PM.