College Football: NCAA Probe of UNC Is Just the Tip of the Iceberg

Things are not looking real bright for the UNC football program right about now, and that is a bad sign for college athletics

Thursday's announcement that UNC is now conducting an internal probe related to potential academic fraud just adds to the university's already troublesome summer.

In addition to several football players who have allegedly committed the academic fraud, the NCAA is still investigating players for taking inappropriate benefits from agents and former UNC players.

All early indications seem to lean toward several prominent players being deemed ineligible for the opening game against LSU.

This all comes in a time when UNC football was boasting its highest preseason ranking in a decade, as well as high expectations from the fan base and media who were predicting that they could potentially challenge for an ACC title.

The bigger story in all of this is that UNC, which has always prided itself on walking the straight and narrow and is known for its academic prowess and its clean image, now is seeing that perception taken apart.

And if it can happen at UNC, you know it is happening elsewhere. That is the most disconcerting part of this entire story. How many other programs are doing or have done the same thing?

While football has been hit and miss at schools like UNC, the NCAA has been looking into powerhouses Alabama and Florida and hit USC hard with infractions related to agents and players receiving inappropriate benefits.

And that doesn't include the academic side of things.

Football players are often seen as uneducated brutes, so it is easy to see why the perception that college football players are not going to class or not doing their own work is so prevalent amongst those who don't care for the sport.

UNC is in the spotlight but it most certainly isn't the only school where academic fraud has or may have taken place.

The problem of maintaining a winning program while maintaining academic integrity is a major challenge for most colleges and universities. UNC's arch rival Duke, for example, was once a football power in the early part of the 1900s before the faculty decided to focus less on the sport and more on academia.

Schools like Notre Dame, Northwestern, and Stanford also battle with the idea of maintaining a high academic standard for those athletes and having a winning football program.

Many schools have sacrificed that integrity for winning football and the temporary riches it brings. The easy fix is to fire the coach and things are forgiven and better.

In North Carolina's case, it would be ironic if Butch Davis lost his job when, in the early 1990s, he was brought into the University of Miami to clean up that program.

Davis is surely not alone, but those who are in the same boat now just haven't been found out. North Carolina just happened to catch the bad break of being on the receiving end of two scandals at once.

But unlike USC, which has a decades-long winning tradition and reputation as a football power, North Carolina's football program is just trying to get to that point after glimpses of it under former coach Mack Brown.

In a way, North Carolina should be commended for self-reporting the academic violations, but then again they should have kept better tabs on what the athletes were doing academically.

The alleged tutor was a babysitter for Davis so the finger will be squarely and fairly pointed at him. What did he know? What did he allow?

When you are the head coach, the buck stops with you, and Davis may find his seat, once quite comfortable, increasingly warm.

But, again, he isn't alone. How many other programs, how many other sports are sacrificing their integrity for the fame and riches of a winning program?

Kentucky basketball coach John Calipari is one of the major targets for those who feel coaches aren't focusing on the concept of student-athlete. Calipari recruited Derek Rose who was later found out to have had someone else take his SATs.

Calipari played the plausible deniability card and got off scott-free, while his former employer and Rose's former school, Memphis paid the price.

It is cases like these that come closer and closer to bringing about the death of true amateurism in college athletics today. Many feel it is already too late.

And unfortunately the NCAA seems to be doing very little but dishing out punishments instead of initiating preventative measures. The problem is there are not easy solutions, but at some point a school's coaches and athletic directors have to be willing to sacrifice winning for academic integrity.

Otherwise stop calling these kids student-athletes, as it is insulting to the real students who pay a lot of money to go to a school for an education.

Surely, if a school as proud and well respected as North Carolina can be guilty of potentially sacrificing itself for football success, so can many other institutions. And like an iceberg, it is the part you can't see that can do the most damage.