For 15 years, UNC-Chapel Hill professor Jack Evans has served as the university's faculty athletics representative, a liaison between the faculty and the athletics department.
It's a role that has come under scrutiny across American higher education as one athletics department after another is investigated for all manner of violation.
In a story in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Evans said even a university with the best of intentions can get burned.
"There's no way to vaccinate these young men and keep them safe from their own immaturity or willingness to give in to temptation," Evans told the Chronicle.
In saying this, Evans is, of course, speaking from experience. UNC-Chapel Hill is in the middle of its own football investigation now; some football players are believed to have taken improper benefits - like jewelry - from sports agents. And the university is also looking into possible academic cheating.
It's enough to keep Evans up at night.
"I'm uncomfortable with it, you bet I am. I don't like it and the AD doesn't like it, and it happened on my time," he said in the Chronicle story. "Were there warning signals along the way we failed to detect? That's the kind of topic that has had me waking up at 3 o'clock in the morning wondering what was it I didn't see. Was there something I could have spotted?"
You can read the entire story here, but you need a Chronicle of Higher Education premium content password to access it.
Comments
waste of money
Tue, 11/02/2010 - 22:38 — igliigliU?NC has been very dishonest for several decades about the funding to pay for the sports teams. Two examples are the 1.3 million yearly subsidy the Dean Dome gets from the state budget and the ever rising professional athlete fees its students are forced to pay.
Board of Trustee should do a
Tue, 11/02/2010 - 18:28 — Z1234567Board of Trustee should do a complete "Clean-house",starting with CH Thorp; AD Baddour; Butch Davis. I don't recall ever in the ACC history of such scandal. It's a disgrace to the conference. First of all, UNC fired John Bunting three years ago mid-way into the seaon. 2). UNC used ex-assisant coach as a "Scapegoat" and 3) UNC refused to provide the scandal info to NCAA.
Be real UNC folks, do you think the public should show sympathy for your school? The Lonley cried Wolves!!
Are we supposed to feel sorry for this man?
Tue, 11/02/2010 - 16:46 — topcat27606Is this supposed to illicit sympathy? Feel sorry for him or the school.? Yes you should have noticed and you probably should have been meeting with professors or the grad students who were leading the classes ( I think now we know why the people grading papers didn't care, they were students).
You were supposed to be make sure everything was on the up and up. But all you did was care about winning and it was all good on UNC campus and in the football stadium. Come on who really cares about what goes on in the class? That's for those regular people who go to Universities for an education. We're talking about football here. What is really more important. Go back to sleep you poor man and get a good night’s sleep. You did exactly what was expected of you by UNC. It’s just a shame that mean ole NCAA has gotten in the way.
UNC and sports
Tue, 11/02/2010 - 12:09 — igliigliThe sports booster clubs are destroying UNC academics. Thorp and the Trustees should solve the problem by firing all the coaches and sports teams.
waste of money
Tue, 11/02/2010 - 11:52 — outhousecatI would have liked to have been able to access more information about this story. It sounds like, from the little I was able to gather, that faculty members are spending a great deal of time going to meetings with the athletics department.
My thought is, don't these acedemic types have enough to do trying to educate people that are in college to learn? I'm trying to remember back to my college days (and I only took 3 semesters before I went to tech school, so I don't claim to be an expert), but it seems like I only saw grad students standing in front of my classrooms. I'm not certain I ever met a full professor.
If I was paying for college, I would be quite upset to find out that the money I was paying for an education was being spent on professors making sure that student athletes don't get a $10,000 piece of gawdy bling from some crooked jeweler in Florida.
Good question
Tue, 11/02/2010 - 13:15 — eferreri (author)Outhousecat: You raise a good question, so let me clarify the role of the faculty athletics representative.
The role isn't a full-time job; it's a committee assignment not unlike many other assignments faculty members involved with a university's faculty council might take on. It's an add-on to a professor's regular duties.
That said, it does require some time and energy, and in Jack's case, nights and weekends if he does indeed attend a lot of games.
But Jack does have regular duties as well, both with the business school and as director of Carolina North, the university's slow-growing research campus north of the main campus.
Hope that helps.
- Eric