July 1: Football player Michael McAdoo files a lawsuit against UNC-CH and the NCAA after being kicked off the team because a tutor had provided footnotes and a bibliography for a term paper. The paper turns out to have several plagiarized passages that were missed by university officials and NCAA investigators. The paper identifies Julius Nyang’oro, chairman of the African and Afro-American Studies Department, as class professor. Chancellor Holden Thorp in a subsequent interview tells The News & Observer he is not going to question Nyang’oro about the paper.

Aug. 21: A partial academic transcript for another football player, Marvin Austin, shows he took an upper level African studies class in the summer of 2007 before taking a full slate of introductory courses in the fall that included remedial writing. Austin received a B-plus in the African studies class. UNC-CH records identified Nyang’oro as the professor.

Sept. 1: Nyang’oro resigns as chairman. University officials launch an investigation into “possible irregularities” in the African studies department after The N&O requests data on independent studies and other courses in which no class is held.

Sept. 16: UNC-CH officials confirm the investigation is targeting independent studies in the department. Data released to The N&O shows that football players are accounting for more than one in five of the enrollments in those classes.

May 4: UNC-CH’s investigation finds 54 classes in the department in which there is little or no evidence of instruction. Among them are the classes McAdoo and Austin took. Nyang’oro is directly connected to 45 of the classes. The report also finds evidence of forgery and unauthorized grade changes, but law enforcement officials decline to investigate, saying there is an apparent lack of financial motive. Data later released to The N&O shows 36 percent of the enrollments are football players and another three percent are basketball players. Nyang'oro is allowed to retire.

May 10: Records requested by The N&O show Nyang’oro received $12,000 in additional pay to teach a summer class that the internal probe found to have no classroom instruction.

May 14: Orange County District Attorney Jim Woodall announces a criminal investigation in light of the summer pay, but said the probe would also look into forgery and other allegations related to the case.
 
 

CHAPEL HILL – Last season, North Carolina’s Casey Barth proved he could make the big kicks when his team needed them the most – booting, for example, a game-tyer, then game-winner, against Tennessee in the Music City Bowl.

Now, the fourth-year starter wants to prove he make the long ones, too.

Barth, a senior from Wilmington, spent the offseason working to get more distance on his kickoffs and field goals, trying to show the coaches that he can kick the latter farther his career high of 49 yards. As a result, interim head coach Everett Withers has allowed him to practice from longer distances during training camp.

The result: “I really am comfortable from 53, 54, 55 … and if my coaches aren’t yet, I hope they’re getting there,’’ Barth said.

CHAPEL HILL - North Carolina interim football coach Everett Withers declined to say this morning whether Tar Heels defensive lineman Quinton Coples would be punished by the team for a sign-out policy mistake that eventually led to the All-ACC player being interviewed by the NCAA.

Watch video of Withers' comments about Coples.

“The sign-out sheet policy is an internal policy that we have, so anything that happens will be an internal issue in how we handle it,’’ Withers said today. “As you guys all know, Quinton was cleared by the NCAA, so that issue goes away. No, what we do is handle anything internally in the family.”

Coples said he filed a sign-out sheet in May when he left campus – a policy instituted during the spring semester to track football players' whereabouts whenever they leave campus for 24 hours or more. The team instituted the policy after UNC lost Marvin Austin, Robert Quinn and Greg Little for the entire 2010 season after it was determined they had accepted trips and improper, agent-related benefits.

The problem, Coples said Thursday, was that he did not inform the team that he would be attending Austin’s NFL draft party in Washington, D.C.

NCAA investigators returned to Chapel Hill to interview Coples after a Washington magazine posted pictures from the party on its website. Several of the photos depicted Coples alongside Quinn, Austin and former teammate Michael McAdoo, who was ruled permanently ineligible by the NCAA for academic misconduct.
 
“I signed out, but it was an adjustment that I had to make that I didn’t make, which was to inform them that I was going to the party outside the place I was actually going,’’ Coples said. “ … I told them where I was going, which I did go to, but when I made that adjustment to go to the party, I just didn’t let anyone know. And that’s when the whole situation came up.”

The NCAA eventually told UNC that Coples did not commit any violations, but given that 14 players were held out of at least one game last season because of the NCAA investigation, it made for a stressful situation.

"I didn't think anything was going to happen,’’ Coples said. “I was just going to celebrate with my former teammates that had just gotten drafted. I felt like some people took things into a different perspective and saw something different and tried to make the situation bigger than what it was. At the end of the day, I was cleared, and I thank God for that and we're moving on.

"That was definitely a learning experience for me."
 

One of the unanswered questions in the Michael McAdoo plagiarism case is what his professor did when the football player turned in a paper that had numerous copied passages. Even UNC-Chapel Hill Chancellor Holden Thorp doesn't know.
Professor Julius Nyang'oro was out of town when the extent of plagiarism first surfaced earlier this month. A woman who answered his phone on Monday said he has returned, but he has not responded to phone and email requests for comment since.
Nyang'oro is the chairman of the Department of African and Afro-American Studies, and had McAdoo for a student in a Swahili class during the summer of 2009. Nyang'oro did not turn in McAdoo to the UNC Honor Court, a student-run organization that adjudicates academic dishonesty cases and other student misconduct. It took an athletic department investigation a year later into the activities of a former tutor, Jennifer Wiley, to bring the paper to the court's attention.
The court did not get a full picture of the plagiarism from athletic officials. The athletic department's investigation only focused on Wiley's work in adding footnotes and a bibliography. That, too, constitutes plagiarism, but not to the level critics found when McAdoo made the paper public as part of his court battle.
Some contend the university should no longer stand behind McAdoo because he did not disclose the full amount of plagiarism in the paper and allowed athletic officials to tell the NCAA that the paper -- save for the footnotes and bibliography -- was his work.
Chancellor Holden Thorp, in an interview last week, said he is not going to dig into Nyang'oro's handling of the paper.
"It's very unfortunate what happened here, but I don't get into grading for faculty members," he said.
Thorp said the focus should be on what the honor court did. It found McAdoo guilty of plagiarism, and issued a penalty equal to those handed out for cases of broader plagiarism. The court gave McAdoo an F on the paper, an F for the course, academic probation for the Fall 2010 Semester and suspended him for the Spring 2011 semester.
The penalty meant McAdoo missed a full season of football, but the honor court ruling did give him the opportunity to rejoin the team for the upcoming season. The NCAA, based on the information submitted to the honor court, ruled that McAdoo can no longer play football for a member school.
Thorp would not say whether the university has since given more scrutiny to the other papers McAdoo wrote. The athletic department had brought two others to the honor court for possible improper help from Wiley, but the court did not find a problem with them. The NCAA has. They have not been made public.
Thorp's response to the question: "We've done a very thorough investigation on the academic side."
 

Former UNC defensive lineman Marvin Austin's comments on Twitter first drew the attention of NCAA investigators last year as he tweeted about a party in Miami and other good times.

Wednesday, in the aftermath of a Durham Superior Court ruling that denied his former Tar Heels teammate Michael McAdoo an injunction that would have allowed McAdoo to resume playing with the Tar Heels this fall, Austin unleashed a series of tweets on his @anchormanaustin account expressing his frustration and apparently threatening to reveal more about North Carolina's football program and the ongoing NCAA investigation.

UPDATED, 5:40 p.m.

DURHAM — Michael McAdoo’s attempt to return to the North Carolina football team may be over after a Durham Superior Court judge denied his request for an injunction against the NCAA and UNC that would have restored his eligibility.

McAdoo had asked the court to intervene because he contended that the NCAA had declared him permanently ineligible based on inaccurate information provided by the university.

Judge Orlando Hudson, after a hearing that lasted more than two hours, found that McAdoo’s claim did not meet the standards required for an injunction, and that it was “not likely he would suffer irreparable loss if not imposed.”

Former North Carolina football player Michael McAdoo has filed a lawsuit against the school and the NCAA. Filed Friday in Durham Superior Court, the suit seeks reinstatement for the former Tar Heels defensive end.

McAdoo was declared permanently ineligible for academic misconduct during the NCAA's investigation of the Tar Heels football program.

A hearing has been scheduled for Judge Orlando Hudson's courtroom on July 15.

Michael McAdoo's NCAA football career is over while Devon Ramsay still awaits his fate.

North Carolina lost its appeal with the NCAA on Wednesday to get McAdoo, a junior defensive end, back on the football field. The NCAA upheld its original ruling of permanently ineligible status for McAdoo. The school said it is still waiting to hear about Ramsay's appeal.