North Carolina athletic director Bubba Cunningham said Wednesday he had communicated with all of his coaches and none had prevented any of their athletes from meeting with civil-rights historian Taylor Branch, a visiting professor at UNC and activist for NCAA reform.

At an on-campus forum Tuesday night, Branch said athletes had been instructed not to talk to him by their coaches. During the Q&A portion of the event, a man identifying himself as a UNC graduate challenged Cunningham, who attended the event but did not intend to participate, to allow his athletes to speak to Branch.

"I was concerned a great deal when I heard it and I had no way to respond on the spot," Cunningham said. "Last night, I talked to Roy (Williams) and Larry Fedora, just checking on football and basketball to make sure it didn't happen. Both of them assured me it did not. Today I emailed all of our coaches. I took the quote out of the article and said, 'This is what was said. Give me some feedback. Give me some positive affirmation that we haven't done this.' Every single coach responded."

The discussion about what's wrong with big-time college sports continued Tuesday in Chapel Hill, as The N&O's Luke DeCock reported in today's column. Taylor Branch, a UNC grad whose writing on what he considers the exploitation of college players has received much attention, said UNC players have been told by their coaches not to talk with him.  Hodding Carter, who teaches at UNC, said the faculty had been passive, as other college faculties had been, "allowing the slaughter of the integrity of the institutions they serve to go forward." The N&O's reporting on the UNC football program (and the NCAA investigation into it) has shown some significant problems. We will continue reporting.

At the same time, it's worth noting that there are some outstanding young adults who play big-time college sports. The N&O featured prominent stories today on two of them as they prepare to play their final home games. NCSU's C.J. Williams' hustle and leadership have been apparent during his four years at State, our J.P. Giglio reports. That's how he got to be a team captain as a sophomore and junior. His coach says he's been "a great young man to coach." He will graduate in May with a degree in business.

UNC's Tyler Zeller also has been outstanding. He's a business major and a two-time academic all-America. One of his business professors told The N&O's Andrew Carter, "It seems like he really believes (in) doing things the right way for the right reasons, treating people with respect and working hard." 

Let's hear it for C.J. Williams and Tyler Zeller (and for their parents). They've set a high standard and have shown how good big-time college sports could be. 

--John Drescher

CHAPEL HILL -- While Tuesday's panel exploring NCAA reform eventually degenerated into yet another public airing of grievances over how UNC handled its football scandal during the Q&A, there were a number of salient points exchanged among the panelists regarding the necessity of change in college athletics first.

A standing-room only crowd at the Sonja Hayes Stone Center Theater on the UNC campus, one that included UNC athletic director Bubba Cunningham as well as a number of other senior athletic administrators, gathered to hear the insights of former UNC president Bill Friday, Duke professor Charles Clotfelter and civil-rights historian Taylor Branch, a visiting professor at UNC. Both Branch and Clotfelter have recently published books about the state of college athletics, while Friday has spent decades pushing NCAA reform.

On Jan. 4, a new window into the Clinton presidency will open at UNC Chapel Hill.

That’s when a trove of source material Pulitzer Prize-winning author Taylor Branch used to write his soon-to-be-released book on the Clinton presidency will become publicly available at the Southern Historical Collection at UNC-CH.

Branch, a UNC-CH alum, has a long relationship with the historical collection. The source materials — interviews, transcriptions, correspondence — that led to his prize-winning writings on Martin Luther King, Jr., are already in the university’s possession. Now, so too are the Clinton records.

“[Historians are] going to be looking at the first-hand reflections of a seasoned and wise historian on what was going on then. I think that's worth something,” said Tim West, the Southern Historical Collection’s curator. “It’s different from what President Clinton was saying himself. It's not just a sort of verbatim record that he was making of what he remembers hearing Clinton say, but also what he noticed happening around the White House. There's going to be interesting stuff.”