An NCAA investigator asked South Carolina tight end Weslye Saunders about his friendship with University of North Carolina senior defensive tackle Marvin Austin, his online interaction with Austin via the social media site Twitter and a trip to Washington, D.C.,  according to Saunders’ father.

Barry Saunders, a metro columnist for The News & Observer, said Wednesday that Marcus Wilson, the NCAA’s assistant director in charge of agents’ activities,  interviewed his son twice this summer.

South Carolina coach Steve Spurrier said today that he wasn’t surprised about reports that NCAA investigators are looking into University of North Carolina assistant coach John Blake’s connection with sports agent Gary Wichard.

“Let me just say this: When you’ve been in coaching as long as I have, we know the reputation of almost all the coaches out there that have been around a long time,” Spurrier told The (Columbia) State newspaper.

DURHAM — North Carolina football coach Butch Davis told a banquet crowd this afternoon that the NCAA has promised it will move quickly in the probe that brought investigators to campus last week.

“The NCAA has assured us that they will make this as quick, and as soon as possible will expediate(sic) [the investigation],” Davis said at the annual Triangle Pigskin Preview at the Washington Duke Inn.

The event marked Davis' first public comments about the investigation. Davis shared the banquet podium with coaches David Cutcliffe of Duke, Ruffin McNeill of East Carolina, Mose Rison of N.C. Central and Tom O’Brien of N.C. State.

Citing an unnamed source close to the family of Alabama defensive end Marcell Dareus, the Birmingham News reported this morning that UNC defensive tackle Marvin Austin paid the travel costs for Dareus to attend a party this summer in Miami's South Beach.

According to the article, Dareus asked to leave the party and paid Austin back for his travel expenses after discovering there were sports agents at the party.

North Carolina Secretary of State Elaine Marshall said her office has the appropriate staff and expertise to investigate possible improprieties on the part of sports agents.

“We’re securities regulators,” Marshall said this morning in a telephone interview, “and a lot of the same type of business record analysis is what we do in our ordinary criminal and other cases in the security areas. We have the expertise, and it’s very similar to [regulating] stockbrockers. A lot of these athlete agents are financial advisers to these young people and their families.”

The Secretary of State’s office started its probe Wednesday, nine days after NCAA investigators arrived at the University of North Carolina for two days of interviews to investigate possible impermissible activities with agents in the school’s football program.