Hillside is ranked No. 9 in ncpreps.com preseason 4A high school football rankings.

As our Sunday story reported, we now have the data from UNC-Chapel Hill regarding how many former athletes were among the students enrolled in the 54 suspect classes in the academic fraud case. The former athletes bring the total percentage of athlete enrollments in the classes to 64 percent, or nearly two of every three seats.

You can find the data at the end of this post.

There is one element missing in this data that the university had provided in the past and that's a breakdown of how many football and men's basketball players are among the former athletes. University officials said they could not make that information public because the numbers may be small enough -- say, one former basketball player in a particular class -- that it might identify that person.

The university is citing a federal law known as the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, which often is described as FERPA, for denying the information. You can read about FERPA here.

One of the more interesting findings in our story is that athletes, including former athletes, on average took more suspect classes than nonathletes. The ratio was roughly 2 classes per athlete, and one per non-athlete.

After seeing that, I took another look at former UNC-CH football player Marvin Austin's partial transcript. We had reported the B-plus he received in one suspect class, but the transcript shows he was also signed up for another: AFRI 520 -- Southern Africa, in the first summer semester of 2009. The transcript does not show a grade, possibly because he had not taken the class yet.

That class had six enrollments. Of those, five were football players, the other a nonathlete.

Documents:

Veteran Garner High football coach Nelson Smith is the new athletic director at the school and will step down from his football coaching duties after the 2012 season.

Jeremy Buck, the former head coach football at East Mecklenburg High, is the new football coach at Franklinton High. He succeeds Clark Harrell, whose final Franklinton team finished 10-3.

Southern Nash's Cameron Gardner is young and still learning about football.

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 in 2011 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.
 
June 8: New information released to the N&O shows the summer class under criminal investigation had been created just days before the start of the semester, and quickly  filled with football players. Of 19 enrollments, 18 were current players on the team and the other a former player. The information also showed that academic advisers for the players knew the course did not meet, but still helped them enroll in it. The university says it is seeking the return of the $12,000 Nyang'oro received.

N.C. State begins spring football practice Friday afternoon with Wolfpack fans concerned more about the basketball doings in St. Louis than football in West Raleigh.

But it's an important time for any football team and again will be for the Pack, 8-5 last season and a bowl winner in Tom O'Brien's fifth year as coach.

"The emphasis, as always, is to be better individually," O'Brien said today. "As individuals improve, the team improves. Certainly as the spring goes along there are certain things we need to look at, offensively, defensively, schematically, to make us better. There are some younger players we need to look at in situational things."