One of the major questions in the recent UNC-Chapel Hill athletics scandals is who should get the blame. Should the athletics director be held entirely responsible for maintaining academic integrity within the departments of athletics, or does the buck absolutely stop with Chancellor Holden Thorp?
These jurisdictional questions naturally came into the public’s consideration after the scandals, but UNC-CH will soon have a new head honcho, and these questions will need to be answered — not just for UNC-CH’s sake, but for the sake of any university with a large athletics program.
Though Thorp was a champion of education, he didn’t realize quickly enough that the responsibility of sportsmanlike conduct in athletics, on the field and in the classroom, ultimately comes down to the chancellor. A university chancellor presides over the entire university, which, distant as it may seem, includes athletics. Along with the associated prestige, it’s the responsibility of the chancellor to make sure all aspects of the university are top-notch.
According to Forbes, only 4 percent of UNC-CH’s student body are athletes. All 100 percent are students. There shouldn’t be much debate that a chancellor should always put academics first. Large amounts of athletics revenue can be dripping with appeal, but as Lance Armstrong will forever illustrate, the truth always comes out. The way to prevent a scandal like this in the first place is to have a strong leader at the helm, thoroughly ensuring athletes are held to the same standards as non-athletes.
But we’ll always take an excuse to poke fun at our rivals down the road. When it comes to athletic integrity, UNC-CH should take a lesson from, well, us. More than 500 N.C. State student-athletes benefit from academic scholarships funded by the Wolfpack Club alone, illustrating the care given to both athletics and academics. Also, though he may not have been extraordinary when it came to teaching football, former-head football coach Tom O’Brien did run a clean program. Last October, when Mustafa Greene and Tyrrell Burriss obtained drug paraphernalia charges, O’Brien let the athletes go.
“They weren’t champions in the classroom or in the community,” O’Brien said in an official statement regarding the October events. We think he’s right: The classroom should be the standard by which all athletes are measured, regardless of how much revenue they score for the University.
Even with O’Brien gone, it still appears we won’t have to worry (fingers crossed) about any athletic integrity problems of our own anytime soon. According to The Wolfpacker, Dave Doeren, our new head football coach, is “unmatched” in his dedication to academic excellence. Northern Illinois is the only school in the U.S. in which an athlete won the National Football Foundation Scholar-Athlete Award in both 2011 and 2012. This type of commitment should be imitated both by UNC-CH and coaches across the country.
Lastly, our own chancellor, Randy Woodson, deserves praise. We haven’t had a recent athletics scandal, but that’s partly due to his leadership. He’s that “strong leader at the helm” UNC-CH deserves, and we’re lucky to have him.
