Devilwolfing: NCAA Hate is Getting Old
Here we go again. With the release of the NCAA’s sanctions on Ohio State, and locally with the news of Dwight Jones’ ineligibility for UNC’s upcoming bowl game, it’s open season once again to take shots at the NCAA for hypocrisy and corruption. Excuse me if I don’t join in with the angry mob.
The two biggest issues being brought up against the supreme governing body over collegiate athletics are its inconsistency in handing out punishments, and the ongoing criticism of amateurism in general where players are not allowed to profit from their popularity while other parties (schools, sponsors, and the NCAA itself) are able to exploit college athletes for financial gain. Both are valid complaints, and it can certainly be argued that the NCAA is operating under an antiquated model that simply cannot sustain itself when considering the size of the industry today as compared to even 10 to 15 years ago.
The NCAA is a business, and “non-profit” does not by any means translate into “non-revenue”. For all of its shortcomings, one thing the NCAA does quite well is understanding its limitations and mitigating the risks that live in those soft spots. For example, let’s take a look at the Dwight Jones situation. Jones, or his family, planned a New Years’ Eve/birthday party in a Burlington, NC club, and used Jones’ likeness to promote the event. It was even beyond that, if you will, as the party’s flyer promoted VIP access to celebrate with Jones himself, and free drinks and cash prizes for “lucky ladies” selected by Jones. The club, the promoters, the family and/or Jones himself were explicitly attempting to profit from Jones’ popularity as a UNC football player. Meanwhile, the NCAA, the school, and other stakeholders were being completely left out of the opportunity to make money. Is that fair? Who cares? That’s a rule, and it’s a shrewd one put in place by the NCAA. Read more
DevilWolfing: Why ECU is Smarter Than They Look
East Carolina wants to get into a BCS conference so bad they can taste it. For years, ECU has been the desperate, drunk college girl at the grown-up bar purposefully dropping her lip gloss on the floor to give herself a chance to bend over and show off her thong, and the Big East has been the would-be sugardaddy paying her absolutely zero attention. Even this Fall, when the Big East came home to find his house empty other than a note from his wife and kids saying they’d left him for the ACC, and even after being rejected over and over again to the point where he’s trolling MySpace for girls who would maybe allow him to buy her a drink, ECU continues to get shot down. That kind of rejection caused ECU to take a look in the mirror and do some serious soul searching. Simply put, ECU HAD to take action to prove their worth.
Missing out on a bowl game may end up being the best thing that ever happened to Pirate Nation this year, thanks to a clever fundraising idea. The “Virtual Bowl” is a fake event that takes place inside the mind of ECU’s athletic department, and tickets are selling for $50 each. The initial reaction from pretty much every news outlet is “OMG THEY’RE MAKING UP A FAKE GAME TO SELL TICKETS TO FANS! THAT’S INSANE!” Or, as Kramer said, is it so sane that it just blew your mind? Read more
DukeHoopBlog’s 2011 Person of the Year
Everyone was going to come out of it just fine. The UNC football scandal that broke shortly before the start of the 2010 season was slowly, but surely moving behind us, and all parties involved were poised to take their slap on the wrist and move on. Dick Baddour, Butch Davis, Holden Thorp … the trio at the forefront of the investigation remained unified, standing together to face whatever the NCAA would throw their way. But much like Bobby Bacala said to Tony Soprano providing the foreshadowing for the end of the series with the line ”You probably don’t even hear it when it happens, right?”, the NCAA would be the least of the concern for the three amigos. On July 1st, suspended UNC player Michael McAdoo filed suit against the NCAA and UNC arguing that improper information was provided by UNC to the NCAA, which ultimately led to the removal of his status as an eligible student-athlete. In turn, all records relating to the lawsuit became public record, which is where our 2011 Person of the Year comes into the picture.
Throughout the entire investigation, PackPride.com, a popular message board for NC State fans, had worked diligently to uncover information through back-channels, unnamed sources, sweeping conclusions, and creative dot-connecting. It was the work that the local media either chose not to perform because of their love for the Tar Heels, or was not allowed to do because of the fear of losing advertising dollars and circulation revenue … allegedly. Up until July, none of the research had really gained any traction despite an exhaustive effort to comb through phone records, research tax records, and scour Facebook for clues or evidence against the North Carolina football program. Led by super-sleuths such as “WufWuf1″, “Brakk” and “WaffleIron”, readers hung on every word, hoping to find that fingerprint at the crime scene that proved Butch Davis guilty. But when Michael McAdoo’s paper from that fateful Swahili class was put through a simple Google search, PackPride finally cracked the case.
It was discovered that McAdoo’s paper, one that made it all the way through honor court being labeled as a “failure to properly cite sources”, was nearly a word-for-word copy and paste job from a previously written paper published online for anyone to see. The trio of Thorp, Baddour and Davis, who continued to paint a picture of integrity and a commitment to academics, were backed into a corner. The local media caught on, followed by the national media, and in the end, both Davis and Baddour ended their tenures at the University of North Carolina, and Chancellor Holden Thorp has suffered mortal wounds to his reputation and remains fortunate to have a job. A message board community, the lunatic fringe, successfully brought down the coaching staff of a rival team, and nearly brought down an entire university. PackPride.com is the clear choice for DukeHoopBlog “Person of the Year” for 2011.
Devilwolfing Rewind: Barnes Did Well Picking UNC
From the old site … this was originally posted on April 21st, 2011.
From my Twitter timeline (at @thedevilwolf, by the way) …
MattLewis8281: “I have a what if for you, what if harrison barnes had signed with duke?….”
Great question, Matt. It may surprise a lot of people for me to say that I think, ultimately, Harrison Barnes made the right call to Skype UNC coach Roy Williams. And no this isn’t going to be one of those message-board-like posts where I irrationally devalue Barnes as a player, or I downplay how badly Duke wanted him on their roster … Barnes is a talented player, and Duke would have been better with Barnes on their team. Additionally, UNC would have been a lot worse without Barnes in light blue. No, I’m not even going to discuss the fake persona that Barnes has tricked everyone into taking at face value. I’m going to keep it to basketball, and I’m going to keep it to business. When talking Harrison Barnes, you can’t separate the two.
First, let’s talk basketball. At the beginning of the season, it was clear to me that Harrison Barnes was in the wrong offense. He wasn’t being put in good positions to take quality shots, and he seemed to be receiving mixed messages from his coach as to how Barnes fit into the Tarheel program. Regardless of the reason, Barnes struggled to find his way through the first half of the season, and it was easy to defend a claim that a talented wing player would have been better off in Coach K’s system. Read more
Introducing … The DevilWolf Podcast
In the first ever installment of the DevilWolf podcast, we talk Larry Fedora press conference and the bright future of UNC football.
Devilwolfing: UNC Goes Fedora, #DukeBack (finally) & Hall of Fame Inductees
It appears that the (allegedly) former Southern Miss head coach Larry Fedora will be announced as UNC’s new football coach in a press conference tomorrow from the Butch Davis media room in the football building. I have no idea if it’s really called that, but it sure as hell should be after all of the memorable moments from the past two years … either fond memories or nightmares depending on your loyalties. Good hire, bad hire – who cares? The important thing is it ends a chapter of UNC football that will forever serve as punctuation to any argument through the end of time on who has the best football program in the Triangle. UNC had to stop the bleeding, and that’s been accomplished. Fedora has the looks of an up-and-comer, coming off of a Conference USA championship in his fourth year as a head coach, and while there may be more questions than answers about how he’ll handle a high-dollar BCS program, all in all, it’s a good move for the Tar Heels. Fedora likes offense, which is something that will excite fans in the interim, but his choice of a defense coordinator may make or break his tenure in Chapel Hill.
On the flip side, there seems to be some hand-wringing going on about the long term goals for a guy who actively sought out his dream job at Texas A&M earlier this week. Is this the coach who is going to want to plant his roots in Chapel Hill? Probably not, but UNC fans need to embrace the potential of being that springboard program. Many within Tar Heel Nation felt like the school needed to make a statement by going out and getting a big name guy, someone who would be above the need to prove himself at UNC in order to be considered for bigger jobs elsewhere. Well, you had that guy, Tar Heels. UNC needed Butch Davis more than he needed UNC, and just like any relationship based on the same dynamic, he treated the program like garbage. But now they have a guy who needs UNC in order to get to his next job, and that’s a great place for the program to be. It’s like buying your first home … you get what you can afford, put a ton of work into it, sell it, and then use the equity to buy a bigger house. Right now, UNC has no equity. It’s a program where a big-named coach had to cheat his ass off to win 8 games. It’s a fixer-upper, and no coach who has had a taste of the show is going to want to come in and work to get the program to the next level. A guy like Fedora will, and because of that, it’s a good outcome for Carolina. Did UNC hire the right “guy like Fedora”? That’s why they play the games. Read more
What’s Left for Coach K to Accomplish? Signing a Big Man
This week, Sports Illustrated unveiled their 2011 Sportsman of the Year issue by honoring two legends of college basketball: Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski and Tennessee’s Pat Summit. It’s extremely fitting the two would share the honor as both sit atop the lists of most career wins as a head coach, and both have made their mark on both the collegiate and international stages, and I can say that I’m fortunate enough to have spent a quality moment with both of them away from the game of basketball. Actually, as I think about it, if it weren’t for Coach K, I never would have met Coach Summit.
Back when I used to spend my summers at Duke basketball camp, Coach K gave me a bit of advice after watching me play for about 10 minutes that ended up paving the way for a good chunk of the life that I’ve lived so far. “Hey, you go to school with my daughter,” Coach said to me, which is about the last conversation starter anyone ever wants to hear. “I like watching you play.” And with that, I was ready to commit to the obvious scholarship offer that was surely coming next, until he continued … “You know you’re not as good as most of those guys out there (gee thanks, Coach), but you put yourself in positions on the court to help your team win. You see the game really well. You should think about being a coach someday.”
Flat out, if anyone else had said that to me, I would have fought them. And not in a hollow, Roy Williams threat kind of way. I mean, actually wanting to hit them for having the balls to essentially tell me at age 15 to give up on my dreams of playing sports and to start focusing on being a coach. But when the best who’s ever done it tells you to think about coaching, you take it as a compliment, and you take it to heart. Read more
Butch Davis Speaks Out on the North Carolina Situation
An animated John Forslund look-alike does a dramatic interpretation of the director’s cut of Butch Davis’ youtube video for Rivalry Hate Week. Which one is the parody designed to troll UNC fans? Well, that’s for you to decide.
The Elusive Post Presence
I’m not sure of the timing since the quote was public the day five star 2012 super-recruit Mitch McGary chose to attend Michigan over Duke, but WRAL/99TheFan personality Joe Ovies decided to run with a blog post today discussing McGary’s decision to snub the Blue Devils and the seemingly annual inability for Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski to land a dominant post presence. McGary had some glowing reviews for the Duke program, its players, and the coaching staff, but also dropped this interesting nugget when explaining his decision not to spend his collegiate career in Durham:
“Despite liking Duke’s style of play, McGary said a big con for the Devils “would be the perception that all their big men do is set screens and rebound and that they don’t get a lot of touches.”"
Whether Duke fans want to hear it or not, it’s a fair question to ask. Why does Duke continue to miss out on post-player prospects? Duke has not had a dominant post player since Shelden Williams, and even in the case of Duke’s all-time leading shot blocker and rebounder, Williams’ forte was on the defensive end despite having a nice offensive skill set as well. Between the end of Williams’ career, Duke has missed on many top post prospects and seems poised to miss out on another as Georgia big man Tony Parker is rumored to be headed anywhere other than Duke. Read more
Scratch & Sniff: Withers Gets Catty; O’Brien Stays Silent
Ah, rivalry week. It may not be more than just a blip on the national radar, but the NC State vs. UNC matchup is always an interesting one to take a look at, especially this year when the Tarheels are just a few short months removed from having their coach, Butch Davis, fired thanks to the handy work of NC State message boards. We don’t need to rehash everything that’s happened to date, but the Cliffs Notes version of it is that PackPride.com did some investigative work on a paper written by a UNC football player and found the entire work to copied and pasted from an article on the internet. This became the final straw that broke the camel’s back, and UNC Chancellor Holden Thorp decided to terminate Davis just weeks before the start of the football season. In terms of a typical rivalry, that’s some next level stuff to have a fanbase responsible for getting their rival coach fired, but ultimately that anecdote has faded into the background as UNC interim coach Everett Withers took to the airwaves yesterday to fire shots at NC State. Read more
