Independent investigator Kenneth Wainstein, a former U.S. Attorney and general counsel to the FBI, found hundreds of North Carolina football players participated in a wide-ranging academic scandal involving no-show classes over an 18-year period at the school in a new report released on Wednesday.
944 former Tar Heels football players were said to have taken a lecture "paper" class in the African and Afro-American Studies Department in a 10-year period spanning three coaching staffs. Some 361 players also took part in an independent study course that had no interaction with a professor.
In addition, the report found widespread involvement with a number of other sports, including men's basketball, and noted allegations of grade-changing, tutors writing papers for athletes and general steering of players to bogus classes.
"Like everyone who reads it, I feel shocked and very disappointed," said UNC Chancellor Carol Folt at a news conference. "I think it's a case where you have bad actions of a few and inaction of many more. And had actions or processes been in place, we could've caught it and stopped it a lot sooner."
Former head coaches Mack Brown, Carl Torbush, John Bunting and Butch Davis all had players enroll in the classes in question. The report was careful to say that while some, especially Bunting and Davis, might have known about the classes' reputation in helping boost grades, they were unaware of the extent that their players were taking such paper classes.
The current staff of Larry Fedora has no connection to the scandal, according to reports.
North Carolina was sanctioned by the NCAA for major violations under the watch of Davis back in 2012, but only part of that case was due to academic fraud. The organization's enforcement staff recently reopened the investigation into the school and released a joint statement shortly after the report was released.
"The University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and the NCAA enforcement staff continue to engage in an independent and cooperative effort to review information of possible NCAA rules violations as was announced earlier this year. The university provided the enforcement staff with a copy of the Wainstein Reports for its consideration," the statement said. "The information included in the Wainstein Reports will be reviewed by the university and enforcement staff under the same standards that are applied in all NCAA infractions cases."
If Wednesday's events indicated anything on Chapel Hill, it's that the already drawn-out scandal is not over yet.
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