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Apparently, there’s a cute little cat fight brewing between the football coaches at North Carolina and North Carolina State — over academics.
The back story: during a radio appearance Wednesday ahead of their annual rivalry game with NCSU, UNC interim coach Everett Withers questioned “the academic environment” at the Raleigh school, and said recruits in the area “need to know the flagship school in this state.”
“they need to know it academically,” Withers said during the radio spot. “if you look at our graduation rates, as opposed to our opponent’s this week, graduation rates for athletics, for football, you’ll see a difference. … if you look at the educational environment here, I think you’ll see a difference.”
Conveniently, Withers failed to mention that, of the two schools, only his has appeared before the NCAA Committee on Infractions recently to answer questions regarding, among other things, academic fraud in the football program. That point didn’t go unnoticed by Withers’ NCSU counterpart, who lit into the coach’s remarks when asked about them Thursday, bringing up not only the academic fraud angle of the NCAA issues but also the one-time presence of John Blake on the coaching staff — alleged to be on the take from a now-deceased NFL agent — as well as multiple players receiving impermissible benefits.
“here is a guy that’s on a football staff that ends up in Indianapolis,” O’Brien said at his regularly scheduled post-practice media availability. “. . .if you take three things that you can’t do in college football, you have an agent on your staff. You’re paying your players. And you have academic fraud. That’s a triple play as far as the NCAA goes. So I don’t know that he has anything to talk about or they have anything to talk about. if that’s what people want in their flagship university in North Carolina, then so be it.”
He was asked what he meant by “paying your players.” He indicated that he was referring to the impermissible benefits players received.
“They had players accepting money from somebody,” O’Brien said. “I mean, money is being given from someone to somebody, that’s been documented, right? I don’t know how it got there. Maybe I’m wrong saying that. but those are no-nos as far as the NCAA goes.”
You’ll have to forgive any cattiness being displayed by the respective coaches theses days. Withers is the head coach of the Tar Heels on an interim basis and will likely be replaced following the season with a permanent coach following a national search. O’Brien’s hold on the Wolfpack job is a tenuous one, rumored to be on the coaching hot seat in the midst of a 4-4 season and with just one winning record in his first four years at the school.
And, as far as what the two are squabbling over? The Charlotte Observer notes that, “[a]ccording to data provided by the NCAA, North Carolina’s football team had a graduation success rate of 75 percent for the freshman class of 2004, compared to 56 percent for N.C. State.”
The graduation success rate in 1-A (FBS) football for entering class of 2004 is 69 percent.
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