The Perfect Storm
In the end what will be will be, but if I had to predict right now how bad this is all going to be for the University of North Carolina due to the two pronged investigation, I would have to say it’s going to be pretty bad, and I would be saying that with a homer set of mind (meaning that I might be looking at this too positively). The fact that chancellor Holden Thorp believes all of this could take up to a year to complete does not help at all. I do not have any inside information, but I think that I do have some common sense and when I keep adding up the pros and cons of this story the latter outweigh the former by a long shot, and it seems that with every 24 hours the distance keeps getting wider and wider. The biggest two being that this has been going on for three months and there seems to be no end in sight and that the two appeals by North Carolina were sent back without the NCAA budging any. It might just be the way things happen, but for me it feels like the head honchos in Indianapolis have decided that this is not going to end well for UNC. And that is just how I feel about all of this!
I also think this, if North Carolina had just the players/agent investigation I could say that probably things could have turned out a bit better, and most of them would be on the field by now. (I say most because I think that from day one Marvin Austin was never going to play another game with a UNC uniform). Had it been just the players/tutor investigation maybe the situation would have been over and done. Had it been that John Blake/Gary Wichard story been just the only thing going on this would not have been the hurricane that it is. However, of the three things I believe that the NCAA has this one as its biggest target. But this, like it or not, is the perfect storm, that when you are getting some relief from the first one in comes another tidal wave from the second part of the storyline. And when that spray dies down there is one from the third part. In other words there is no relief to this and it is making this more and more newsworthy because there seems to be something new from one of the three fronts. And even after this is all over the reminder of what has happened this year at UNC will be something that many people will talk about for years to come.
And while I think that the NCAA has taken a “this is going to be the school we make an example of” approach with North Carolina, the media seems to have wanted to be more jock shock than fact finding regarding the storylines and facts, the ABC’ers and haters have multiplied each and everyday because of this, the simple reality is that the players (and John Blake) had not done what they did there would be nothing to report about. And for those of you that will say “enough with talking about the players that are not on the field” let me reply by saying this: “We can not cry over spilt milk, but we can sure think about how it was spilled”. Just not thinking about the players that are not here does not make them or the problems go away. As a matter of fact only by dissecting what went wrong could we truly begin to find a remedy, and trust me I am pretty sure that everyone in the higher ranking offics in Chapel Hill are looking for those remedies to show the NCAA that they are headed in the right direction.
But again, as I said above, remedies found or not, I think the NCAA will throw the proverbial book at Carolina, and while I do not see the “death penalty” coming, it is going to be as close as it gets to it. Why? Because the NCAA is famous for wanting to prove they are in control, and in this instance the only way to do that is by hitting the Tar Heels as hard as they can. We can also thank the fact that how they handled the USC story made a lot of people in the media shake their head at their approach, or let’s just say they were laughed at in a politically correct way. Those same people are not going to have anyone tell them they did it in a way that should have done better, and for that head coach Butch Davis’ program is going to get a bigger hit than it might have under any other circumstance. Once again, this is the perfect storm and UNC is the only boat/ship/vessel out in the open seas.
In the end, I believe that when this is all said and done many of the players that could have been game changers on the field might become rules changers off the field. Instead of sacks of quarterbacks Marvin Austin’s actions might make it so that the NCAA will be able to sack the shady going ons that some (not all) agents are doing when it comes to college players. And to me, if this is the case, I might just be as happy because in the end this investigation isn’t going to be saved, but it might save a lot of other players from committing the same mistake, and that might just be the only sliver of silver lining I can find out of hours and hours of reading and reflecting on all of this.
