It certainly appears that to an extent, unpleasant things are hitting the fan for North Carolina and its football program, again. Just when you thought things were over or couldn't possibly get worse for the Tar Heels maligned program that was the tip of the iceberg in a nation wide scandal ridden college football season last year, it does.
Local and national media have jumped back on the academic fraud story which was only part of the troubles that led to the dismissal of Butch Davis as head coach just before the start of last season.
And the news that this scandal may not be over, at least in terms of the extent with which the academic fraud apparently took place, has seemed to delight fans of rival programs, especially Duke and NC State.
My advice would be don't take too much pleasure in the misery of the Tar Heels just because you never know when things might turn on you.
Wolfpack fans know all too well how scandal can tear down a program. The basketball program was once a consistent contender for the ACC title with regular appearances in the NCAA Tournament.
A scandal involving former coach, the late Jim Valvano, all but killed the stature of the basketball program and some 20 plus years later it is just now starting to show signs of returning to that once high level it had with regularity.
North Carolina football has never really been a consistently strong football program on a national level but always, for one reason or another, has generated a lot of buzz regarding its potential. When the Tar Heels hired Butch Davis many felt that contending for championships, possibly national championships was just around the corner.
Davis was seen a big time recruiter with an eye for talent and the ability to get guys who were future pros. That much was true, but what turned out to be his downfall was his inability to maintain control over his assistances and other facets of the program which contributed to players receiving impermissible benefit and the academic fraud.
So while there were hopes of North Carolina becoming a national power in college football, they were all but dashed when Davis was fired and it was revealed that the institution which prided itself in being the flagship of the public university system in North Carolina, was riddled with academic fraud accusations.
Naturally Duke and NC State fans took some, if not a great amount of pleasure in the failures of their rival. State fans wanted the book thrown at them while Duke fans more or less sat in the wings and watched taking a morbid pleasure in the programs possible demise.
Now that new revelations are coming forward about the extent to which football players apparently flocked to a class that may have ended up being more window dressing than actual class, rival fans are once again gleeful.
My advice to them is just be careful in how much you gloat. The facts are that prior to the scandal, few thought a school with the academic reputation of North Carolina would fall victim to this level of ineptness and possible corruption.
Surely there are those Duke fans who feel and hope that this would never happen at Duke too, but whose can say with 100 percent certainty that it couldn't, especially in this day and age.
Granted like most, I have an immense amount of faith in football coach David Cutcliffe and certainly Mike Krzyzewski to run and maintain clean programs. But again in this day and age it only seems to take one bad seed to ruin everything.
So if you are going to rub it in to your fellow North Carolina fans I would suggest being careful because if something ever happens at Duke, no matter how many years down the road, those same fans won't let you forget.
Don't believe me; ask those NC State fans who remember the grief they got following the Valvano scandal. They are probably the same ones taking the most pleasure in giving it all back to those North Carolina fans who did it to them.
Lets just hope something like this never happens at Duke.
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