We been bombarded with claims about UNC athletes in the media. CNN's yellow journalism in particular has been laughably irresponsible, recycling the same unsupported claims from Willingham over and over and over, to make each incarnation of the same story seem like some new revelation of wrong-doing.
It's been pretty well-known on the Carolina boards for some time now that Willingham's credentials are paper thin (she has only one presentation and no publications in the relevant areas in eleven years). In recent weeks it's also become clear that her claims are radically exaggerated--and it's become hard to resist the conclusion that she is dogmatically pursuing a jihad against Carolina athletics. Even when unequivocally called out on misrepresentations, she refuses to admit error but, instead, dodges the criticism and goes on the attack again.
Today the university released a report from three independent experts who, working independently of each other, each concluded that
Willingham's claims are unsupported by the data.
College athletics needs reform. There's no doubt about it. And the AFAM scandal at Carolina was just godawful. But a rabid campaign to smear UNC athletics isn't warranted, and isn't doing anything to fix the problem.
