More Bad News For Carolina Hoops

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Many people are skeptical of Willingham, and she's certainly provided no names or records...but the absolute best thing you can say about this is that it's deeply troubling.

She's been making these allegations for a long time, but the NCAA seemed unconcerned.

Everybody at Carolina basically has faith that the hoops program is still run like it was in Dean's time. The football program is hoped to be clean, but it's not revered in the same way, so the recent scandal was bad, but not horrific. Even those who might be concerned tend to think that nobody would be stupid enough to risk Carolina's reputation in hoops by even flirting with the line on stuff like this...

There was a huge sigh of relief that the NCAA seemed satisfied, at least with respect to hoops, and moved on.

I assumed that they must have concluded that Willingham was not credible. But now she says that the NCAA did not interview her. That seems crazy.

That this stuff happens anywhere is scandalous. If it happens in the Carolina hoops program, it's utterly inexcusable If it can happen there, it can happen anywhere. That would, for me, be the final, undeniable proof that big-time college sports simply can't be run in an honorable way.

(And that's of even greater interest to me given that my current institution is greedily eyeing a move to division I-A football...)

It's been nothing but bad luck and bad news for Carolina hoops since their awesome performance in the 2009 NCAA tournament. But this stuff is, obviously and by far--if true--the worst thing that could happen. And it would be entirely self-inflicted.

Let's hope this sounds worse than it actually is.

Update: Carolina's statement on the CNN piece here.