The Roy Williams-Rashad McCants Credibility Mismatch

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So....Carolina has now run two investigations, neither of which found any reason to be concerned about the basketball program with respect to the African-American studies scandal. Basically everything Mary Willingham has said has turned out to be false, and it has become clear that she is incompetent as a researcher. Two independent investigators with much better credentials than hers concluded that her claims were unsupported by her data. UNC is now running a third investigation, spearheaded by a former DoJ investigator...

So...you'd think that everybody would just wait and see.  

But no...

ESPN (aka DSPN...) has been giving air time to Rashad McCants, who has suddenly begun claiming that the hoops program set him up with fake classes, and Roy knew about it.

Now...nobody who is even vaguely objective believes this. First, it's inconsistent with what's known about Roy. Second, Rashad is a nut, and everyone knows it. This is the guy who was recruited by Dougherty, and was disgruntled from the moment he stepped on campus. He famously compared his time at Carolina to being in prison...largely because Roy made him go to class, and forced him to run laps if he didn't. McCants's father hates Roy with a fiery passion, and both blame Roy for allegedly being fairly up-front with NBA managers about McCants's attitude problems. Since washing out of the league, Rashad has tried (a) rapping and (b) acting...with his only role being that of a flamboyant transexual in a straight-to-video movie... 

Oh and: his assertions have been denied in an open letter from his teammates--and, of course, by Roy.

Oh and: the semester he's now complaining about was not relevant to his standing. Oh and: despite his new complaints about his education, he has never finished his degree--something Roy, like Dean, has tried to get everyone to do.

So an actual news outlet would not exactly jump at the chance to hand McCants a megaphone...but ESPN did it last week, and apparently plans on doing it again this week.

Look, this business should be thoroughly investigated. I'm happy to have it looked into again. Carolina fans want to make sure everything is on the up-and-up. Dougherty was a rather sketchy character, and that's the main reason he didn't last long. It would not be the most surprising thing in the world to find out that rules were being stretched before Roy came back.

But it's tough to be objective and keep an open mind about all this when this kind of crap is going on. The pattern has been: outrageous accusations make big headlines...disproof of those accusations gets little or no air time. CNN has been absolutely awful about this, and now ESPN is going down the same hole.  

And, of course, some rabid fans of nearby teams are working hard to fan every spark into a wildfire. It's been really nauseating. They're dying to get some kind of revenge in the court of public opinion that they're unable to effect on the basketball court

Nevertheless, we hold ourselves to a higher standard--and now is not the time to get all tribal and circle the wagons.

The truth will out--in fact, it seems to already have done so...

So all rational observers can do is wait and see whether the next--and final--investigation turns up any actual transgressions.