Carolina's AFAM Scandal: Bradley Bethel vs. The Lynch Mob

   There's simply no way to understand what actually went on in the UNC AFAM scandal without reading Bradley Bethel's posts at Coaching the Mind. As nauseating as the scandal was, a careful examination of the facts seems clearly to indicate that it was an academic scandal involving Nyang'oro and Crowder, not an athletic scandal. Every account I've read of the scandal in the national media has been some combination of ignorance and lies.  Ignorance is, I think, to some extent excusable--it's sports, and the people who write about sports don't typically have a scholarly bent... But it's difficult to excuse ignorance when it's combined with a rabid, bloodthirsty desire for punishment.
   At any rate, the good news from the perspective of Carolina basketball fans is that men's basketball seems clearly to be innocent of any wrong-doing. The bad news is that it isn't clear that anyone cares...  Another ray of hope, though, is mentioned by Bethel at the end of the post I link to above: there's at least some reason to believe that the NCAA's investigation will be more objective than the Wainstein report. Even the latter leaves MBB largely unscathed...though, as Bethel notes, there is a subtle but systematic effort there to shift blame from academics to athletics. But presumably the NCAA will not share the Carolina administration's goal of shifting blame. We might get the most objective investigation yet from the NCAA...