By: RJ Swartz
This article takes a look at a potential scandal involving the University of North Carolina. These accusation involved the football and men's basketball team. The article talks about an African studies program that most athletes would take. The academic adviser from the university comments in the article talking on how he rarely if ever saw athletes coming to him to look for advice on what courses he should schedule, he would see "normal" students quite regularly. The transcpript from a former football player was investagated and it found he was taking courses and receiving credits for courses that had never meet. If you view the video attached you can see the submittion of a paper that received an A- and it clearly does not show anywhere near that effort.
This connects to our class discussion where we looked at examples of deviance in sports and the problems of studying deviance. This scandal from the University of North Carolina is a direct example of deviance we took note of in class as well of how tough it can be to study this issue. We all know that for one of us to plagarize or to turn in poor work we will receive a poor grade, but when it comes to athletes and the pressure of your program to succeed academic cheating is way too common especially at the division 1 and FBS levels. This is looked at in Coakley's text on page 172, although it seems to maybe contrast the points made from the article and video. In the text it is disuccused that todays deviance is way less common before the days of mass televison coverage. Although we still see corruption such as this one if we look back on the early 80's and SMU giving players cars and receiving the death penalty. Although we all know that this is a deviant act by the university the video touches on how the reality of the situation is that they were the ones who were caught and this is more common then we actually know in intercollegiate sport.
No comments:
Post a Comment