The Univ. of North Carolina "has struggled to maintain its academic reputation and, at the same time, build a modern football program that excites a large enough fan base to fill 63,000 seats and contribute mightily to the big-time costs associated with national championship aspirations," according to a front-page piece by Anne Blythe of the Raleigh NEWS & OBSERVER. The school fired football coach Butch Davis on Wednesday due to a year-long academic investigation into the football program, and AD Dick Baddour announced his impending resignation on Thursday. UNC Chancellor Holden Thorp on Thursday said, "I've got an acute sense of the true nature of the tension. Nearly every public university, including many, many great public universities, are wrestling with the issues that we're talking about." Fans initally described UNC Board of Trustees Chair Wade Hargrove as the "impetus behind the abrupt dismissal" of Davis. But Hargrove said that the "decision was Thorp's." Hargrove: "This chancellor is committed to the core mission of the university. After all is said and done, this is an educational institution, not an entertainment institution." He added, "At some point, the sense was we need to just get this chapter behind us and get on to running the university. At the end of the day, the chancellor and the administrators have to make sure their job as educators is not being compromised. We just have to be ever vigilant to make sure we're doing the right thing."
BOOSTERS AT WORK: Former UNC system President Bill Friday, "long a critic of big-time athletics," said that the school "gets pushed by boosters with deep pockets who want championships." Friday: "We've got work to do, and we've got issues to resolve, but the first one has got to be ferreting out where this pressure comes from. ... Why is it this win-at-any-cost mentality?" A report filed by UNC with the Department of Education revealed that the school "spent nearly $15 million on its football program in the year ending June 30, 2010." The program "brought in revenue of $22 million, part of an athletics budget of more than $67 million." UNC is constructing a "new east end zone addition, a $70 million project adding thousands of seats, luxury boxes and plush athletic training and tutoring facilities." The school is "still trying to sell naming rights to all sorts of features in the stadium renovation" (Raleigh NEWS & OBSERVER, 7/31).
