Men’s Basketball: There were 226 enrollments of men’s basketball players in the paper classes between 1999 and 2009. We spoke with 12 men’s basketball players who had knowledge of or took the classes. As with the football players, it was common knowledge among their teammates that these classes required little work for high grades. Unlike the football players, however, the basketball players seemed to find their way to these classes through a variety of routes. While the ASPSA basketball counselor –McSwain and then Walden – would occasionally suggest these classes, they did not routinely steer players into the classes without the players’ knowledge. More often than not, the basketball players found these classes either through referrals from their teammates – “locker room advising” – or via their direct relationship with Crowder, who always maintained close ties among the basketball team. Moreover, unlike the football players who largely conceded that these classes held little educational value, several of the basketball players insisted that they read extensively and worked hard to produce their papers for these classes.87
87. One former Tar Heel player described how he would bury himself in the library for a full week, read five to six books and produce a lengthy paper for every irregular AFAM class he took. Two others similarly described working hard to research and write these papers while playing in the NBA
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As for men’s basketball specifically, there is no downturn in enrollments in 2005 to suggest that the new coaching staff brought in a new policy disfavoring the paper classes. There is a gradual decline in enrollments starting in 2007 – and no spike right before Crowder’s retirement while football players and other athletes were desperately trying to load up on the last paper classes – which likely does reflect the conscious effort by the coaches and Wayne Walden to encourage their players to take lecture classes that require attendance.91
91. Both Walden and Holladay explained that they preferred that their players be in structured classes that required attendance.
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ii. Coach Roy Williams
As Williams, Holladay and Walden told us in their interviews, a large number of the team that they inherited were majoring in AFAM. Five of the 15 members of the 2003–2004 team were AFAM majors, and 10 of the 15 players on the 2005 team were AFAM majors. The three men were uneasy about this situation. Coach Williams was uncomfortable with that clustering in AFAM because it looked like the players were being steered into that major, and after a year or two on the job he asked Holladay to make sure that basketball and ASPSA personnel were not steering players to the AFAM Department.138
138. Coaches Holladay and Williams also had a preference against independent studies and for the structure of a regular lecture class. As such, they directed Walden to encourage players to opt for lecture classes over independent studies. That direction took a while to take effect, as the numbers show that men’s basketball enrollments in the paper classes do not start to decline until 2007, four years after Coach Williams took over as head coach. Wayne Walden’s successor, Jennifer Townsend, also recalls Coach Holladay saying he preferred lecture classes over independent studies for their players.
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We then sought interviews with all 23 of the players who were McCants’ teammates during his Tar Heel playing years of 2002 through 2005. After 11 of them appeared together on ESPN and signed a statement to refute McCants’ allegations, we asked the Chapel Hill Athletics Department to request that they submit to interviews with us. We ultimately succeeded in interviewing seven, all of whom acknowledged that players took these classes because they were easy, but denied that there was anything fraudulent about them or that tutors had drafted papers for them or others.
