A Thanksgiving Theory

My buddy texted me yesterday that he’s thankful for Twitter.

Without Twitter, the rampant, chronic academic fraud and outright cheating over at The Flagship may still be rolling on, unexposed.

Now, let’s have a little fun speculating.

There’s a working theory we’ve formed over time: when NC State “broke the spirit, not the letter” of the law in the 1980s, it essentially altered the template The Flagship would need to use going forward.

Consider the scenario: During the 1980s, Carolina had two ACC titles (1981, 1982), was national runner-up in 1981, won the national title in 1982 and had three ACC titles (1981, 1982, 1989). But by 1989, Carolina basketball had two main threats.

One was Duke basketball, which during the 1980s had won three ACC titles (1980, 1986, 1988), been to four Final Fours (1986, 1988, 1989) and played for the national title in 1986.

The other was NC State basketball, which during the 1980s had won two ACC titles (1983, 1987), been to two Elite Eights (1985, 1986) and had won a national championship (1983). More importantly, Jim Valvano was — hands down — college basketball’s biggest rock star. Remember, Valvano (and then Krzyzewski) had turned down the UCLA head coaching job in 1988.

They weren’t quite an afterthought, but Duke and State were overshadowing Carolina, and that wouldn’t — couldn’t — be tolerated.

We all know what happens next for State: a UNC-centric Board of Governors, Poole Commission, SBI, General Assembly, Attorney General, NCAA, Valvano forced out.

One threat averted.

But it wouldn’t be so easy in regards to Duke, a private school. Recall that in 1990, Duke lost in the national title game. But then in 1991, when Carolina won the ACC championship and then made the Final Four for the first time in a decade, Duke upstaged them by winning the national title. Then, in 1992 Duke won both the ACC and national championships.

The Carolina Way would need to act immediately.

Keep in mind, on the academic side, the “minor infractions” at State in the 1980s were in reference to basketball players essentially course-hopping easy classes. The intent was for academically-weak players to remain eligible by avoiding matriculation into more difficult classes. It was a sketchy practice, sure, but there was no academic fraud — the players who didn’t deserve to matriculate weren’t doing so.

So, after all the grandstanding and outrage by the Board of Governors, et al, at such a practice, it was hardly feasible for Carolina to continue forward with a similar model. So, in 1993, John Swofford and Dean Smith created the AFAM program.

Then, as The Flagship institutionalized and streamlined the AFAM fraud over the next two decades, Carolina won three national titles (1993, 2005, 2009) and five ACC championships (1994, 1997, 1998, 2007, 2008).

What say you SFN Community?

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  • #62668
    StateFans
    Keymaster

    My buddy texted me yesterday that he’s thankful for Twitter. Without Twitter, the rampant, chronic academic fraud and outright cheating over at The Fl
    [See the full post at: A Thanksgiving Theory]

    #62671
    wufpup76
    Keymaster

    I’d say something similar to AFAM had been going on before ’93, maybe not as widespread.

    Then again, LT did matriculate through the Hole football program.

    *Shrug*, they’ve always been jealous, petty, cheats.

    #62674
    WTNY
    Participant

    Must see graphs on the cheating:
    Graph of AFAM sham courses from Wainstein report

    Also, see Bob Lee on the theory:
    How To Blame It All on Coach K….

    (Bob Lee’s formatting is terrible. Skip down to “Desperate Times > Desperate Measures > The Scheme”)

    Coach K had won his first two rings in 91 and 92. Dean countered with Montross/Williams in 93 but it was obvious that “K” was not going away and would be a threat of unimaginable proportions. A threat so real that Dean would retool his recruiting for “a different type of student-athlete”. Those “different type of kids” would require a different sort of “handling”. That special “handling” being The Scheme.

    #62675
    bill.onthebeach
    Participant

    Basically that all makes sense to me…

    But as wufpup pointed out… that ain’t when it started…

    It all started in 1952 … old13 remembers this ’cause he was an eyewitness… when *NC hired Frank McGuire away from St. Johns… (It took some big bucks back then… to get McGuire to take several career steps backwards to come down to the backwoods of Tobacco Road… near the outer edge of the Basketball Universe). And it’s worth noting that was the year before, the ACC was formed.

    Now the plain facts are that we all have been trying to ‘out-cheat’ each other, especially on the hardwood, ever since…

    I probably ought to clarify what I mean by ‘out-cheat’…
    First – know where the line is between legal and illegal, put one foot on the line, try a rope to your a$$, and lean a far as you can across that line… when you done your business, your Asst. Coach pulls you back to safety.

    Second… find creative and profitable ways to get other people to do your ‘out-cheating’ for you, ’cause it’s a lot easier to hide dirty money than illegal activities, and politically much safer.

    In this case… “The Carolina Way” did a whole lot of both… until after a while … they decided they that spent so much time across the line that the rope was in the way, disconnected it as in their minds it was no longer needed…

    After a little while longer, they forgot the way to safety and declared that they had moved the line to a NEW place better suited for their purposes. Then the Emperor wrote a book about all that he had accomplished…. complete with footnotes by the loyal Tarhole priests espousing their flawed theology.

    —————-

    What the OP describes is exactly what happens when a catastrophic event upsets the physical equilibrium of opposing forces at work.

    When the energy of the catastrophic event was dissipated and absorbed by our neighbors… (remember ‘energy’ is not consumed, it is absorbed to be released again )… and with the checks and balances of worthy competition destroyed by the catastrophic event, the new equilibrium point was several light years from the old one. And the ‘exploded star’ was nothing more than a former shadow of itself, barely unnoticed in the night sky, powerless to restore itself.

    Of course IF that was the case, the TarHoles reading this Topic would all immediately conclude that they did nothing wrong as they were bound by the physical laws of the universe and could not have done any different had they wanted to.

    Either that or their loyal and faithful Tarhole Priests would declare the whole thing ordained by the Assembly of Righteous Basketball gods as salvation and damnation in the final battle between good and evil.

    To which we might respond (ignoring the flawed theology of the Tarhole priests and the abyss that discussion with them always falls into ) … “Yeah but… since the same amount of ‘out-cheating’ is going on now as was before, it’s just happening in two places instead of three… in other words, you guys are doing our ‘out-cheating’ for us and we don’t really approve of the way or the results you’re getting, so we want our ‘out-cheating’ powers back…”

    Now just for the sake of discussion… the thought provoking bonus question is…

    Had the epicenter of the explosion of that supernova been 25 miles further west down old highway 54… would we not have done the same thing with the dumba$$ from Vermont sitting in the Chancellors chair, and our beloved, but not saintly, Coach V sitting in both the AD’s and the Head BB Coach’s chair?

    Now that is something I really don’t want to think about too much… ‘
    … and since it’s Thanksgiving, maybe we add “Things We Don’t Know’ to list of things we ought to be thankful for…

    Perhaps the title of the Topic ought to be…
    “The Cosmology of Tobacco Road Basketball from 1990 to the present – from the series… Lectures in Nelson Hall”
    or
    “Be Careful What You Ask For.. Because You Might Get It” by Wedont Know Anybetter.

    #NCSU-North Carolina's #1 FOOTBALL school!
    #62680
    Adventuroo
    Participant

    NEVER thought about it….Not being a “social media” user or follower nor had inclination to invest in such directly (but own a bunch of it in Mutual Funds), I guess we of the order of the Red, White and Moral do owe a debt of gratitude to the following….

    Jack Dorsey; Biz Stone; Noah Glass & Evan Williams. Looked them up and NONE are UNC or NCSU Grads….or even attended. Closest I found was that Evan Williams was a Farmhouse Fraternity member….so I guess I should ask for a few shares of TWTR since I was once such.

    Had it NOT been for their High Tech “Look at ME” app that even the “Duh…..we can barely read at a 3rd grade level” folks like Twettin’ Marvin, then this little warm breeze off the coast of Western Africa would never had been spawned and turned into the Cat 5 Storm that it has….maybe it is more like a disturbance in the West that developed into an F5 monster that just dropped out of the “Light Blue Skies” without warning and devastated the entire campus of UNC….laying waste the Athletics Department as well as the complicit Academnians that let it grow and mutate into the multi tennacled and faceted gremlin that it is.

    SO, after all the turkey, while you may be having an adult beverage while watching the NFL or other entertainment….hoist an adult beverage to the four individuals above and say….”Thank YOU!”. Had they made it anymore complex, then the Flagship’s “students” would have been too technologically challenged to ever get the word (and pictures) OUT…

    On to Saturday…..bring your EMPTY Red Spray Paint cans for the “simulated” celebration and defacing of Kenan after OUR Victory.

    #62683
    Gene
    Participant

    Makes sense. I went to NCSU from ’92 to ’96. My friends who went to Chapel Hill often griped about how Dean Smith was holding his team back, in the tournament, by not cutting loose the top talent and letting them go off, rather than distributing the ball like he had always done.

    The run of Final Fours, by Duke, and eventual national titles, really stuck in the craw of UNC fans.

    Athletics Department was probably just as eager to make up the ground with Duke.

    And then Mack Brown was looking poised to turn UNC into a Top 10 football power (or at least Top 20) and they probably figured why not be elite in all the team sports and expanded the cheating to any coach, who was worried about keeping important players eligible.

    EDIT: I really would be interested to see the Women’s a Soccer team use of the fake classes, since they are arguably the most dominant team in a team sport in the history of the NCAA. They have won about 2/3’s of the Women’s Soccer titles over the last 30 or so years.

    #62688
    john of sparta
    Participant

    several falsifiable predictions will be needed
    to accord “theory” given to this work of fancy.

    #62834
    lawful
    Participant

    Ever seen the movie “Conspiracy Theory”? Their sports programs didn’t create this problem, they exploited it. Will we ever let the Valvano story go? A lot changes in 25 years…including the NCAA and the bloated revenue stream of college athletics. It’s apples and oranges. A better answer would just be to beat them on a regular basis.

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