Burney “still friends” with Hawkins, UNC liason’s sleepless nights, & the “Tutor Handbook” (Day 110)

 

I am back!  Last week the other members of the SFN author team were knocking it out of the park covering the scandal here and here, so there was no need for me to clutter up the blog with redundant and/or inferior analysis.  Also, the FSU game appropriately occupied our attention and energy.  Speaking of the FSU game, I want to praise the students who performed this bit of theatre at halftime:

I apologize for the quality of that picture.  All I had with me was my crappy Blackberry camera.  The lettering reads “$UNC=TRICK OR CHEAT!$”  If anyone has a better picture, please let SFN know.  We would like a better copy.

Turning to scandal news, Kendrick Burney played Saturday!  

Given that Burney has apparently been found guilty of both academic cheating AND of taking improper benefits from (at least) Chris Hawkins, let’s take a look at some words from Thorp this past August, as quoted in an N & O piece:

”It’s a privilege to put on the North Carolina uniform and represent this university,” Thorp said, “and it’s our job to make sure that the people who do so have earned that privilege.”

In light of Burney’s actions, how in the world can he have “earned that privilege”?  By going to Vegas with Hawkins?  Through academic cheating?  Yet UNC must think that he has “earned that privilege” because they bent over backwards to get him on the field.  Shouldn’t someone in the press ask Thorp these questions?

Moving on, in this piece from the Herald-Sun, we learn that Kendic Burney says he is “still friends” with former UNC player Chris Hawkins:

“It was a friendship that led into some allegations that never happened, but we’re still friends,” Burney said. “We’ve just got to stay our distance from each other. But like I said, during that whole process, it was all a friendship.”

The NCAA suspended Burney for the first six games of the season for violating the agent benefits and preferential treatment rules after it was determined he received $1,333 in benefits, which included trips to California, Atlanta and Las Vegas.

Has anyone in the press asked the obvious question about the $1,333 sum contrasted with the going rate for those trips’ airfare?  It would be great if a reader would quickly look up what round trips cost to those three cities and post that research in the comments section below this entry.  Of course that doesn’t even get into the cost of hotel rooms or the costs of partying in general, and we know Burney enjoyed partying in Vegas with Hawkins:

Moving on, this N & O piece lets us know that UNC’s Faculty-Athletic Department liason had some “sleepless nights” as a result of the scandals.  That linked article is only part of a larger piece that you need a password to access.  But it is good to know that someone over there, aside from the Daily Tar Heel staff, has an adult’s perspective.

Lastly, UNC has released a copy of the Tutor Handbook.  I don’t have the time right now to look through it.  However, given that UNC released it, you can be sure that there is nothing of note to be gleaned.  As we have learned over and over in these scandals, “open and honest” UNC-CH only releases information willingly if it furthers their agenda.  Will UNC-CH also release a handbook covering their policies on tutors who are employed by the head football coach (but not the University) when they help players cheat?