Long-time Duke fan here of over 20 years since I was in middle school. Long-time lurker of the boards for several years and definitely long enough to have seen the original version of this thread on the previous boards. First of all, thanks for doing all the work you do to gather all this information, DevilDJ.
The reason why I wanted to post this was because through all the talk of how bad this scandal has been, there’s one thing that I don’t think was ever really touched on or if it was, it’s just not been focused on enough and that’s the damage that this scandal has done to not only every school and individual student-athlete who played these UNC sports teams, but really it’s done damage on a national level outside of sports as well. Let me explain by using the men’s basketball team as an example.
First, let’s look at the 2005 season, one of the biggest culprits in this scandal. That team finished their season with a 35-4 record. If their athletes had been taking proper classes, that’s 35 times they would have likely lost. Those are times when another team should have won. Those are times, if you examine those teams they beat, that could have caused them to not make it into the NCAA tournament. Those are times when other teams could have likely beat them in the NCAA tournament. Teams who should have had their big moment in the spotlight or at least made it further in the tournament. There are players out in the working world who don’t have a ring on their finger and should have. There are players, and this one may be reaching, but there are men’s basketball players out there who may have not received a look from the NBA recruiters due to a loss to UNC. Yeah those players may have had other reasons to cause the recruiters not to take them seriously, but still.
That applies not only to the 2005 UNC team, but all the other seasons as well where there were ineligible players. There are teams and individual players who suffered as a result. Even then, student-athletes chose to go to UNC based on the years where UNC had great seasons, national titles or not, based on watching players who should have been ineligible to begin with.
I previously mentioned the NBA. There’s been a lot of UNC players in the NBA. How many of those players throughout the years of the scandal would have been ineligible to begin with if they had been forced to take real classes? So that then causes you to think how many players were denied those spots those UNC players took up? Those players have suffered as a result.
Of course this whole point about people suffering applies to all sports where there are student-athletes who took these bogus classes and then there’s the working world. What about all those student-athletes and students who weren’t athletes who took these fake courses and now hold jobs based on their degree they didn’t truly earn? There’s many jobs where you have to give the potential employer your GPA. How many working men and women out there are holding jobs based on fake courses? How many people would have gotten the job before them had the UNC graduates I’m referring to played on a level playing field with the other applicants?
If I was an employer and I had people working for me who were UNC graduates of 5+ years ago, I would be sitting there wondering how many of them were honest in school and actually took real classes and truly earned their degrees.
So yeah, just thought I’d throw all this out there. I’m pretty sure I haven’t seen anything like this mentioned and harped on in this vast thread or the other threads or places you’ve mentioned or linked to over the years.
