NCAA Football

UNC’s Football Program Issues De Facto Suspensions To Everybody Ever (UPDATE: Another One)

The UNC football season, once so promising, might be going down in flames before it even starts. The school announced today that 12 13 players will not participate in tomorrow night’s season opener – six were ruled ineligible, while six seven more were “withheld.”

First of all, 12 13 is a ton of players to go without. Even on gigantic college rosters, that’s well over 10% of the entire team. Hit hardest is the secondary, where no fewer than five six players will be out of action Saturday.

Speaking of Saturday, this isn’t some meaningless tune-up game against a clearly inferior opponent we’re talking about – the Tar Heels are playing LSU, a preseason top 25 team in both major polls. For this many players to be out of a game against an opponent of this caliber – a game where a win would put UNC football back on the national map – something has to be very wrong.

Now, if these 12 players were all scrubs who wouldn’t see much action anyway, one might interpret this as coach Butch Davis sending a message by making an example of expendable parts.

But that brings us to our next point: that this is indeed not what is happening. Remember those five players from the secondary being held out? Three of them (Charles Brown, Kendric Burney, Da’Norris Searcy, Deunta Williams) are starters. (All four starters!) Arguably the two best players on the team’s vaunted defensive line (Marvin Austin and Robert Quinn) are out, as is another key D-liner, Michael McAdoo.

As far as missing personnel on the offensive side of the ball, how do last year’s two leading rushers (Shaun Draughn and Ryan Houston) as well as last year’s leading receiver (and third-leading rusher) Greg Little grab you? Because other than that, the offense totally got off easy.

It’s safe to say, with losses like this for a key game, that something was very, very wrong institutionally in Chapel Hill. Whether there wasn’t enough control over agents’ involvement with players, whether it was academic fraud, or some combination thereof, there needs to be a close examination of exactly what went wrong down there. This should be an exciting, resurgent time for North Carolina football…not a time to gawk at everyone who’s not on the field.

H/T SPORTSbyBROOKS

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