Let me say, no one fan base has a corner on crazy. The internet and message board era of sports fandom creates countless forum where fans can anonymously spew the most inane and ridiculous statements without filter save the one the cleans up the profanity. It is an understood that every fan base has this segment of “internet crazies” and the principles of free speech on which this country operates afford them their voice regardless of how idiotic they might sound. Such voices can be dismissed as being “just fans” and there is no expectation that they act responsibly aside from treating other people with respect within the online community in question.
There are certain individuals who pass themselves off as journalists and even enjoy the privileges of media access. In doing that they assume a responsibility to write and publish articles that adhere to certain standards. Such persons do not have the luxury of spouting off every crackpot theory that comes along. Apparently longtime Tar Heel writers/journalists Art Chansky and Eddy Landreth do not operate that way. In the past two weeks have both engaged in the kind of writing that is often found on message boards and do not serve the vested interest of bringing this whole sordid mess to a quiet end. Chansky got the party started by reporting rumors and attempting to draw connections to UNC’s NOA response in an effort to validate his own agenda against Butch Davis. Now Tar Heel Illustrated’s Eddy Landreth has entered the fray with essentially baseless accusations of conflicts of interest and some grand conspiracy between the chair of the UNC Board of Trustees, his law firm, the News and Observer and WRAL. Yes. Really.
On July 27, 2011, the new chair of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Board of Trustees, Wade H. Hargrove, appears to have violated the State Government Ethics Act by failing to reveal a potential conflict of interest in the NCAA investigation of Carolina’s football program and now-former head coach Butch Davis.
The law firm of which Hargrove is a partner — Brooks, Pierce, McLendon, Humphrey & Leonard, L.L.P. — represents the Raleigh News & Observer and Capitol Broadcasting. Either Hargrove himself or his law firm has represented the News & Observer at three times in court since the late 1980s.
These cases are a public record.
Both the News & Observer and Capitol Broadcasting had sued the university for all information in regards to the NCAA investigation of the football program recently before Hargrove became chair of the Board of Trustees.
There is no evidence the firm represented either party against UNC in this particular suit, but both remain clients, which is information Hargrove should have revealed.
Hargrove does not appear to have removed himself from the discussions concerning the UNC football case and/or the firing of Davis, both before and after the fact.
He had an obligation to recuse himself and to make clear the reasons for his recusal, on the record, and in a public setting.
The State Governement Ethics Act states that it is not enough for board members to have an actual conflict of interest. They must avoid all all appearances of conflicts.
Whether Hargrove ever actually participated in any of the court proceedings against UNC is irrelevant in regards to the law. He is a member of the law firm that sued UNC on behalf of the Raleigh News & Observer in the past.
The N&O had repeatedly called for Davis to be fired, and Capitol Broadcasting, which also owns a Raleigh radio station that hosts a sports talk show that had consistently attacked Davis and criticized UNC for not firing him, as well as GoPack.com, the official Website of one of UNC’s main rivals, N.C. State University.
Simply Landreth’s beef here is that BOT chair Wade Hargrove’s law firm has had the News and Observer and Capitol Broadcasting as clients for an extended period dating back two decades. Landreth says because of this connection and the editorial position of the N&O that Davis should be fired not to mention the fact Capitol owns GoPack.com(and let’s throw in that they broadcast Wolfpack games too) this means Hargrove is conflicted in his ability to take part in the decision of whether to fire Butch Davis or not. Except Landreth doesn’t really explain why Hargrove is conflicted. His law firm represents to local media outlets but not in the recent lawsuits over the release of public records. Is Landreth saying Harvgrove was unable to make an objective decision on Davis because he was beholden to clients of his law firm, one of who had called expressly for Davis’ dismissal? Or is it the mere appearance of impropriety that has Landreth’s dander up?
Let’s just cut right to it. Can someone explain to me why we are spending this much ink over a coach who was fired because nine major NCAA violations happened on his watch? NCAA violations which have already resulted in the vacating of 16 wins, reductions in scholarships and probation even before the NCAA makes its final judgment. Seriously, on one side we have Chansky who apparently wants people to pat him on the back and tell him he was right about firing Davis to the point he is dredging up crap that only makes UNC look worse. On the other side you have Landreth and any number of folks on the UNC fan base who are hellbent on defending Davis to the point of accusing BOT members of a conflict of interest. Never mind the fact Davis hired John Blake which was a decision that has done far more damage to UNC that Hargrove stepping out of the conference room for a cup of coffee. I just don’t get it. I don’t get the devotion and loyalty to a man who, in my opinion, had less loyalty to UNC in his whole body than Roy William does in his pinkie finger. I don’t get why people think Butch Davis is worth this kind of angst and internal conflict at a time when the focus should be on the COI hearing, hiring a new AD, finalizing the football coaching position and accepting the final penalties. This is all pointless. All a bunch of sactimonious whining from people who didn’t care about the fact Davis brought Blake in from the start but now are so butthurt over Davis’ firing they want to continue to drag the school through the mud.
What most of these people fail to realize and have failed to understand since July last year is the media scrutiny, the attention from the local talking heads, suspension of players and the firing of Butch Davis wasn’t for nothing. While Davis was not named in the notice of allegations, it is still his program and in his program NCAA violations occurred. To put it another way, “if you don’t start nothing, there won’t be nothing.” UNC broke rules. Coaches who head up programs that commit nine major NCAA violations do not tend to survive. We can argue about the timing which sucked mightily but the deed is done. It was a deed that was inevitable by every standard used to analyze these types of situation. All of this whining, complaining and general screeching about being right, firing Holden Thorp, suing UNC over the Blue Zone and floating accusations against the Board of Trustees is all completely useless to me..
Let. It. Go.
Seriously. Let it go. Drop it. Move on and look to the future. Whatever cliche or phrase that gets you going, let’s bury this crap and move on. Let’s stop dragging stuff up every two weeks which distracts from the team on the field and doesn’t do UNC any good. For a group of people who claim to love UNC so much they have a strange way of showing it. And for Chansky and Landreth, who are both semi-retired, let me say this as clearly and succinctly as possible.
Go. Away.
Go and buy a house next to John Bunting down at the beach, sit around on your screened in porches and vent among yourselves so the rest of us can move on.
This crap is an embarrassment to the fan base and fuels the lunatics among our rivals. The only thing we should concern ourselves with now is supporting the team on the field and figuring out the future. I guess these guys want to argue that the current leadership of the school is incapable of crafting the right future for the football program. I’m not buying it, at least not yet. We here at THF, have said from the beginning to let all of this play out to the proper conclusion and then judge whether the UNC administration did the right things or not. I know that is difficult in an instant information age. I know there is a great temptation to fill the void with anything remotely close to a real story to drive traffic. Doing so is also wrong and makes the rest of us look like idiots.
Throughout this ordeal those who have had issues with the media or the chancellor or anyone else disagreeing with them think the best way to get results is attack, insult and go to war with these people. Ripping the local media doesn’t make it stop nor does flying banners condemning the chancellor or badly implying the chair of the BOT is acting unethically. These are battles that no one will win and in the end it only makes UNC fans look incredibly idiotic. I don’t care which side of the fence you are on in this mess. Engaging in this quasi-civil war within Tar Heel Nation is utterly pointless and does zero good, least of which for the school all of us claim to love.
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If UNC wants people to forget about Butch, they probably should ask him to stay away from the program. The thing where he still hangs around is weird.
Amen, THF.
THF -
A friendly suggestion: The only way to step away from it is to step away from it.
You run what I suspect is a well-read site. The way to actually help make this crud die down is to refuse to post anything more about it. From now on, just concentrate on what we’re doing on the field.
We can’t control what other people say, but we can control whether we react to it. The less we do, the less incentive they’ll have to continue. What makes them tick is not either accuracy or approval, but attention. Deprive them of that, and you’ll be helping to deprive them of their oxygen.
I agree in principle with most of what you say, and with your ultimate conclusions.
I will say that Landreth’s piece, while making inferences and drawing conclusions that cannot be substantiated, is not totally off-base. I have been troubled for some time by the inter-relationships that do exist among entities that have been the most adamant about Davis’s firing, especially with CBC and its close ties to NC State sports. Eddy is not wrong to bring these linkages to light, but he should not have tried to connect the dots without more information.
rath,
I normally agree with that but sometimes it is important to stand up and say something needs to stop.
Riothamus,
Every school, every board anywhere has people who have their connections all over the place. Just because CBC has ties to NCSU doesn’t mean anything nor is in influencing the on-air opinions. In fact, Landreth was completely off based in referencing on-air calls for Davis’ firing when, as far as I know, that did not happen on any of the local radio shows. Adam Gold and Joe Ovies didn’t call for Davis to be fired they simply said they thought he would not be head coach after the 2011 season. David Glenn wasn’t doing it and besides his program is syndicated. Not sure about the morning crew on 620 AM but as far as I know no one with WRAL or 99.9 The Fan made a direct call to fire Davis. The N&O is another story as we all know.
I just don’t buy Hargrove being connected ever so slightly to CBC or N&O means he exerted influence to oust Davis.
Again,we are talking about a 28-23 coach who did not win more than eight games and presided over a major NCAA scandal. Him getting fired has 100% to do with that and zero percent to do with anything else.
I often like Landreth’s writing, but this one was full of crap and very irresponsible.
THF - Gold did say Davis should be fired on at least one occasion, of that I am certain, and he implied it for some time. The CBC/Wolfpack Sports Marketing linkage is a deep one, and I know it goes back decades from personal experience. I don’t think that means the on-air guys at 99.9 are necessarily slanting their coverage, but I do sense a compartmentalizing of sports radio to the point where we have “home” teams. It may simply be smart marketing, if that is their audience, but it is what it is and my point is that this should be known.
Few things in life are more sordid than a two bit journalist with a ten gallon agenda.
Facts speak louder than self righteous outrage.
Landreth and Chansky should both be ashamed.
I know on other occasions he has said something to the effect that he thought Davis would not be in the job past the 2011 season. Regardless, I don’t buy that WRAL or even the N&O are being driven by some “get UNC” or “get Davis” agenda which is the foundation for all of this stuff Landry is kicking around.
And yes, WRAL has always had ties to NCSU based in part on the hometown angle. However the coverage has never struck me as skewed.
If Landreth wants to explore the relationship WRAL has with NCSU then he should do so. But none of that has anything to do with Davis being fired.
It’s not that hard to understand the angst over Davis. To a lot of people who care about UNC football as much or more than they care about UNC basketball (a fairly small and longsuffering group in the UNC fanbase), Davis was a symbol of UNC at long last making a real commitment to football. He got 30K fans to a spring game that was on ESPN. He got Thursday night football and a stadium expansion and top recruits. He got us the nationally televised kickoff game against LSU. He was “coach big time”. Right now, for these folks, I think the firing of Davis feels like the death of that commitment. If we can make a good AD hire and the AD can make a good coaching hire (and I don’t see how we can or should promote someone from Davis’s staff, if your arguments about things happening on the coach’s watch are to apply), it might calm everyone down and get them on the same page again. The AD hire is crucial.
As for Landreth and Chansky, I completely agree. They (or whoever is funneling them stories) need to drop their campaigns.
BD could have left UNC for Arkansas but he stuck with us, plus it sounds like he still provides moral support to his players, so I do not know about BD being completely disloyal. I did hate the Navy blue in the uniforms. Also, did not Roy Williams spurn UNC for Kansas and only come to UNC on the wake of an investigation for repeated improper benefit violations and a hefty salary increase?
Yawper, our reasons for being uneasy about removing the interim tag from Withers may be different, we are together in our apprehension.
Bottom line, we cannot get so angry at Landreth that we begin to write like Landreth.
I am a huge football fan, but I have managed to move on to watching our next head coach improve to 5 - 0.
just deal with it for one more month, once Nov. rolls around no one will be talking about Butch aka the worst hire in UNC history
Oh how I harken for the simple days of:
“Hopefully his toe…”
or
“I’m getting high right now and…”
Times were simpler here at THF and of course across Tar Heel sports. I had trouble reading the Landreth copy you posted as it was so poorly written. I’m not sure what he’s trying to say or how I’m to interpret it. It’s that bad. I see where you are headed though. He is trying to create the most tenuous of links and fails. It’s almost like that Kevin Bacon analogy - see there is a link.
Thanks for standing up to the ignorance. You have high standards and I appreciate your work on the site.
I will tell you, I’ve got a fever for more cowbell baby. That is if cowbell means beating the life out of ECU this Saturday. Go Heels.
This message brought to you by Nobody - the only person left that Dana Bible outthinks.
Right or wrong, depending on your perspective I think Yawper hits at a salient point as to why Tar Heel Nation is very divided over the handling of the BD issue. I too am afraid that Withers will be stamped as our next coach which would be a huge error in my opinion. This issue is so tinder-box sensitive that neither side will be able to convince the other side that they are wrong. Better to just let it go both ways and see what transpires. For the record I advocated for a Paul Johnson hiring (a NC native) but that was not high profile enough for many. He is not being blamed for the vacated title game at GT. He also continues to kick this coaching staff’s butt every year.
Who is this Butch Davis guy everyone keeps talking about?
It still amazes me how UNC fans will defend and back Butch Davis? What is the love affair with this man. Yes, he put a lot of talent into the pros, but he did that at Miami.
He couldnt beat State, GT, or Miami on a regualar basis, he couldnt develop a solid QB, hes had one of the worst staffs in the ACC, and barely made it to the Charlotte bowl..
^T.J. Yates. And, it looks like, Bryn Renner isn’t too shabby. Carry on.
I do think the N&O wanted to see Butch gone, but not because it has connections with Hargrove. The N&O has been yearning for a Pulitzer for quite some time and it’s not a secret that the quickest path to a Pulitzer is investigative journalism.
Generally, though, to get that Pulitzer, it helps to be able to point at an action by the institution being investigated and say, “See? That action was a response to our coverage.” Butch’s firing helps. Their obsession with prize-winning also explains the “I’m not saying, I’m just saying” coverage, because it means they’ve found evidence that they think is damning, but they can’t find the sources to connect the dots.
Essentially the N&O saw the scandal break last year and felt this was its chance if they could expand the story. So, they started throwing every dart that they could find at the wall to see which ones would land closest to the bull’s eye.
Come on notorious, those navy jerseys were nice! I was hoping they would come out in all navy vs. Miami-sweet.
^T.J. Yates. And, it looks like, Bryn Renner isn’t too shabby. Carry on.
Comments like that prove my point thank you!….
You want to shut Landreth up? Ask him how much time he spends worrying about whether or not our players are getting a good education or what they plan to do after they’re done playing football.
T.J. Yates holds how many school records? Who was the head coach during his tenure? What was your point again?
I agree that Landreth’s column was over the top. Maybe Hargrove does have conflict of interest issues, but Eddie hasn’t proven them here, and writing what he did seems irresponsible.
Having said that, I am not going to “let it go.” And I’m not one of those who’s “in love with Butch.” I’m willing to acknowledge that there was a case for firing Butch, but the time was not eight days before practice.
If Butch needed to go, then so does Thorp. Thorp can’t blame Butch for all of the problems the investigation uncovered when so many of those problems developed within the College of Arts and Sciences.
At this point, I think the only thing that will bring the University community back together is for Thorp to resign or be fired. At least then both sides will have something in common - they’ll both be p****d off and starting from scratch.