Report: UNC players took 35 bogus classes during 2005 title run
North Carolina men's basketball players accounted for 35 bogus "paper" classes during the Tar Heels' 2004-05 national championship season, reports Dan Kane of the News & Observer.
Kane reports that nine of the 35 classes came during the fall semester, when spring eligibility is determined, with 26 classes coming in the spring. UNC won the 2005 men's basketball championship in April.
The classes did not meet and "yielded easy, high grades" awarded by Department of African and Afro-American Studies administrator Deborah Crowder, who was the architect of the university’s academic scandal.
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In June, one of the members of the 2004-05 team, Rashad McCants, told ESPN he rarely went to class for about half his time at North Carolina, that tutors wrote his term papers and that he only stayed academically eligible because of bogus classes.
He also told ESPN that he made the dean's list in spring of 2005 but did not attend any of his four classes. He received an A-minus in all four.
That same month, the News & Observer reportedthat five members of the 2004-05 championship team, including four key players, "had relied heavily on the paper classes."
In October, the university released the report on its latest investigation into alleged academic fraud, detailing how a lack of oversight allowed Crowder and former chairman Julius Nyang'oro to create so-called "paper classes."
- Molly Geary
