Former UNC football player says academic counselors led him to no-show classes

Michael McAdoo was kicked off the UNC football team in 2010. (Joe Robbins/Getty Images)

Former North Carolina defensive end Michael McAdoo said he was steered toward four no-show classes by the school's academic counselors, according to Dan Kane of The News & Observer in Raleigh, N.C.

McAdoo, who told Kane the academic environment for UNC athletes was "a scam," was kicked off the football team in 2010 after a tutor did "improper work" on three of his term papers. He sued the school for breach of contract, but the university countered by saying it had kept him on athletic scholarship.

The no-show classes, including AFAM 280: Blacks in North Carolina, which McAdoo was enrolled in, led to a fraud charge against Julius Nyang'oro, the former African and Afro-American Studies chairman at the school. The classes were reportedly filled with football players.

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“They pretty much put me in that class,” McAdoo said of the counselors in the Academic Support Program for Student-Athletes. “They pretty much told me ... that I might want to consider that class and I really don’t have much time to think about it, so [I might] want to take that class while it was available.”

More than 200 classes either confirmed or suspected of having never met are being used as evidence in a lawsuit representing college athletes who want a cut of the revenues from items sold with their names, images and likenesses, according to The News & Observer.

"The athletes are using the case to contest the NCAA’s claim that the athletes were getting a meaningful education in exchange for helping universities and the NCAA make millions of dollars from their exploits on the football field or basketball court," Kane wrote about the five-year-old case, which will be heard in court in June.

After two years with the Ravens, McAdoo played the 2013 season for the Winnipeg Blue Bombers of the CFL.

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