“I don’t tell anyone that I’m an athlete until they know who I am as a student,” he said. “I go to their office hours and I say, ‘Hey, I’m John. I’m in your class, blah, blah, blah. Then I kind of establish that I’m an athlete.”
Devon Ramsay, who played UNC football from 2008 to 2011, said he felt he was fortunate to come well-prepared from a boarding high school, but still struggled.
“I’ve never had to work so hard and have such rigorous academic work at the same time,” he said.
“I think that that’s a recipe for disaster.”
The Problems
Discussion about student-athletes was recently revamped after a CNN report in January. Former athletic learning specialist Mary Willingham claimed in the article that 60 percent of 183 UNC athletes admitted between 2004 and 2012 could not read above an eighth grade level, something that was later discounted by an outside group of reports commissioned by UNC.
UNC tennis player Nelson Vick said Willingham’s claims were troubling to him, and that he has a 3.7 GPA at UNC.
“So being accused of not being able to read at a fifth-grade level is fairly insulting, and I promise I work harder than a lot of people in my classes,” he said.
But UNC’s larger story began with a tweet three years ago.
“I live In club LIV so I get the tenant rate ... bottles comin like its a giveaway,” former UNC football player Marvin Austin tweeted. This drew the NCAA’s attention in June 2010, which launched an investigation into improper benefits given to football players.
That tweet was just the tip of the iceberg of a scandal that has been plagued by a series of administrative shakeups including the dismissal of a football coach, resignation of an athletic director and, much later, the resignation of a chancellor after years of pressure dealing with these issues.
Meanwhile, then-Department of African and Afro-American Studies faced scrutiny due to no-show courses with disproportionate numbers of student-athletes. A year later, department head Julius Nyang’oro was asked to retire.
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Ramsay was one the players at the heart of the football scandal at its inception, after receiving help from a tutor on a paper. He was declared permanently ineligible to play during the NCAA investigation, but later reinstated after an appeal.
“During the investigation it felt like the school had my best interests at heart. I don’t think that was the case,” he said. “Basically, UNC doesn’t have any leverage on the NCAA, and I got stuck in the middle between those two.”
The investigation also resulted in scholarship reductions and a bowl ban for 2012.
Fast forward to 2013, and enter Chancellor Carol Folt along with Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Jim Dean. They were followed by the creation of the Student-Athlete Academic Initiative Working Group last fall, which aims to examine every policy associated with athletics.
The group includes Michelle Brown, a former college athlete who is the director of the Academic Support Program for Student Athletes. Since taking her position in May, Brown said she has heard many stories surrounding UNC athletics — and they’re discouraging.
“There are lots of stories out there, and we need to continue to tell our story — the student-athlete’s story, really. It’s been very disheartening for many student-athletes, and they deserve better than that,” she said.
Brown said communication has improved since the football coaching staff began meeting with the academic support staff on a weekly basis.
Brown said football coach Larry Fedora, who was hired in January 2012, has taken steps to enhance the relationship between athletics and academics by keeping what’s best for the students in mind.
“But (Fedora’s) very supportive,” Brown said. “We’re thankful for that good working relationship, where we’re working together on the same thing for the student-athlete.”
At a March Board of Trustees meeting, several student-athletes said their biggest challenge at UNC was their strenuous schedules, something Athletic Director Bubba Cunningham has said he agrees with.
Mike Ingersoll, who played football at UNC from 2007-10, said almost every minute of his day was set by a strict schedule, which at its worst consumed 19 hours of his day .
“My schedule was completely dictated by my practice schedule,” Ingersoll said.
Ramsay said the academic support team was more helpful to athletes who had academic plans for their futures.
“But if you weren’t really sure, then it was easier to get lumped into a COMM major or an AFAM major,” he said. “Most of the guys do this major and the class schedule goes well with practice schedules.”
Ingersoll said another obstacle he faced was money.
“A full scholarship doesn’t cover a majority of the cost of things,” he said. “I was given a food stipend every month for about $300, and this comes out to about $9.72 a day to eat off. This was OK during the season because we had breakfast and dinner provided for us, but in the off season we had the entire weekend to worry about.”
The Suggestions
In February, Northwestern University football players sued, suggesting that they were employees that could be unionized, and ultimately a regional board of the National Labor Relations Board ruled in their favor.
Ramsay said he thinks unionization could help with the schedule-balancing issues that UNC athletes face.
“There’s no entity that looks out strictly for the college athlete. It’s unrealistic for me to be able to fund anything to protect my rights. Creating (a union) would be an amazing step for college athletes,” he said.
In terms of academic-athletic balance, Ramsay said a football major might be helpful for student-athletes who are sure they want to go to the NFL.
“I think it would be OK for guys who know from the get-go that that’s what they want to do,” he said. “But I’m also nervous that some guys would feel pressured to do that major and really kind of lose the opportunity of a college education.”
Ingersoll also said he thinks there should be a program in college that prepares student-athletes for life in professional leagues.
“Careers in the NBA and NFL are some of the most unique and sought after careers in the world,” he said. “Why don’t you put (athletes) in classes about money earned, invested and owed?”
Ingersoll compared student athletes to students who go to college for other specialties, such as fine arts.
“Drama is a major for students who want to go on Broadway — why can’t I take classes for the NFL as far as managing money, dealing with the lifestyle and dealing with women,” he said.
Changing support
Brown said services at the Loudermilk Center for Excellence provide a good academic atmosphere.
“I would have loved it as a student-athlete myself to have had the facility and the resources and the support,” she said. “Because you do find challenges as a student-athlete and sometimes you have no one to help you through it.”
McGill also said he felt his coaches and advisers did everything possible to help him juggle his athletic and academic schedules. But he said not every teammate took advantage of that.
“You try to give them help as best as you can. Some of them take it, some of them don’t. And you’ll see how it plays out over the course of their career,” he said.
McGill said the athletic department made it difficult to cheat or skip class, but there were ways around it.
“If you wanted to cut a corner, you could easily do it,” he said. “It was not all on the shoulders of other people to make you become more as a student, just like it was not on the shoulders of the coaches to force you to become a better player.”
However, McGill said some athletes faced tougher challenges starting off at UNC.
“They’re not coming from the same places and the education they come from and the background is not the same,” he said.
Jacoby Watkins, who played football from 2003 to 2005, said help was available for those who sought it out.
“We had a great academic support system,” he said. “We got a lot of help and a lot of support. You just had to take advantage of it,” Watkins said.
Kyle Ralph, who played football from 2002 to 2006, said he never saw an athlete who fit Willingham’s claims.
“I’ve seen the (Willingham) report, and none of the kids I came in with would have been like that. I’d be very hard-pressed to find anyone on the team with me that I didn’t think could read or write at at least an eighth grade level,” he said.
Ramsay said the problems associated with student-athletes are part of a bigger culture within the system.
“Hopefully more people will come forward from other schools and show this was not a random event or anything,” he said. “This is a problem everywhere.”
Michael Lananna, Daniel Schere, Bryan Frantz and Dylan Howlett contributed to this report.
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