Six years and three notices of allegations came to a head this month in Nashville, where UNC attended an NCAA hearing to defend themselves against five allegations leveled by committee on infractions. But the events of the hearing were closed to the public, and reporters waited in a hallway outside of the hearing for two days to catch a glimpse of what was going on behind closed doors. Editor-in-chief Tyler Fleming spoke to The Daily Tar Heel's Nashville team — James Tatter, assistant sports editor, and Nathan Klima, photo editor — to find out what it was like covering the hearing.
Tyler Fleming: Sitting outside a door for large periods of time — what did you do when people came out? Was there any announcement, or was it people just walking out and you tried to get their information?
James Tatter: Yeah, you had a bunch of reporters sitting in this hallway outside the Magnolia Ballroom. Any time that you saw the security guys lifting the ropes it meant someone was coming out of the door and you would just see a rush. Everyone pulled out their iPhones, all the camera guys would mount their cameras. Didn't matter who it is, we wanted to get a shot of it. You never knew whether it was going to be Roy (Williams) or the person that had just brought in lunch. Everyone wanted to get shots. We were lucky, Nathan — we were figuring out what staircase they were coming in and out of, so we got some good exclusive shots from that direction, which is what went on the front pack (on August 18).
TF: So do you think that was the most beneficial, trying to find the places that weren't necessarily the meeting room but where they were outside, just around Nashville?
Nathan Klima: Yeah, especially with the lack of access. Because essentially they had us roped off in one certain section outside the room. We couldn't even go around to get different angles. So we essentially just walked around and watched what they did. The next day was a much better day, because we knew what their movements were.
TF: What was the context of this? Why was it that important that you all went to Nashville?
JT: What was going on in that room is what everyone's been wondering for the past six years: what exactly did the University of North Carolina do wrong in the NCAA's eyes and what's a prosecutable offense and ultimately what is the penalty that the University will face for these offenses? So the University had the chance to present their case through documents and through testimony to the NCAA committee on infractions and they were in there for more than 12 hours making their case, which just shows you the amount of content they had to go through to prove themselves against these five allegations. So it's going to take 60 to 90 days before we know, but that was what everyone's been waiting for. The University of North Carolina made their case against the NCAA and is about to find out officially what they'll be charged with.
TF: What's next? What do we wait for, what do we want to hear and when can we expect a response?
JT: So right now, the NCAA committee on infractions is — I don't know if it's necessarily today, but over the next few weeks they'll be huddled in a room going over all these documents, going over all this testimony and deciding how strong UNC's case is and how strong the NCAA enforcement branch's case is, weighing those. Ultimately they have the opportunity to dismiss charges against the University but also add more charges to these five that have already been levied. And so they're going to decide which charges they're actually going to prosecute and what the penalty for those will be, on what they did find UNC guilty and not guilty of. Then they're going to create a report, and as I said, Stacey Osborne of the NCAA gave us a timeline of 60 to 90 days before we will get that report and the summary press release.
