Andy Thomason was a student at UNC when news of the academic-athletic scandal first broke. Now, almost a decade later, he wrote a book about it, which will be released in October.
"Discredited: The UNC Scandal and College Athletics' Amateur Ideal" details the 2010s academic-athletic scandal that rocked the University and its athletic program, alleging UNC was unethical and provided unequal opportunities to scholarship athletes.
Thomason was editor-in-chief of The Daily Tar Heel in 2012. He went from covering the scandal at the DTH to covering it at the Chronicle of Higher Education, where he is now an assistant managing editor.
“When I started working at the Chronicle, I got a better understanding about how higher education works, and I found the marriage between big-time athletics and college education,” Thomason said.
In 2016, Thomason became interested in writing "Discredited" and ended up working with an editor from the University of Michigan Press.
The book is already getting attention from around the community.
Kevin Schwartz, former general manager of the DTH, said Thomason had great leadership and a skill for writing.
“I’m sure this will be a great book,” Schwartz said. “It is a very anticipated work because there needs to be more sources discussing this topic.”
But Thomason's book is not the first about the scandal. Jay Smith, a UNC professor, co-authored a book about the 2010 allegations — called "Cheated: The UNC Scandal, the Education of Athletes, and the Future of Big-Time College Sports" — that was released in 2015. Smith is just one of many sources interviewed in Thomason's book.
