Rashad McCants Opens Up About Sham Classes At UNC
Rashad McCants was a key member of North Carolina’s 2005 national championship team, and he opened up to Outside The Lines yesterday about his academic experience at the school. McCants says that he skipped classes, had papers written for him, and that head coach Roy Williams and the university had full knowledge of what was being done to keep basketball players eligible. The African-American studies department was allegedly the hub of the sham, where 15 UNC basketball players were enrolled for study in 2005. Here are the allegations listed out:
- McCants made the Dean’s List in that championship semester of spring ’05, despite never attending four of his classes. He received As in all of them.
- A copy of McCants’s transcript shows that in his classes outside Afro-American Studies, he received six Cs, one D and three Fs. In his Afro-American Studies courses, he received 10 As, six Bs, one C, and one D.
- McCants says he was steered by academic advisors to so-called “paper classes,” where attendance wasn’t necessary and his entire grade would be based on a single term paper at the end of the semester. He says tutors provided by the basketball program would simply write his papers for him.
Here were some of McCants candid remarks,
I thought it was a part of the college experience, just like He Got Game or Blue Chips. When you get to college, you don’t go to class, you don’t do nothing, you just show up and play. That’s exactly how it was. I think that was the tradition of college basketball, or college, period, any sport. You’re not there to get an education, though they tell you that. You’re there to make revenue for the college. You’re there to put fans in the seats. You’re there to bring prestige to the university by winning games.
The NCAA has declined to sanction UNC, saying the issues were in the field of academics and not athletics.
