clock menu more-arrow no yes mobile

Filed under:

A Letter To The Editor Perfectly Explains The 2018 UNC Mentality

It’s like the love child of Jimmy Swaggart and Bernie Madoff

If you buy something from an SB Nation link, Vox Media may earn a commission. See our ethics statement.

Liberty v North Carolina
CHAPEL HILL, NC - AUGUST 30: Chancellor Carol Folt poses for a selfie with North Carolina Tar Heels fans during their game against the Liberty Flames at Kenan Stadium on August 30, 2014 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
Photo by Grant Halverson/Getty Images

We saw this letter in the Daily Tar Heel and it just rubbed us the wrong way.

In a nutshell, it’s a Carolina fan criticizing Duke for recruiting one-and-done players because it harms the rivalry.

All we can say to that is: are you freaking kidding?

We know a lot of UNC fans who were at least chastened by UNC’s scandal and just as bad the epic fail in how the university responded to it. But way too many people - including many people who get paid by UNC - want to move on and pretend nothing has changed.

Well it has, at least for the rest of the ACC and in particular for Duke, State and Wake Forest.

The writer here is a good UNC fan we’re sure, but you have to work really hard to look past everything that has happened and UNC’s emulation of schools like UNLV or Auburn where nothing matters except winning.

Twenty years of academic fraud? Big deal. Situational ethics? Who needs an ethics center anyway? Just win.

It’s like the ad we hear on UNC’s local affiliate that calls the Tar Heels “the pride of the ACC.”

Your reputation is a smoking toxic ruin. You have to be serious deluded or utterly shameless to call yourself the “pride of the ACC” or to suggest that recruiting one-and-dones is on the same par as cheating for 20+years.

Duke and UNC played more than 50 times in basketball since 1990. UNC won a lot of those and none of them can be considered legitimate since many of the players were enrolled in fraudulent classes.

In other words, UNC cheated but Duke and everyone else they played were cheated.

In the 1970s there was a bumper sticker/slogan that said “if God is not a Tar Heel why is the sky Carolina Blue?”

That was pretty arrogant but the arrogance we see from Chapel Hill lately is way beyond that.

A little humility and some genuine contrition could have healed this already.

Unfortunately, the Carolina Way is now best defined as a combination of Win At All Costs, Screw The Rules, and Deny Everything. Whatever damage has been done was entirely self-inflicted.

If you're going to shop Amazon please start here and help DBR
Check out our October '17 t-shirt! || Drop us a line