Our pal Brady McCollough at the LA Times reached out to folks at UNC to get a sense for Carol L. Folt's approach to the scandals that athletic department faced and how she might approach athletics at USC.
https://www.latimes.com/sports/usc/la-sp-usc-sports-president-carol-folt-20190320-story.html
For those that can't access the story, the gist is there were mixed feelings about the way she handled the Tar Heels' academic fraud scandal.
From the story:
North Carolina understood a loophole in the NCAA's bylaws that stated a school had to find itself in violation of academic fraud in order for the NCAA to punish the school. Despite North Carolina’s admission to SACS, the university switched course and told the NCAA that it was not guilty of academic fraud because the classes in question were not created specifically for athletes and were taken just as often by non-athletes.
“She turned around and, with a straight face, told the NCAA that UNC had not committed academic fraud after all, that it had been a ‘typo’ in communications with our accrediting agency,” said Jay Smith, a North Carolina history professor who co-wrote the book “Cheated: The UNC Scandal, the Education of Athletes, and the Future of Big-Time College Sports.”
“That was a stunning act of hypocrisy that she and her team were willing to carry out. The whole thing was just disorienting in its dishonesty. She lost the respect of a lot of people when that happened.”
And …
“USC athletics has every reason to be delighted by this appointment,” Smith said. “They’re probably doing handstands over at USC athletics, because she has proven herself to be an enabler of the worst forms of corruption of which big-time sports are associated. She is a cheerleader, not a reformer, and the folks at USC athletics will be very pleased with how she conducts herself.”
But …
For every critic of Folt in Chapel Hill, there is an advocate who feels she was thrown into a no-win situation and did what was in the best interest of the school.
“I was there, I was involved with her, and she certainly didn’t do anything that was unethical in any way to protect the program at the expense of doing the right thing,” said Chuck Duckett, the vice chair of the North Carolina board of trustees. “I don’t agree with that [criticism] in any way, shape or form, and I’m not an athletics at all costs guy. It’s a strange case. We can dissect the Carolina case, spend two days talking about it. I think she’s the right kind of person to help Southern Cal during this time.”
Also:
“I suspect that Carol will do a lot of listening,” said Dr. Lowry Caudill, a North Carolina board of trustees member who was chair of the board when Folt began at the school, “and it will take her some time to come up to speed, to understand the issues, the background and just the culture and history of the university.”
https://www.latimes.com/sports/usc/la-sp-usc-sports-president-carol-folt-20190320-story.html
For those that can't access the story, the gist is there were mixed feelings about the way she handled the Tar Heels' academic fraud scandal.
From the story:
North Carolina understood a loophole in the NCAA's bylaws that stated a school had to find itself in violation of academic fraud in order for the NCAA to punish the school. Despite North Carolina’s admission to SACS, the university switched course and told the NCAA that it was not guilty of academic fraud because the classes in question were not created specifically for athletes and were taken just as often by non-athletes.
“She turned around and, with a straight face, told the NCAA that UNC had not committed academic fraud after all, that it had been a ‘typo’ in communications with our accrediting agency,” said Jay Smith, a North Carolina history professor who co-wrote the book “Cheated: The UNC Scandal, the Education of Athletes, and the Future of Big-Time College Sports.”
“That was a stunning act of hypocrisy that she and her team were willing to carry out. The whole thing was just disorienting in its dishonesty. She lost the respect of a lot of people when that happened.”
And …
“USC athletics has every reason to be delighted by this appointment,” Smith said. “They’re probably doing handstands over at USC athletics, because she has proven herself to be an enabler of the worst forms of corruption of which big-time sports are associated. She is a cheerleader, not a reformer, and the folks at USC athletics will be very pleased with how she conducts herself.”
But …
For every critic of Folt in Chapel Hill, there is an advocate who feels she was thrown into a no-win situation and did what was in the best interest of the school.
“I was there, I was involved with her, and she certainly didn’t do anything that was unethical in any way to protect the program at the expense of doing the right thing,” said Chuck Duckett, the vice chair of the North Carolina board of trustees. “I don’t agree with that [criticism] in any way, shape or form, and I’m not an athletics at all costs guy. It’s a strange case. We can dissect the Carolina case, spend two days talking about it. I think she’s the right kind of person to help Southern Cal during this time.”
Also:
“I suspect that Carol will do a lot of listening,” said Dr. Lowry Caudill, a North Carolina board of trustees member who was chair of the board when Folt began at the school, “and it will take her some time to come up to speed, to understand the issues, the background and just the culture and history of the university.”
