Oh for “a Buford Pusser”….. sigh.

BobLee
July12/ 2012

  Maybe it’s my fault.  I did that last column on TGU and now UNC’s self-inflicted gut shot starts bleeding again.   Like Prometheus….., we seem forever chained to a rock and doomed to having our regenerated liver eaten daily by birds of prey…. with / without “some fava beans and a nice chianti”.   If we are ever going to clean up the smell of corruption & cover-up in the public’s eye we need “a Buford Pusser” to emerge swinging a 2×4 and taking names…..

More documents are being released and, like earlier released documents, what is “redacted” is more damaging than what is shown.   When and by whom was the term “redacted” created anyway.   Did Al Capone “redact” his tax returns?  Did Nixon redact those 18 minutes?  Honest people with nothing to hide don’t “redact” or “take the 5th”.  Real Men Don’t Redact!

Fear of FERPA …. give me a break!  The reputation of a once-renown institution has been shredded over exaggerated fear of lawsuits by a handful of petty criminals.  “Academicians” are beyond clueless about how the general public – and “the media” – view a mess like this one.  Nothing about any of this has “made sense” to any “man on the street” whether that street is Franklin Street, Hillsborough St or main street in Mt Airy.

And “the media”….. remember my analogy of the optimist finding the pile of crap and digging furiously to “find the pony”?  The media sees a pony and immediately starts writing about “where’s the pile o’ crap”.  It’s who they are.  It’s what they do.  Deal with it.

Between Jennifer Wiley and “Warren Martin’s girlfriend” refusing to speak….. Julius running off to deepest darkest Africa…. and releasing records that are redacted out the wazoo, my alma mater could not appear more guilty if she were standing over a dead body holding a smoking gun, a bloody butcher knife, a sign around her neck saying “I did it”; and an Alfred E. Neuman expressiion on her face.

UNC is up to its armpits in quicksand yelling “someone throw us an anvil, an anchor and a dozen bowling balls…. please.”

With Butcher and Baddour gone, I like pretty much everyone still fogging a mirror over there in the UNC Administration.  Some considerably more than others, of course, but I want SOMEONE to emerge as “Buford Pusser” and start cleaning up the stink in the basement.

Holden Thorp oozed testosterone when he fired Butcher.  OK, “oozed” is a bit much perhaps.  And his 2×4 was wrapped in a $2.7M golden parachute…. but he took decisive action.  Just like w/ Buford, his adversaries came at him with guns ablazin’ and threats aflyin’ but he did what had to be done.

But all this “we are moving forward confident that Marvin won’t tweet any more and hoping nothing else will jump up and bite us in the butt” rhetoric is akin to having a nest of dead skunks in the basement smelling to high heaven and our solution is to announce we are installing new wallpaper in the foyer.

Sure….. anyone with any insider status knew John Blake’s well-earned reputation over the past 20 years.  “Black Santa” was not created by a cross-eyed goober on PackPride.  It was Blake’s national nickname.

Sure….. how Butch “cleaned up Miami” (wink wink) was well-documented by everyone EXCEPT the BOT3 apparently.

That Butch & Blake were stocking the football pantry with SEC-type “student-athletes” of marginal levels of literacy was not a secret.   They BRAGGED about it.  After 30 years of UNC fans mocking the thugs of the SEC….. a faction of UNC fans somehow decided if you put an illiterate SEC-thug in a C-Blue helmet he magically becomes a HipHop Horatio Alger studying Shakespeare by flashlight, building Habitats for Humanity between classes and ripping heads off opponents on Fall Saturdays in Kenan.  Duh…….  In truth Butch & Blake were simply turning Chapel Hill into Starkville North.

OK, Dickie was scared spitless of Butch and was never going to question him or suggest he not be so obvious.  How scared was Dickie of Butch ….. he wouldn’t even suggest he wear Carolina blue on the sidelines.

Holden Thorp gets hammered for being naïve about the realities of big time college sports.  Yes, Thorp was young and inexperienced and handed a Gordian Knot to try and unravel.   And decided to wear a pair of oven mitts while doing so.   BUT what about Gordon Gee at Ohio State?

Gee is the highest paid on-campus Poobah in America at a public institution.  He had been a Poobah at numerous other schools including Vanderbilt in the SEC.  If any academic Poobah should have known what a gooey mess college FB & BkB is it would be Gordon Gee.   And that bow-tied clown made the classic statement “I hope the football coach doesn’t fire me” when their s***storm broke with Jim Tressel.

College administrators are as totally out-of-touch when it comes to the realities of big time college sports as a community organizer is in being Commander-in-chief of the US military.

Hellfire…. it was never a mystery how The Great Unpleasantness was allowed to develop.  It would still be thriving had Marvin not tweeted.  Butch and Blake would still be bringing in Dwight Jones’ and Dante Paige-Moss’ and anyone else they wanted to….. Dickie would still be babbling on about The Carolina Way….. and Larry Fedora would be in College Station working for Eric Hyman.

A lot of UNC fans would still believe in the Tooth Fairy….. and the bottom-feeders of the ABC community would be pissin’ & moanin’ and belly-achin’ about something else.  The term “ABC” was not created when Marvin tweeted.

Alls I want is “a Buford Pusser” to emerge out of the obfuscating fog and start swinging a 2×4.

Stop handing out golden parachutes and stop redacting….

Start kickin’ ass and start naming names…..

And, for Gawd Sakes….. Bring ALL the dead skunks up out of the basement before bragging about the new wallpaper in the foyer.

There has to be a better answer than “….. our mess isn’t as bad as Penn State’s.”

 

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