Weren’t you perplexed at this week’s $795,000 For A Walk-On. Your secondary reaction was (1) unbounded glee or (2) more holocaust denial depending on your allegiances; but your first reaction was WHAT DA HELL ?? Mine was….
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NOTE: With the dawn of a new day (Saturday), I remain a captive of waaaay too much Flagship Fodder. It is like I’ve been handcuffed to a 55 gallon drum of jelly doughnuts. The key to the cuffs is at the bottom of the drum. I must devour all the jelly doughnuts to free myself before moving on to other venues of abject human foolishness. ….. But what harm is there in “just one more” UNCCH jelly doughnut ???
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…. (1) The Aloft Incident was no more Hazing than it was domestic terrorism. The Rude Boys did NOT strip the Walk-on nekkid and drop him off in rural Chatham County on a rainy night. The Rude Boys did NOT make the Walk-on have sex with a domesticated farm animal or even hold a lighted match while reciting the Greek alphabet…. Those are hazing.
UNCCH’s calling this hazing sets a ridiculous $$$ standard for what an aggrieved party will expect after the next actual “hazing”. Not just at UNCCH but anywhere. Hazing is stoopid whether it occurs in frats, sororities, military, sports teams or at summer camp. It is also impossible to stop because society can never legislate out stoopidity. Which is why we will always have liberals. Ooops.
This was a buncha guys ganging up on one guy over some alleged grievance likely involving a girl and beating him up with fists and feet. Maybe it was aggravated assault or assault and battery or whatever. It was NOT hazing.
…. (2) Why was The Settlement SO FREAKIN’ LARGE ??? Had the amount been “only $25K” THAT would have seemed significant and would have been a popular 
topic on monkey boards and around water coolers. The rabidly partisan rival mobs would have flung feces at one another for 48 hours because that’s what rival partisan mobs do…. $795,000 is A LOTTA $$$ to anyone not a sultan …. a rap mogul …. a drug kingpin …. or a really deep-pocketed Fat Cat. ….. Why was The Settlement SO FREAKIN’ LARGE?
…. (3) Why was there a $$$ settlement at all? Yes… the Walk-on got beat up by the Rude Boys but, by every account, it was no more than the scrapes and bruises following a bar fight. His “injuries” were so minor that he was back practicing football within a week or so…. and two years later he is still playing football. He did not lose an eye or ANY mobility to function in daily life…. or at a level to play on a Power Five football team.
This was NOT a situation where a John Edwards’-type would parade in a woeful “victim” wrapped in bandages to play on the sympathies of a jury. Plus…. There was NO JURY or even a judge. This was a mediated settlement. In a mediation, both sides – UNCCH / The Boyer Family – agree to plead their respective sides of the case to a professional mediator with both sides agreeing to abide by his/her decision. I’m not even sure anyone is even under oath in a mediation. ….. Whoa…. Could that “not under oath” be the key here?
Was there something at stake that both sides knew was more valuable to UNCCH than simply a whole lot of money? Money isn’t real to academia executives. Was UNCCH’s strategy in the mediation that “if throwing a LOTTA money at this” makes it go away, then do it; no matter how much a LOTTA might be. The alternative to a LOTTA $$$ being too risky.
Remember this happened two years ago smack in the middle of Wainstein / Martin / TGU blah blah blah…. Four years after Marvin Hits Send.
Rude Boys Beat The Crap Outta Walk-On was totally unrelated to Marvin’s Tweet…. or John Blake Who? ….. or Jim Martin’s flub-filled report…. or Wainstein’s powerpoint show…. or Deborah and Burgess’ Scheme…. or Goofy Roy said WHAT?…. or even PJ’s crime spree. They were all straws piling up on the camel’s back in terms of The All Important REPUTATION of That Most Hallowed Institution.
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NOTE: I think Larry Fedora is a very solid Power Five Head FB Coach. Given free rein and an unlimited budget I’m sure he can recruit/coach the on-field talent to be successful against peer programs with similar free rein and unlimited budgets.
IMO, Larry Fedora is no more/less “a good guy” or “a bad guy” than his Power Five peers. Big Time College Sports, like Big Time Anything involves a great deal of high-risk situational ethics.
Should Fedora or any other UNCCH official be fired / fined / incarcerated / or forced to eat a rotten egg on the steps of Wilson Library for what they did/did not do in The Aloft Incident? Who knows; but none of the above is even a remote possibility. I’m more concerned with The Cardinals finding a new Closer to replace Trevor Rosenthal ASAP!
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Since this story broke, I made and received more than a few calls from various inside sources…. peripheral sources…. and my elite go-to-guys who know stuff a
nd possess Sherlockian instincts when it comes to connecting dots.
The theme that keeps reoccurring in everyone’s likely scenario re: The Aloft Incident is ….
Our old buddy Sgt Schultz bit Larry Fedora in the butt BIG TIME. “Sgt Know Nuuthing” took a $795,000 bite out of UNCCH’s secret cash stash because of how Larry mishandled the incident.
You may recall when this story broke….
Fedora claimed he never even knew about the Aloft incident until a week or so later.
File THAT ONE with Butch’s saying I didn’t really know John Blake that well…. and Dean never knowing what Deborah & Burgess were cooking up…. and Rick Pitino saying …. and Art Briles saying…. He who lives by “Sgt Schultz” can also find himself hung by his cajones by Ol’ Schultz.
In truth, Fedora knew about it almost instantly as every micro-manager Head Coach would, if not that night certainly early the next morning…. and he took immediate steps to “squelch it”. Uh Oh!
The Walk-on was a Chapel Hill kid so there were those of influence around town who might be able to convince his folks to keep it from going KABOOM. A sound strategy to consider IF it works…. a very risky one if it doesn’t. This was “a didn’t work” time.
What timeline of what I knew and when I knew it did Larry give Bubba? …. give UNCCH legal admins? ….. give the Boyers ….. give CHPD …. give the media?
Did all these other parties know the real timeline or bought Larry’s version or did the latter first and then continued to even when they learned the former?
Once the original statement of who, what, when was on the record…. any later modification is pulling at a loose thread on a sweater or yanking a soup can out of a grocery store end-aisle display.
How valuable were The Rude Boys to the team’s success to risk a cover up to protect them? Missing the Liberty Game did not even rise to wrist slap level.
Has UNC Football reached the level that “we have to let the bad boyz do what they wanna do or WE RISK HURTING RECRUITING.” …. The legendary concern of Trustee Barbara Rosser-Hyde. Also what Baylor was very much scared of….
Not equating beating up a Walk-on to Baylor’s raping coeds but as the list of who knows grows it WILL reach a critical mass and SPLATT.
$795,000 later – It is easy to say If Larry Fedora had only….
…. (1) Known darn well it was going to get out…. (2) That “cover-ups” very very rarely work for very long so it would be UNsquelchable …. (3) applied whatever degree of Solomonesque wisdom fit the scope of the situation – without regard for the talent depth of his defensive backfield – and (4) issued a public statement within the legal confines of Hippa – Pippa – Frippa et al…. that was HONEST and (5) did not impugn the credibility of his administrative upline ….. and (6) realized that the consequences of up-front honesty are rarely as painful as the consequences of “but you lied” ….. or, in this case ….. as EXPENSIVE.
Had the mediation NOT been settled whatever the $$$$s, there was the risk of a jury trial with witnesses UNDER OATH recounting who knew what and when …..
The Incident was never more than some college kids got into a fight over a girl. It did not involve muslims, gays or guns. No one was seriously injured. If it rose to the level of “charges filed” it woulda been easily dismissed with a small fine and some meaningless community service yadda yadda.
But…..
As soon as Larry Fedora and Sgt Schultz chose to go for the squelch…. He and The University would find The Road To Perdition to be a VERY expensive journey.
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