The NCAA has announced that two football players from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill will never again compete in an NCAA program, because both accepted thousands of dollars in gifts from sports agents and then lied about it.
Greg Little and Robert Quinn were declared permanently ineligible after the NCAA found that each had accepted about $5,000 in gifts—including jewelry and trips to Miami—from sports agents. In three interviews with university staff members and NCAA investigators, the athletes had provided “false and misleading information” about their actions, the association said, in violation of ethical-conduct rules.
The multiple occasions on which Little and Quinn accepted the gifts, as well as their lack of truthfulness about it when pressed for information, were key factors in the decision to declare both athletes permanently—rather than temporarily—ineligible, the NCAA said.
The university announced the dismissal of the third player, Marvin Austin, this morning, for accepting agents’ gifts. (Unlike the other two, Austin’s case did not go before the NCAA’s student-athlete reinstatement staff.)
None of the players has competed in a game this season; Austin had been suspended since September 1.
North Carolina’s athletic director, like other leaders who have vowed in recent weeks to shield college athletes from the influence of agents, said today that he would “repair the environment” in which the rules violations occurred.
“College football is a wonderful game, but we need to closely examine and address the agent-related problems,” Dick Baddour said in a prepared statement, ESPN.com reported. “The University of North Carolina pledges to do all it can to do that.”
North Carolina has reluctantly been in the spotlight ever since news reports surfaced in August that some football players had accepted perks from agents and that a tutor had written papers for several of the students. (The NCAA is investigating the latter claims as well.)
Robert Malekoff, an assistant professor of sport studies at Guilford College, said the turmoil at a university that has long been considered one of the “good guys” in college sports could tarnish more than just the Tar Heels’ reputation. The whole enterprise of big-time college sports suffers, he said.
“When there’s huge publicity about something like this, that’s one more chink in the educational nonprofit status,” Mr. Malekoff said. “The worst thing about it is now everybody gets painted this way.”
