According to a report from The News & Observer, a member of Roy Williams’ staff might have a connection to the academic scandal at North Carolina.
Eric Hoots, who now tracks players’ academic progress as the assistant to the athletic director and director of player development for Williams, apparently sent e-mails to the architect of the fake classes that existed at UNC for almost twenty years.
Here is an excerpt:
In 2007, when Eric Hoots was a video coordinator for UNC-Chapel Hill’s men’s basketball team, he sent an email to Deborah Crowder, the architect of the bogus “paper” classes that existed for nearly two decades.
In that message, he forwarded “AFAM Papers” to Crowder, who was the office manager for the African and Afro-American Studies department. “Thanks for the help,” he wrote. “I will see you soon…”
Today, Hoots tracks players’ academic progress as the assistant to the athletic director and director of player development for coach Roy Williams; his duties include serving as the program’s in-office academic coordinator. It’s unclear if he knew what Crowder was up to back then. He and UNC officials have declined to say whether the papers he forwarded to Crowder were for classes later found to be bogus.
Critics of how the university has handled the scandal say UNC and Hoots should be more forthcoming.
“It looks bad, and if people see it, given (UNC’s) track record, they are going to assume it’s bad,” said Burley Mitchell, a former state Supreme Court chief justice who served as a member of the UNC system Board of Governors.
A second email involving Hoots has the same subject. It lists two attachments, described as “summerpaper1.doc; summerpaper2.doc.” UNC redacted the sender’s name and the date of the email, which suggests the sender is a student.
“Hey Eric,” the sender wrote. “You dont (sic) realize how much I owe you for this. I’m gonna be the one that pays for lunch from here on out or something. And I just put those papers as an attachment.”
