Former University of North Carolina guard Rashad McCants scored plenty of buckets during his time with the Tar Heels. What he wasn’t doing, however, was attending classes.
The UNC standout said in an interview with ESPN’s “Outside the Lines” that he rarely, if ever, showed up for his courses at Chapel Hill. His academic advisers and tutors even allegedly wrote some of his papers.
“When you get to college, you don’t go to class, you don’t do nothing, you just show up and play,” McCants said. “You’re not there to get an education, though they tell you that.”
The guard said he could have been academically ineligible during the 2004-05 season, a year in which UNC won the NCAA title. McCants was the second-best scorer on the team that season but also did not show up to his four classes in the spring semester. He received A’s in all of his courses that semester.
McCants said he was part of the system where student-athletes at the university would not have to attend classes, but instead write one term paper in the African and Afro-American Studies Department. Tar Heels head coach Roy Williams was well aware of this process, McCants said.
These claims are similar to that of former UNC learning specialist Mary Willingham, who earlier this year said players from the football and basketball teams took part in the paper-class system. Her research at the school from 2004 to 2012 indicated that many of these athletes could not read above the eighth-grade level.
Though McCants came out of college as a national champion, he said he wishes he did things differently during his time at UNC, and that the school needs to change its ways.
“Stand up,” McCants said. “It’s time for everybody to really just be accountable.”
Photo via Twitter/@SInow
