The Carolina Way - Part 2

Summary

Campus Files: The Carolina Way - Part 2

Introduction

In the gripping second part of "The Carolina Way," Campus Files delves deep into one of the most significant academic fraud scandals in the history of American college sports. Hosted by Audacy and released on February 5, 2025, this episode unravels the intricate web of deceit at the University of North Carolina (UNC), highlighting the lengths to which the institution went to maintain its athletic prestige.

Background: UNC’s Athletic Prowess and “The Carolina Way”

UNC has long been synonymous with athletic excellence, particularly in basketball. The university's commitment to both sports and academics was epitomized by legendary figures like Michael Jordan and Dean Smith. Dean Smith, the iconic head coach from 1961 to 1997, not only transformed the basketball team into a national powerhouse with 879 victories but also championed a culture of integrity and academic excellence, known as "The Carolina Way."

Jay Smith eloquently describes the ethos:

“If you were a student at UNC, the Carolina Way is not something you could miss. It was everywhere. It was a source of institutional pride, the idea that you can win, and you can win the right way, you can win the Carolina way.” (03:53)

For decades, UNC boasted a spotless reputation, avoiding NCAA violations from 1961 until 2010, embodying the very essence of ethical college sports.

Uncovering the Scandal: The Fall of Integrity

The façade began to crack in July 2010 when a UNC football player’s social media bragging about his Miami nightclub experience drew the attention of NCAA investigators. This initial incident exposed deeper issues, revealing that several football players were receiving impermissible benefits, such as free plane tickets and hotel stays. Simultaneously, allegations surfaced that a tutor was writing portions of players' papers.

Margo Gray summarizes the discovery:

“There was a Potemkin Village of a curriculum here. The courses had titles. They had course numbers. It seemed that they had instructors. None of that was real.” (01:35)

The immediate aftermath saw UNC’s athletic performance plummet, with the football team recording a GPA of 2.1—their worst in over a decade.

Investigative Journalism and Whistleblowers

Editor Andy, author of The UNC Scandal and College Athletics Amateur Ideal, brings to light his collaboration with Dan Cain of the News and Observer. Cain's investigative reporting was pivotal in exposing the depth of the scandal. His diligent work, including analyzing transcripts and uncovering falsified academic records, shed light on the extensive fraud perpetrated by the African and Afro American Studies (AFAM) department.

Dan Cain shares his investigative journey:

“When we made the decision right there that this is a story, there's something wrong. Here, something doesn't make sense.” (09:11)

Whistleblower Mary Willingham, an academic support program specialist, played a crucial role. Initially reluctant, her courage to speak out provided the necessary insider perspective to validate the widespread academic misconduct.

Mary Willingham reflects on her experience:

“Everybody stayed away from me like I had some infectious disease or something. I was certainly the bad egg. I was the snitch.” (17:02)

Internal Investigations and Reporting

The scandal prompted UNC to initiate its internal investigations, initially led by former Governor Jim Martin. Despite UNC’s attempts to minimize the issue, Cain’s relentless reporting uncovered that the fraudulent paper classes dated back decades, involving over 3,100 students, nearly half of whom were athletes. This revelation necessitated a more exhaustive investigation led by Kenneth Weinstein, a former FBI general counsel.

Dan Cain highlights the severity of the findings:

“The University of North Carolina today [is] reeling from a blow, a really big blow to its reputation, especially the report found that over the 18 years between 1993 and 2011, Debbie and Julius had offered 188 fake lecture courses, along with hundreds of bogus independent studies.” (20:22)

Legal Battles with the NCAA

As media coverage intensified, the NCAA stepped in, accusing UNC of providing impermissible benefits through the fake classes. UNC’s legal team deployed strategic defenses, arguing that the courses were available to all students and that the NCAA lacked authority over university academics.

Margo Gray critiques UNC’s legal stance:

“I think UNC had the right argument. In order to advance that argument, however, they all had to look like fools... But I think they found, by God, they found the loophole.” (25:12)

After years of deliberation, the NCAA concluded that it could not punish UNC under its existing rules, a decision that left UNC largely unscathed beyond significant negative media exposure.

Outcomes and Consequences

The aftermath of the scandal saw UNC grappling with its tarnished reputation. Despite massive financial gains from athletics, the ethical breaches raised questions about the university's commitment to academic integrity. The lack of substantial NCAA sanctions was a critical point of contention, leaving many to feel that UNC escaped true accountability.

Jay Smith comments on the outcome:

“If the university wouldn't confront the scandal, then Smith would do it himself.” (28:10)

Reflecting on College Sports and Future Implications

The episode concludes with a sobering reflection on the inherent paradox of modern university athletics—balancing academic missions with the profit-driven nature of college sports. Jay Smith emphasizes that without systemic changes, similar abuses are likely to persist as institutions prioritize athletic success over genuine academic achievement.

Margo Gray encapsulates the enduring issue:

“The basic paradox that is the modern university... is also running this multimillion dollar business that's generated by the profit motive. That paradox remains, and I don't think it's going anywhere.” (30:30)

Conclusion

"The Carolina Way - Part 2" offers a comprehensive exploration of UNC’s academic scandal, highlighting the complexities of maintaining athletic excellence while upholding academic integrity. Through meticulous reporting and courageous whistleblowers, Campus Files exposes the vulnerabilities within collegiate sports systems and urges for ongoing vigilance and reform.

Notable Quotes

• Mary Willingham:

  “I'm in the academic support program, and I'm working with athletes who they're just so far behind. How on earth are we going to keep these players eligible? You know, I learned about the paper class system pretty quickly.” (01:35)

• Dan Cain:

  “The University of North Carolina today [is] reeling from a blow, a really big blow to its reputation...” (20:22)

• Jay Smith:

  “If you were a student at UNC, the Carolina Way is not something you could miss.” (03:53)

• Margo Gray:

  “It's hard being a whistleblower. That's a difficult existence. You give up so much, including so many friendships.” (17:28)

This detailed account not only chronicles the scandal but also serves as a cautionary tale about the enduring challenges within the nexus of higher education and collegiate athletics.

Transcript

[Margo Gray]

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[Andy]

Previously on Campus Files.

[Margo Gray]

UNC had become ever more invested in its sports brand.

[Andy]

And that is it.

[Margo Gray]

North Carolina takes the title. And the leaders of the university wanted to do everything they could to sustain and promote future athletic success.

[Mary Willingham]

I'm in the academic support program, and I'm working with athletes who they're just so far behind. How on earth are we going to keep these players eligible? You know, I learned about the paper class system pretty quickly.

[Margo Gray]

There was a Potemkin Village of a curriculum here. The courses had titles. They had course numbers. It seemed that they had instructors. None of that was real.

[Mary Willingham]

That's the biggest academic scandal in the history of college sports and probably in the history of academia. We were all complicit because we enjoyed game day so much. Shame on us.

[Andy]

In 2008, Debbie Crowder announced her retirement from UNC. She'd spent two decades as the office administrator in the African and Afro American Studies department, or afam. During this time, she'd used her position to offer fake courses that helped student athletes stay academically eligible. So for the athletic department, her retirement wasn't exactly welcome news. Almost immediately, academic advisors sounded the alarm. In a meeting with football coaches, they presented a PowerPoint that made one thing these fake courses had been a lifeline for many football players. Eligibility. One PowerPoint slide bluntly stated, we put them in classes that met degree requirements in which they didn't go to class. These no longer exist. And these academic advisors were right to be worried because the very semester after Debbie retired, the football team earned its worst grade point average in more than a decade. A GPA of 2.1. I'm Margo Gray. This week on Campus Files, the decades long scheme at UNC finally comes to light.

[Jay Smith]

I grew up in Charlotte, North Carolina, and as anybody who's from North Carolina will tell you, I think college basketball in particular is A humongous deal here.

[Andy]

This is Andy. He's an editor at the Chronicle of Higher Education and author of the UNC Scandal and College Athletics Amateur Ideal. But perhaps most importantly, he went to UNC when the scandal first broke.

[Jay Smith]

Basketball is so central and so sort of attached to the heart of UNC for a couple of very obvious reasons. One of them is that the most famous basketball player who has ever lived went to Carolina. It's Michael Jordan, of course.

[Margo Gray]

Jordan skies to the hook.

[Jay Smith]

He's very much attached to the program still. His image is on the Nike logo that adorns UNC apparel. And then the second reason is Dean Smith.

[Andy]

Dean Smith was the legendary head coach of the UNC men's basketball team from 1961 to 1997. Over those 36 years, he transformed the team into a national powerhouse with a record setting 879 victories. But if you ask anyone at UNC, they'll tell you Smith is remembered for a lot more than just his accomplishments on the court.

[Jay Smith]

This was a coach who talked very loudly and persuasively about the importance of academics and of ethics. This was an intoxicating quality for professors, for students, for administrators, because Dean Smith was coaching in an era where people started to get a little bit antsy in college sports about scandals.

[Andy]

In the 1980s, college sports were rocked by one scandal after another, everything from academic cheating to pay for play schemes. But at unc, coach Dean Smith was championing a different path. He called it the Carolina way, a commitment to doing things the right way. Andy says it's a philosophy that long outlived Smith's tenure as head coach.

[Jay Smith]

If you were a student at unc, the Carolina way is not something you could miss. It was everywhere. That phrase alone you would see everywhere on signs. If you went to any kind of sporting event, you would see it. It was a source of institutional pride, the idea that you can win, and you can win the right way, you can win the Carolina way.

[Andy]

UNC actually seemed to practice what it preached. While athletic programs at universities weathered scandals and sanctions, UNC stood apart, boasting a pristine reputation. From 1961 all the way to 2010, UNC managed to avoid a single NCAA violation. That changed in July 2010, the summer before Andy's sophomore year, when a UNC football player took to social media, bragging about his experience at a Miami nightclub.

[Jay Smith]

This player tweeted basically that, like, he was in Miami at a club and getting bottles for free, something to that effect. And it was like a lyric from a song. But it caught a bunch of notice, including from NCAA investigators.

[Andy]

Once investigators stepped in, the floodgates opened. They uncovered that several football players had been accepting free plane tickets and hotel stays, a clear violation of NCAA rules prohibiting outside gifts. Then came another revelation. A tutor had written portions of players papers. UNC administrators responded swiftly, hoping to snuff out the scandal before it grew. They suspended over a dozen players, some indefinitely, and the head coach memorably said, there is no single game more important than the character and integrity of this university. The strategy might have worked if the story had ended there. But one of the suspended football players decided to fight back and filed a lawsuit to get back on the team.

[Jay Smith]

He argued that the NCAA and UNC had overreached. He filed a lawsuit. And buried inside of this lawsuit were some of the papers that this player had written to prove that he'd done his own academic work.

[Andy]

The paper was for a course in the AFAM department, with department chair Julius Nyongaro listed at the top.

[Jay Smith]

So some NC State fans go into the lawsuit, they plug it into a plagiarism detection software and find that, lo and behold, this paper was like heavily plagiarized.

[Andy]

The NC State fan posted about the plagiarism on a sports message board, writing, I can't wait till the media gets this and breaks it down. And before long, a journalist at the News and Observer came across the Post. That journalist was Dan Cain.

[Dan Cain]

There were so many flags there that this was a lot of lifted passages and some really outdated information. I mean, why didn't anybody catch it?

[Andy]

On July 9, 2011, Dan published an article asking that very question. How had nobody caught such blatant plagiarism? Shortly after publishing the article, Dan got one step closer to the answer. He tracked down the transcript of a football player, which offered some key clues.

[Dan Cain]

His transcript was really interesting because it showed that the first class that he took at Carolina was not your typical introductory class. It was a 400 level during the summer.

[Andy]

In the summer before his freshman year, this player was enrolled in a senior level course and managed to get a B plus.

[Dan Cain]

And then he goes in to start his sort of regular first semester as a freshman. And his grades in many of his classes were just way below what he pulled in that class. So we really stuck out as an outlier.

[Andy]

The professor of that 400 level course was none other than Julius Nyongaro, the same professor who had neglected to report the clearly plagiarized paper.

[Dan Cain]

When we made the decision right there that this is a story, there's something wrong Here, something doesn't make sense. We published another story, and that day, Mary Willingham sent me an email, and she was willing to talk off the record.

[Andy]

You'll remember Mary from the previous episode. She worked as a learning specialist in the academic support program for student athletes.

[Dan Cain]

So I asked her what was going on here with what we were seeing, and she said the African. African American studies department had these classes that looked like they were lecture classes, but they weren't, in fact, meeting. And this was just absolutely mind blowing.

[Andy]

Dan filed a records request with UNC asking for five years worth of transcripts. It sent administrators into a panic. In order to stay ahead of his reporting, the university quickly announced an internal investigation into what they called academic irregularities. The following spring, they quietly released their findings. In the middle of final exams. They confirmed that the AFAM department had in fact, been offering paper classes for the past few years. But they didn't acknowledge the fact that 40% of the students enrolled in those fraudulent courses were from the football and men's basketball teams.

[Dan Cain]

You know, there was this sense of holding back, trying to control the story, trying to say, we dealt with it, time to move forward.

[Andy]

As much as UNC wanted to move on, they couldn't. Because in the months that followed, Dan Cain kept breaking one blockbuster story after another, including the explosive revelation that Julius had been paid $12,000 to teach a summer course that actually met. And then came a discovery that took the scandal to a whole new level. While browsing UNC's website, Dan stumbled upon a page where students could upload their transcripts to check outstanding grade requirements. On that page was a sample transcript.

[Dan Cain]

So I looked at this, and I said it just wasn't coincidental that on this transcript, the student, this mock student, does poorly in everything, almost everything, except for these AFAM classes. This looked like it was a real transcript, and it looked like somebody who's a beneficiary of these classes.

[Andy]

The transcript was from the 1990s, which complicated things. Up until now, the university had acted like the paper classes went back just a few years. But if this transcript were legitimate, it would mean the scandal stretched back decades.

[Dan Cain]

The university just insisted over and over again that this was not a real transcript. It was a mock transcript. It was just designed to test this tool.

[Andy]

Ultimately, Dan managed to confirm that not only was this a real transcript, but it belonged to one of Carolina's most famous athletes, a football player named Julius Peppers.

[Dan Cain]

One in a billion shot that this would ever happen. I mean, it was just kind of an explosion, you know, a big explosion because it really put into focus the seriousness of the situation.

[Andy]

UNC had no choice but to launch a second investigation, this time led by someone outside the UNC bubble, former North Carolina Governor Jim Martin.

[Jim Martin]

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[Jonathan Van Ness]

Minding your own business? And start to wonder, is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch real? How do the Northern Lights happen? Why is weed not legal yet? I'm Jonathan Van Ness, and every week on Getting Curious, I sit down for a gorgeous conversation with a brilliant expert to learn all about something that makes me curious. Join me every Wednesday as we set off on a stunning journey of curiosity on a new subject and dive into the archive of more than 370 episodes. Listen to Getting Curious wherever you get your podcasts.

[Andy]

By fall 2012, Dan Kane's reporting was causing massive waves. His story had already triggered one internal investigation, with another now underway, led by Jim Martin. But despite the shock of his findings, Dan still had no one on the record to back up his allegations. That changed in October 2012, when Mary Willingham attended the memorial service for UNC's former president. He'd been a staunch advocate for integrity in college athletics, and I sat at.

[Mary Willingham]

His memorial service and listened to people talk about how important academic integrity was.

[Andy]

Mr. Friday was a man of high morals and values. Integrity in all institutions and in all walks of life mattered greatly to him.

[Mary Willingham]

And I went home and I said, I've got to do something. And my husband was like, you should just write a blog post. And that's what I did. And then that's when Dan said, well, you may as well talk to me now.

[Andy]

In November 2012, Mary finally went on the Record with Dan for the first time. An insider revealed that the scandal went far beyond just two bad apples in the AFAM department. Academic advisors like Mary knew what was happening, and likely many more people on campus did, too. The article was damning, to say the least, and Mary assumed it would spark significant conversations on campus.

[Mary Willingham]

That's not at all what they wanted to do.

[Jonathan Van Ness]

Not at all.

[Mary Willingham]

They wanted to just sweep it all under the rug and move on.

[Andy]

Despite her explosive allegations, not a single UNC administrator reached out to learn more about Mary's experience or the cheating she'd witnessed. In fact, no one wanted to talk to her at all.

[Mary Willingham]

Everybody stayed away from me like I had some infectious disease or something. I was certainly the bad egg. I was the snitch. But I don't think they knew exactly what to do with me. My boss, he started just following me around everywhere. It was crazy. It was kind of like having a stalker. They were trying to figure out how to fire me with just cause. So it wasn't a fun time.

[Margo Gray]

It's hard being a whistleblower. That's a difficult existence. You give up so much, including so many friendships.

[Andy]

This is UNC professor Jay Smith. He later teamed up with Mary to write Cheated the UNC Scandal, the Education of Athletes, and the future of Big Time College Sports.

[Margo Gray]

You know, look at the history of academic scandals in sports programs over the past 50, 60 years. There's a small handful of people who have been willing to stick their necks out and speak from within the belly of the beast. And Mary belongs to that small list of very courageous people who was willing to do that.

[Andy]

Things only became more isolating for Mary in December 2012 when the findings from the Jim Martin investigation were released. While Martin confirmed that the paper classes dated back decades, not just a few years, he insisted that they hadn't been designed to help athletes directly, undermining everything Mary had said on the record. Former governor Jim Martin released his independent report today on the academic scandal at UNCLE that report, however, cleared the athletic.

[Dan Cain]

Department of funneling athletes to easy or no show classes.

[Andy]

In remarks before the UNC board of trustees, Martin said it was nothing more than speculation to suggest that the courses were intended to keep athletes eligible.

[Dan Cain]

We were unable to discern a clear motive for establishing and offering these perverse and anomalous courses.

[Andy]

Martin speculated that maybe Julius and Debbie had just created these easy courses courses to attract more students to their department and get more funding. Jay found it laughable. But just like that, this narrative became the party line for UNC administrators.

[Margo Gray]

They wanted to put their heads in the sand and pretend that this wasn't as bad as it was. Their interest was in protecting the brand, protecting the university brand, and making the bad headlines stop.

[Andy]

Remarkably, the strategy worked for another year. National media coverage was kept relatively at bay. But that changed dramatically on New Year's Day 2014, when the front page of the New York Times reported that Julius Niangaro was being indicted for accepting $12,000 for a class he never taught. In response, UNC struck a deal with the district attorney. They could avoid a criminal prosecution if Debbie and Julius agreed to cooperate with a thorough investigation. This time, the investigation would be led by a no nonsense former general counsel at the FBI, Kenneth Weinstein. Over the next eight months, Weinstein and his team sifted through millions of emails, analyzed thousands of student transcripts, interviewed more than 100 people, and took the testimonies of both Julius and Debbie. On October 22, 2014, Weinstein announced his findings, and they were nothing short of explosive. The University of North Carolina today reeling from a blow, a really big blow to its reputation, especially the the report found that over the 18 years between 1993 and 20 2011, Debbie and Julius had offered 188 fake lecture courses, along with hundreds of bogus independent studies. More than 3,100 students, nearly half of them athletes, took at least one semester of deficient instruction. Here's Jay Smith again.

[Margo Gray]

Having Waystein lay out the case for decades of fraud in the way he did was very gratifying to me personally. I'm a longtime employee at UNC. I shouldn't have taken such joy at UNC's humiliation, but I did.

[Andy]

Unlike all previous investigations, this one made it clear that these courses were designed above all to keep student athletes eligible. It also made clear the sheer number of people who were complicit academic counselors, coaches, and even academic deans.

[Mary Willingham]

What happened at UNC now appears to be the biggest academic fraud scandal in.

[Andy]

All of college sports history.

[Mary Willingham]

And I have to tell you that this is validation for Mary Willingham.

[Andy]

For years, the NCAA had stayed on the sidelines, but now sitting out was no longer an option. Foreign.

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[Jonathan Van Ness]

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[Andy]

Switch upfront payment of $45 for 3 month plan equivalent to $15 per month required intro rate first 3 months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra. See full [e-mail] from the very beginning of the UNC scandal, fans feared one thing above all NCAA involvement. The NCAA governs college sports and has the power to punish schools that break the rules, punishments that range from player suspensions to the removal of championship banners. By the summer of 2015, those punishments were becoming a very real possibility. The NCAA formally accused UNC of violating its rule rules. It argued that UNC had provided impermissible benefits to student athletes in the form of paper classes. For two decades, these classes had awarded athletes high grades with little to no work required. The facts certainly didn't look good for unc, but even so, this was never going to be an easy case for the NCAA to prosecute the paper class system.

[Margo Gray]

It was so well designed and so large and involved so many people over so many years. I feel just a little bit of sympathy, I have to say, for the enforcement staff of the NCAA.

[Andy]

UNC's legal team focused on two main arguments. First, they argued that the paper classes were technically open to all students, not just athletes. In other words, athletes weren't receiving special treatment because anyone could enroll. Their second argument was that the NCAA had no grounds to judge these courses as special benefits or question their rigor to begin with.

[Margo Gray]

I think the UNC lawyers were extremely clever and they basically found a way to pin NCAA rules back on the ncaa.

[Andy]

The NCAA has repeatedly stated that it doesn't have a role in policing university academics. While it can punish players for cheating or plagiarizing, it can't determine whether a school's academics are up to par. That's up to the university itself.

[Margo Gray]

I think UNC had the right argument. In order to advance that argument, however, they all had to look like fools, like complete, utter fools and say, yes, we at UNC are happy to offer contentless courses. We think that is exactly the way university students should be taught. They even said that, you know, this is an ideal, an ideal learning experience for our athletes to be offered this customized instruction. I mean, it's laughable. It's laughable. But I think they found, by God, they found the loophole. And I'm willing to congratulate the UNC staff for developing a brilliant counterargument.

[Andy]

It took the NCAA more than two years to reach a decision as they sparred behind closed doors with UNC's high powered legal team. Finally, in October 2017, they announced their decision.

[Dan Cain]

The word is that the Tar Heels.

[Andy]

Will avoid major sanctions.

[Dan Cain]

Many thought this was going to be doomsday for the Tar Heels. They are celebrating.

[Andy]

The NCAA said it didn't have the authority to punish UNC under its rules. So in the end, Jay says, the only real consequence UNC faced was the negative media coverage.

[Margo Gray]

That was the worst punishment it suffered, and it deserved much worse. It deserved to pay a serious, meaningful institutional price for decades of cheating. And it didn't have to.

[Andy]

In the wake of the NCAA decision, the UNC chancellor stated, we believe this is the correct and fair outcome. I am grateful that this case has been decided and that the university can continue to focus on delivering the best possible education to our students.

[Margo Gray]

To make a long story short, accountability didn't mean anything to them. They were not interested in dealing truthfully with what had happened.

[Andy]

If the university wouldn't confront the scandal, then Smith would do it himself. Normally an expert in early modern France, he created a new course titled Big Time College Sports and the rights of athletes, 1956 to the present.

[Margo Gray]

So I designed this class that was focused on the rights of athletes and the various ways in which they are suppressed, mitigated, violated all the time.

[Andy]

Smith isn't alone in arguing that college athletes are often deprived of their rights, especially their right to an education. These student athletes commit themselves to their sport, often bringing in significant revenue for their schools with the understanding that they'll receive a free education in return. But all too often, Smith says, the educational side of that bargain falls short in the most extreme cases, players are enrolled in courses that don't even exist. When it comes to unc, I asked Smith what measures have been put in place to prevent this kind of educational fraud from happening again.

[Margo Gray]

I want to be as fair and generous as I can can to my colleagues here at unc. I do want to acknowledge that steps have been taken to ensure that certain kinds of abuses can't occur again. So the independent studies system has been completely revamped. I can say with confidence that we will never again have a situation in which a single faculty member or a single department is offering hundreds of independent studies every year.

[Andy]

Smith says. Many of the new guardrails simply add extra work for faculty members, for example, before each semester, professors now have to upload course syllabi to UNC overseers, who can verify, if necessary, that there's an actual syllabus for each course.

[Margo Gray]

And for a while, the provost's office would do classroom checks not in the old fashioned way that the athletic department used to to make sure that their students were attending classes, but to make sure that professors are in classes. Love it, gotta love it.

[Andy]

While the system may be harder to abuse now, Smith doesn't think much has truly changed.

[Margo Gray]

Athletics is bigger than it ever was here and everywhere. The pressure to win and to compete and to maintain the reputation of the athletic program here and elsewhere is only growing. And what that tells us is that personnel at these universities, whether they're professors or advisors or administrators, people will be looking for the paths of least resistance for athletes who need to stay eligible for their sports. Paths of least resistance aren't going anywhere. The basic paradox that is the modern university that is that it is ostensibly an academic enterprise all about nurturing minds and developing and imparting new knowledge, but is also running this multimillion dollar business that's generated by the profit motive. That paradox remains, and I don't think it's going anywhere.

[Andy]

UNC's athletics department is still raking in huge profits. In the 2022-23 fiscal year, it pulled in more than $139 million, nearly a 15% jump from the year before. But even that impressive figure is modest compared to the revenue at schools like the University of Texas and the University of Alabama. According to the most Recent numbers, Division 1 college sports programs across the country brought in a giant, jaw dropping $17.1 billion. And as Smith pointed out, that total is only climbing. Campus Files is An Odyssey Original Podcast this episode was written and reported by Margo Gray. Campus Files is produced by Ian Mondo Elliot Adler and me, Margo Gray. Our executive producers and story editors are Maddie Sprunkheiser and Lloyd Lockridge. Campus Files is edited, mixed and mastered by Chris Basel and Andy Jaskowicz. Special thanks to Jenna Weiss, Berman, J.D. crowley, Leah Reese, Dennis, Maura Curran, Josephina Francis, Kurt Kor, Courtney, Hilary Schuff, Sean Cherry, Laura Berman and Hilary Van Ornam. Original theme music by James Waterman and Davy Sumner. If you have tips or story ideas, write to us at [e-mail].

[Joyn Robinson]

I'M Joyn Robinson, host of the new podcast the Women's Hoop Show. Each episode I'll be joined by a rotating group of women's basketball experts to talk wnba, college hoops, the new unrivaled league, and the shifting landscape of the sport. The game is growing and so are we. Listen to and follow the Women's Hoop show and Odyssey Podcast, available now for free on the Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts.