Cheated

In 2010 allegations of an utterly corrupt academic system for student-athletes emerged from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill campus, home of the legendary Tar Heels. As the alma mater of Michael Jordan, Larry Brown, Marion Jones, Lawrence Taylor, Rashad McCants, and many others; winner of forty national championships in six different sports; and a partner in one of the best rivalries in sports,UNC-Chapel Hillis a world-famous colossus of college athletics. In the wake of the Wainstein report, however, the fallout from this scandal-and the continuing spotlight on the failings of college athletics-has made the school ground zero in the debateabout how the $16 billion college sports industry operates. Written by UNCprofessor of history Jay Smith and UNC athletics department whistleblower Mary Willingham, Cheated exposes the fraudulent inner workings of this famous university. For decades these internal systems have allowed woefully underprepared basketball and football players to take fake courses and earndevalued degrees from one of the nation's top universities while faculty and administrators looked the other way.In unbiased and carefully sourced detail, Cheated recountsthe academic fraud in UNC's athletics department, even as universityleaders focused on minimizing the damage in order to keep the billion-dollar college sports revenue machine functioning. Smith and Willingham make an impassioned argument that the "student-athletes" in these programs are being cheated out of what, after all, ispromised them in the first place: a college education.