Another Prong Of The Shutdown: Academics

The Tar Heels are home, healthy and accounted for. They’re also working out. But what about their academics now that the campus has been shut down through the end of the spring semester as a result of the coronavirus pandemic?

After all, athletes can’t play unless they are eligible, so keeping tabs on the players and relying on them to be disciplined in their online course work is of paramount concern to North Carolina Coach Mack Brown.

“Academically, they have to continue to make progress toward a degree,” Brown said. “The way I understand it… a young student can choose to go pass-fail. They have to make that decision only by August 7, but some of our guys that might be needing a certain GPA to be eligible. But in staying on track for their degree, it might not be in their best interest to go pass-fail. So that's something that our academic people are looking at.

“Right now, learning to take classes online and being able to be tested online, take tests on online, all of those are unique and new things for us.”

UNC began online courses for its entire student body March 23. Teachers and professors were taught the previous week how to conduct online courses before continuing with the course work.

Some of the Tar Heels have gone to social media to let the masses know what they’re doing from working out to just hanging out. A few have also commented about the new “class” structure, including senior safety Patrice Rene, whose knee injury in the second game last fall forced him to miss the rest of the season. Rene will be a fifth-year player next fall, if there’s a season in the fall.

In addition to the current Tar Heels, Brown is concerned about the players that signed their letters of intent in December but didn’t enroll in January.

Thirteen of UNC’s 25-member class enrolled early, so 12 were still in high school when the shutdown began. Some states plan on tentatively returning to classes in May – North Carolina is one of those states – but others have also cancelled classes for the remainder of the semester. The signed future Heels still have academic requirements to meet before they can enroll at Carolina.

“Thank goodness we've got a lot of the guys were in great academic shape and obviously 13 of them came in early,” Brown said. “You always have a few that need to finish strong. And now we're looking at if they are still having the ACT and SAT available if some guys need that at the end.

But the fact is that most of the high school kids have to go back online. They're taking classes online today. Again, many will have them for the first time. So it's unique in all the areas because we can’t help them academically.”

Unfortunately, even though they’ve signed their LOIs, their future schools cannot assist them right now.

“We can't get them counselors, so we've got to lean on them to step up and be strong and we've got to lean on the high school coach and their faculty to make sure that their teaching is right,” Brown said.

Challenging times for everyone, indeed, and another of many prongs Brown is dealing with is the academic side. This is all new to him and the players involved, but he’s confident it will work out.

“There'll be different ways for them to learn,” he said, “and they're just going to have to step up and do it.”