re: UNC Admits Academic Fraud: Lack Of Institutional Controls, *NCAA Issues 3rd NOA

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Pete: He had a good GPA, it's not like he was a bad student. That test was just too much.

That test was the SAT, and it proved to be a fiend. During the spring of his senior year, Waddell spent two hours a day, three days per week studying to try and make the requisite score that would make him eligible to play at Carolina as a freshman. He had the required GPA with plenty of room to spare. But the test, that standardized demon that has bedeviled many a high school student, would not be cracked.

Waddell wound up 10 points--one correct answer--short of the needed score. He had to enter UNC as a partial qualifier, which meant that he would be able to practice with the team during his freshman year, but not play in the games. It is the equivalent of a forced redshirt year. It also decreases a player's eligibility from four years to three years.

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Michael Waddell has never even been close to being in academic trouble at the University of North Carolina. He hasn't served a suspension for cutting class, or needed a dramatic late-summer turnaround to get eligible for the fall. He has, with the help of the academic staff, been a model student.

"I really had a point to prove," says Waddell, who says his toughest class was biology. "There were a lot of people out there saying, 'He's a partial, he's not going to make it.' It bothered me, but I didn't pay any attention to it."

The former partial qualifier is on track to graduate at the end of his fourth year of college, which means that under NCAA guidelines he will earn back an extra year of eligibility. That's a nice gift, but it doesn't mean as much as something else he will earn in May--a college degree.

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