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The Wall Street Journal said UNC's football team is embarrassing. We asked UNC students what they thought.

UNC defensive tackle Nazair Jones (90) gets the defensive line hyped up before their season opener against Georgia. The Tar Heels fell to the Bulldogs 33-24 on Saturday in Atlanta.

UNC defensive tackle Nazair Jones (90) gets the defensive line hyped up before their season opener against Georgia. The Tar Heels fell to the Bulldogs 33-24 on Saturday in Atlanta.

To coincide with the beginning of college football, The Wall Street Journal released its annual article and accompanying graph, “College Football’s Grid of Shame,” last week. The graph has four quadrants with the horizontal axis ranging from “weakling” to “powerhouse” and the vertical axis ranging from “embarrassing” to “admirable.”  

(source)

Our beloved UNC fell into the fourth quadrant — more specifically the bottom-right. The WSJ recognized that we were, indeed, a powerhouse, but felt that we were a pretty big embarrassment. 

The article adds that the weakling versus powerhouse traits come from how good the team is expected to be using basic knowledge as well as statistics. The vertical axis, or “shame meter,” is where academic performance, behavior and, of course, scandals are taken into consideration. That, my friends, is why UNC is ranked in the lower, bottom-right quadrant. 

Although we are predicted to be a very good team this year, the WSJ won’t let us forget the giant NCAA cloud looming overhead (although I doubt anyone would let us forget that).

In response to the article, I went to campus to ask fellow students what they thought about the graph and whether they thought we should feel "embarrassed” or not.


Anika Khan 

Senior 

“I feel like (the WSJ) putting us down that low is assuming that the scandal was that impactful on our football team, I guess, whereas it’s not really going for their athletic merits or anything like that. It’s based on something that happened before any of the athletes were here, so I don’t really think it’s that accurate. It’s not an accurate depiction, and I think that it’s a very weird graph to create, on top of that. I know they like their statistics and all of their ideas and stuff like that, but I think having a powerhouse versus embarrassment is a very weird graph to compare to. It’s not something like academics.”


Delaney O’Connell

First-year 

“I suppose (it’s fair), but I don’t really have a frame of reference for the other teams or what they’ve done. But (the scandal) is pretty embarrassing, especially considering I think the U.S. News ranked us maybe 30th academic university in the United States.”


Avery Lue 

Junior 

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“I don’t really think the graph is fair. I think it’s a subjective view; I mean I know everyone’s got their own opinion on things, but our programs are constantly ranked high. Academically, we have a lot of athletes who are top-notch scholars, graduate and work hard, so I don’t really think that we’re embarrassing in any way. I think that’s just someone’s opinion.”


Sydney Tillman 

Senior 

“I mean, I think that’s a fair thing to say about us because it’s something that did happen that did get a lot of press and attention. I think it was fair of them to say that. However, I didn’t really realize that our football team was considered a powerhouse. So I think that aspect of it is interesting.”


Trevor Doane

Junior 

“I don’t know. It’s a blurry line because of the scandal, like it affects the entire University as a whole, but I guarantee you that the football players that are on the team right now had nothing to do with that scandal. The scandal happened years ago so … I don’t think that, in their case, they should be embarrassed.”

@MariaMullis2017

swerve@dailytarheel.com