Thorp caught off guard by Davis scholarship offer

University of North Carolina chancellor Holden Thorp said today that he was disappointed that former football coach Butch Davis offered son Drew Davis a football scholarship without consulting with Thorp or UNC athletic director Dick Baddour.

Thorp added, once again, that there was no one reason for Davis’ firing July 27, but rather a “collection of problems” as UNC faces NCAA allegations of nine major violations and an Oct. 28 hearing before of the NCAA's Committee on Infractions.

Drew Davis is a senior quarterback at East Chapel Hill High. Thorp said that with all of the controversy surrounding the program, it would have been better for Butch Davis to talk with Thorp and Baddour before offering Drew a scholarship.

“I found out about that a couple months ago when I saw it online,” Thorp said during a telephone interview today, “and yes, I was disappointed that neither the athletic director nor I knew about that.”

Thorp said UNC’s program is under a lot of scrutiny and needs everybody to pull together to make sure things work best for the program. The NCAA’s Notice of Allegations arrived June 21; it was also revealed in June that fewer than 12 players had amassed 395 parking tickets with fines totaling $13,125.

In July, UNC officials learned that they had failed to detect plagiarism in a term paper written by defensive lineman Michael McAdoo, who’s been ruled ineligible by the NCAA.

Butch Davis was to be paid an average of $2.2 million a year under the contract extension he signed after the 2007 season. Tuition and fees at UNC for an in-state student in the 2011-12 academic year cost $7,008.70.

“Drew is a good kid and I feel bad for him in all this,” Thorp said, “and for all I know, we would love to have him on the football team. But with everything going on, it would be good for the athletic director and the coach to talk about that and probably for all three of us to talk.”

Ken Tysiac