UNC hires lawyer for advice during NCAA's review

The University of North Carolina has hired a lawyer with a background in NCAA rules compliance to advise the school while the NCAA investigates the Tar Heels football program.

Rick Evrard, a lawyer with Bond, Schoeneck & King in Overland Park, Kan., spent seven years on the NCAA staff, first as an enforcement representative and later as director of legislative services.

North Carolina athletic director Dick Baddour said the school is using Evrard as a consultant. NCAA investigators have been to campus twice in the last six weeks in a probe of possible improprieties between football players and sports agents.

Baddour said he still has complete faith in assistant athletic director for compliance Amy Herman and university legal counsel Leslie Strohm.

“This is just something that we felt like, let’s don’t leave any stone unturned,” Baddour said this morning. “Let’s don’t look back on this and wish we had done something in a different way. Somebody who has experience going through this who can bring knowledge about what other schools have done, what’s been helpful in the past, what’s not been helpful, and help us know what to expect at each turn.”

Evrard sometimes helps schools conduct their own, independent investigations, but Baddour said he won’t do that for North Carolina. Although Evrard has visited Chapel Hill during this process, he won’t conduct any interviews.

Connecticut and Kansas are among the schools Evrard has advised.

“Leslie Strohm and I talked about it for some time and we thought that would be a good thing for us to do,” Baddour said. “We felt like it could be helpful. Other schools who had used similar kind of counsel have commented that it was helpful to them.”

Ken Tysiac