Lawyer still working to clear UNC's Ramsay

The lawyer for UNC fullback Devon Ramsay said Thursday that he is continuing to work with the University of North Carolina and the NCAA to reverse the determination that the Tar Heels football player violated NCAA rules.

“We’re convinced that Devon has not committed any violation,” said former N.C. Supreme Court justice Robert Orr, who represents Ramsay.

Ramsay played in the first four games of his junior season last fall before UNC officials discovered his correspondence with a university tutor during an NCAA investigation of impermissible benefits and academic misconduct in the school’s football program.

He was withheld from the team’s remaining nine games and was declared permanently ineligible by the NCAA on Nov. 15. UNC announced that it would appeal the ruling, but the appeal originally scheduled for Dec. 16 was postponed.

Orr said a reinstatement appeal merely deals with the penalty associated with an NCAA violation and presumes that a violation has taken place. Orr said he is convinced that Ramsay hasn’t committed a violation.

“What we’ve had to do is back away from that penalty phase and try to address everything surrounding the violation question,” Orr said.

In November, Ramsay’s mother, Sharon Lee, told The Charlotte Observer and The News & Observer that Ramsay’s involvement in the case stems from alterations that tutor Jennifer Wiley suggested on a three-page sociology paper in an e-mail exchange with Ramsay in November of 2008.

The timetable for a resolution to Ramsay’s case with the NCAA is uncertain.
On Wednesday, UNC announced that another football player, defensive end Michael McAdoo, lost his reinstatement appeal with the NCAA. McAdoo also had been declared ineligible Nov. 15; his appeal was heard in December.

Ken Tysiac