The tone deafness in Chapel Hill seems to have reached Helen Keller levels with the promotion of “assistant” athletic director for compliance Amy Herman to “associate” director of athletics for compliance. This move by athletic director Dick Baddour has an oddly similar smell to James Oblinger’s final act as NC State chancellor (other than resigning in disgrace, of course): his eleventh-hour massive benefits package increase to his provost Larry Nielsen, ostensibly in return for Nielsen falling on his sword to take the blame for the Mary Easley scandal (didn’t work, though).

A compliance officer is in charge of making sure that the school meets all NCAA standards, including those for recruiting, eligibility, relationships with agents, etc. In other words, all the rules that were broken as a pattern recently by UNC’s football program. The real question is, how does she still have a job? The only way UNC’s current compliance officer could be deserving of a promotion in the midst of such a debacle would be if she had been the whistle-blower, not just one more wagon-circler. (She circled.)

Perhaps I’m a tad cynical, but how can anybody reading the story about her promotion not wonder whether it was in exchange for testimony that resembled a more legalistic version of the Sargent Schultz refrain, “I know noth-zing, Herr Kommandant!”

The arrogance astounds.