Got a bunch of them and more seem to be piling up every day.

If you can’t find good beer these days, you aren’t trying.

North Carolina keeps telling everyone it wasn’t an athletic scandal, but an academic scandal that just happened to involve some athletics. Yet, they can’t seem to put it behind them. Perhaps because every drip, drip, drip of information they finally, tortuously release when forced to suggests something else.

Julius Nyang’oro, the former UNC African studies chairman at the heart of an academic fraud scandal, had a cozy relationship with the program that tutored athletes, according to newly released emails.

Members of the academic support staff offered Nyang’oro football tickets and the chance to watch a game from the sidelines. One counselor offered to discuss athletes’ coursework over drinks, and another negotiated with Nyang’oro to schedule a no-show class.

UNC-Chapel Hill Chancellor Holden Thorp and other officials have said the Academic Support Program for Student Athletes did not collaborate with Nyang’oro or his department manager, Debbie Crowder, to create the classes to help keep athletes eligible to play sports.

The university, in its own investigation and in a probe helmed by former Gov. Jim Martin, had concluded the fraud was not intended to benefit athletes because nonathletes were also enrolled and received the same high grades. They have pinned the blame solely on Nyang’oro and Crowder.

The emails were released to The News & Observer this month as part of a public records request filed nearly a year earlier. None of the details within the correspondence had shown up in the numerous investigations conducted since the university confirmed the existence of the fraudulent courses in May 2012.

Is it a pure smoking gun? Not really, but once again it shows that this is not simply an “academic scandal.” It’s yet another piece that gets added to the pile of evidence. And once again it raises some more questions about the investigations if these e-mails never made it into any of the reports.

It’s one of those things. UNC has a bit of a holier-than-thou attitude about their academic component and their athletics. This has been a major blow, yet they keep claiming it was a limited academic scandal. Everyone else looks at it and sees that it is obviously an athletic scandal with academics.

I have trouble believing that UNC is actually trying to cover it up, per se. It seems more like a collective sense of denial. That this really didn’t happen. That it was all just a couple of rouge people that made this mess. So they keep ignoring/rationalizing away the big chunks of evidence that say something else.

/Penn State fans just shake their heads at such a willful inability to see the truth.

You know what happens when an athletic department is more awash in money than ever? You start spending it on things about which you really  don’t care. For example, Nebraska basketball. A program that hasn’t been to the NCAA Tournament since 1998. A program with six total appearances, and zero NCAA Tourney wins.

That Nebraska poached an assistant from Georgetown.

But the Hunter-to-Nebraska development is wild, mostly because it means Nebraska just poached an assistant from Georgetown. And while it would be easy to question how Georgetown could let that happen, I think a better use of this space would be to highlight exactly what’s going on in Lincoln.

Simply put, this is not your grandfather’s Nebraska.

Or your father’s Nebraska.

Or even your older brother’s Nebraska.

The Big Ten school opened a new $20 million basketball practice facility in October 2011, will open a new $179 million basketball arena this season, and is paying second-year coach Tim Miles a salary that’ll eventually exceed $2 million annually, which brings me to Hunter and his salary. A source told CBSSports.com that it’ll be $230,000 a year, and that all three Huskers assistants now make at least $200,000 a year. So while Nebraska is still quite obviously a “football” school, the administration has made it clear it thinks there’s no reason basketball can’t operate at a high level, too.

The splintered Big East is going to find out that the arms race in basketball is going to get even more cutthroat. There’s a lot of money coming into the five major conferences, and there’s only so much more they can plow into football.

Programs are willing to put money into places where they have never done so before. Rail on Jamie Dixon’s latest extension, but if Tim Miles is getting a deal that will soon cross $2 million. At Nebraska. Then it is harder to say Dixon is overpaid. Now, just pay some closer attention to the assistant coaches salaries, Pitt.

Speaking of coaching and assistants…

It’s a long, but phenomenal piece on one assistant trying to climb the assistant coach ladder. This dude is not getting $230K to be an assistant. His story isn’t even atypical. There are so many assistants grinding and trying to get up the ladder. Making progress and then falling back.

Over the past two years, he has applied for dozens of coaching jobs at all sorts of levels — from Texas Tech University to Jacksonville State University to Odessa Community College.

He’s gotten close a handful of times. At the 2012 Final Four, in New Orleans, he was one of two finalists for an opening at Youngstown State University. More than 150 people had applied for that job, says Jerry Slocum, the head coach. Mr. Slocum eventually settled on someone with more experience recruiting in the Rust Belt.

Last summer, with few prospects, Mr. McRoy put in a call to Michael Grant, a former colleague who had an opening on his staff at Stillman College.

The catch: Stillman could pay just $3,000 for the season, plus room and board. Mr. McRoy knew that wasn’t enough to live on, but he was willing to take anything to stay in the game.

YSU is at best a middling Horizon League program. They are a low mid-major. And over 150 people applied for one assistant coaching position.

This is also the ten year mark of one of the worst college basketball scandals. The murder of Patrick Dennehy, a Baylor basketball player. Dennehy was technically a walk-on but it turned out that the Baylor head coach, Dave Bliss was secretly paying his way. After Dennehy was murdered and the investigation began, Bliss was only worried about covering his ass — specifically how to explain how Dennehy could afford the tuition at Baylor. His master plan was to mislead investigators by suggesting that Dennehy got his money — and may have met his death — because he dealt drugs.

One young assistant and former Baylor player, Abar Rouse did not approve of the plan as Bliss laid it out to them. He objected. His job and career was threatened. So, he took to recording the discussions to protect himself and to expose what Bliss was doing. He gave them to an attorney to get them to the NCAA. The attorney also leaked them to the media and eventually revealed his name — without Rouse’s consent.

Rouse was blackballed. If you don’t know or don’t remember this story, watch the video. I remember it, because — and the video shows a clip — there were some sanctimonious college coaches almost blaming Rouse. That he was the real villain for “betraying” his boss. That he wasn’t trustworthy or someone who could be hired. It pissed me off back then, and it still gets me angry.

Reminder, the National Letter of Intent is still the worst contract to sign.

Here is what the NLI guarantees the school:

• The player cannot be recruited by any other school.

• The player must enroll at the school for at least a year, or he/she must give up 25 percent of college athletic eligibility.

• Once said player is enrolled at the school, he/she is bound by NCAA transfer rules, which allow the school’s coach to decide if the player can transfer and receive an athletic scholarship anywhere else. (Also, the athlete still must sit out a year after transferring regardless of whether the program released him or her to receive a scholarship.)

• All these penalties stay in effect even if the school fires the head coach or the head coach leaves (usually basketball) or the assistant coach who recruited the player takes a new job within a week of National Signing Day (usually football).

Here is what the NLI guarantees a player:

• Other schools aren’t allowed to recruit him.

That’s it.

Sure, the NLI contains some language about guaranteeing an athletic scholarship, but that depends on two factors. First, the student must be admitted to the school. This seems logical enough, but if a school is asking the player to sign away all his leverage, the least the school can do is guarantee a seat in the freshman class. Second, the school must have enough available scholarships under NCAA rules.

And of course the scholarship is only valid for a year, with the school-only option to renew.

Beers Above Replacement? Beers Above Replacement.