One more North Carolina football player is being inspected by the NCAA for likely benefits infringements only months after the program was rocked by two investigations into other violations. An NCAA canvasser spoke with distrustful end Quinton Coples in Chapel Hill on Wednesday about his presence at a party in Washington, D.C., to determine if Coples received any extra benefits, in violation of NCAA rules.
Coples was present to the party to rejoice the NFL draft at a nightclub with Robert Quinn and Marvin Austin, former UNC players and former teammates of Coples who were selected in the draft. ESPN first reported the investigation.
Kevin Best, North Carolina's sports information director for football, said Friday morning that he could confirm that an NCAA investigator was on campus to talk to Coples — a rising senior who is considered a possible early-round selection in the 2012 NFL draft.
Best, however, said he was not at liberty to discuss the situation further.
If Coples paid his own expenses to Washington and paid for everything while he was there and at the party, he would not be in violation of any NCAA rules.
Athletics director Dick Baddour of North Carolina could not be reached at his office Friday morning and did not return a phone message left at the office early Friday afternoon to discuss the investigation.
Coples' attendance at the party comes five months after a season in which the NCAA investigated the UNC program for players having illegal contact with agents. The NCAA declared Quinn and recipient Greg Little everlastingly ineligible for taking benefits from an agent, and UNC dismissed Austin from its program for numerous violations.
UNC also had to look into questions of academic impropriety in the football program, because of a tutor who is no longer at the school.
UNC now has in place a check system in which football players must sign in when they are leaving campus and must identify who they will be with and who would be paying the expenses for any trip or a visit.
Coples would have been required to sign in before attending the party.
