Stop us if you’ve heard this one before. A professor at the University of North Carolina is unhappy with the school’s football program, its players, and its head coach, Bill Belichick.
That’s right. Another North Carolina professor has been complaining to the school’s athletic director, Bubba Cunningham.
This time, according to emails and images examined by WRAL News, university professor Mark Peifer has urged administrators, athletic department officials, and parking authorities to take action regarding the parking practices of some football players.
“Is there no one who can rein in these players, probably only a subset of the football team, who are tarnishing the reputation of our school and of all Carolina athletes?” Peifer wrote in a recent email to Cunningham.
The North Carolina professor has repeatedly complained about football players, calling them an ’embarrassment’
Pfeifer claims that players have cursed at him, driven through small parking decks and on campus roads, reversed into parking spaces against the rules, and parked in areas designated for individuals with disabilities.
He wrote a long letter to Cunningham in March with the subject being “Carolina Football players on-campus behavior is an embarrassment to UNC and to Carolina Athletics.” He requested that it be forwarded to the football general manager, Michael Lombardi and to Bill Belichick.
“They must have some sort of meeting that ends at 5 p.m. Because each day, when we are leaving work, they are getting in their vehicles, revving their motors so loud you probably could hear it in South Building, and then racing one another at literally 40 mph down the narrow lanes of the deck,” Peifer wrote. “This further escalated yesterday when I told one of the students to slow down. He pulled forward, and revved his engine in a way that flames literally came out of the dual tail pipes, and then cursed me out as he left.”
“We work with our athletic programs to ensure that players are educated about driving safety, and we will continue to work with all of our teams on safe driving education,” North Carolina’s athletic department told WRAL News in a statement.
It’s not just parking that has made faculty members upset with the North Carolina football program
Last year, WRAL News discovered that roughly 20% of the 101 players on the roster had received a driving citation, including 31 speeding citations and 10 reckless driving counts.
“Our conduct outside of the building, outside of the program, is important to us, and we stress that,” Belichick told WRAL News in November. “We’ve addressed multiple things, not just that. There are other things that go on, besides driving, that we’ve talked about absolutely.”
The complaints about Bill Belichick and his football players from university professor Mark Peifer are just the latest to come from inside the university.
Last year, a longtime University of North Carolina professor asked the school to “end this circus” surrounding head football coach Bill Belichick and his girlfriend Jordon Hudson.
Prior to that, numerous emails from University of North Carolina donors, alumni, and faculty revealed how angry many of them were over the school’s hiring of Belichick and the presence of Hudson.
“When you agreed to pay a king’s ransom to hire Bill Belichick, did you also know that you [were] hiring Jordon Hudson to serve as the primary face of UNC athletics?” one faculty member wrote to Cunningham in an email. “Normally, I would say the University should not concern itself with its employees’ personal lives. But when a prominent employee injects his significant other into the University’s affairs, it becomes the University’s concern. … She’s already an embarrassment and it’s only going to get worse. Please end this circus before the season begins.”