Sometimes Mother Knows Best: Devon Ramsay Given Second Chance At UNC
Wednesday, February 23, 2011 at 8:45AM Joe Simmons 
Many of you probably don’t know the names of some of the other UNC players who were involved in the scandal earlier this season. Well there is finally some good news for some of the young men who were accused of rules infractions by the NCAA. One of the players, Devon Ramsay is now a winner because of the results of hard work by his mother.
Ramsay played in the first four games of the 2010 season but missed the last nine after officials found his e-mail exchange with tutor Jennifer Wiley regarding a three-page sociology paper in November 2008.
According to news reports, the NCAA ruled him permanently ineligible. This in essence is a ban for life by the NCAA. But all along, Sharon Lee said her son Devon Ramsay was being punished simply for turning to a tutor whose job was to assist athletes with their work.
Lee said her son, too, was confident when UNC appealed the NCAA's decision. But she was afraid he was being naïve and wanted to do everything she could to ensure the outcome she thought was proper.
According to the Raleigh News and Observer, Lee met with UNC officials, whom she deemed extremely helpful. She tried to get through to the NCAA but couldn't discover a mechanism to do so. She called The News & Observer and asked to speak with a reporter.
At a Chapel Hill coffee shop on a Sunday morning in November, Lee explained her concerns, choking back tears a couple of times before departing on her long drive home to New Jersey.
Being banned by the NCAA for life because of an academic situation carries a negative connotation. It's not difficult to imagine employers in the future shunning Ramsay if it was their impression that he cheated in college.
Ramsay shouldn't have to worry about that anymore. After reading about Ramsay in the newspaper, Robert Orr got in touch with Lee.
Orr is a former North Carolina Supreme Court justice and the executive director and senior counsel of the North Carolina Institute for Constitutional Law.
He asked for the reinstatement hearing scheduled for December to be canceled because the hearing presumed that Ramsay had committed an NCAA violation. Instead, he asked the NCAA to take a closer look at whether Ramsay had violated NCAA rules to begin with.
After a second look, the NCAA agreed that no violation had occurred. Ramsay was cleared and reinstated to return to the team for his senior year. It happened so suddenly that his mother didn't know what to do. She compared it with being hit by a lightning bolt. Ramsay's problems had vanished as suddenly as they had appeared.
For those of you who don’t know, sometimes a mother is just what the doctor ordered to pull a young man out of a situation that he should have never have been in.
Reader Comments (3)
Good to see something good come out of that situation. All we ever hear about is the bad.
Man his mom was persistent. To get a former Supreme court justice involved had to take a lot of work. Good job by his mom.
That is a feel good story. Sometime it do take parents to get kids out of dilemmas.