College Football Player Busted For Plagiarizing 11-Year-Olds

Student athletes are the best and brightest.

Image by J Pat Carter / AP

In the tradition of Ohio State’s Cardale Jones (“I ain’t come to play school!”) and seemingly 83% of all college football players, North Carolina’s Erik Highsmith is in trouble for… well… not coming to play school. For his communications class (HEY ATHLETES, STOP BEING COMMUNICATIONS MAJORS, TAKE A BUSINESS CLASS SO YOU DON’T ANTOINE WALKER!) Highsmith was required to keep a blog for class that would count for a significant percentage of his grade. Rather than writing a short blog post himself, Highsmith cruised down the Internet super highway until he found an Oracle ThinkQuest article about poultry farming. It was written by four 11-year-olds for their class. After the half hour it took Highsmith to parse the meaning of their prose, he decided to borrow it.

A sample of the ThinkQuest post:

Poultry farming is raising chickens, turkeys, ducks and other fowl for meat or eggs. Poultry farms can be: 1. Breeding farms where they raise poultry for meat, or 2. Layer farms where they produce eggs.
The ‘best’ breeds depend on what you want from them. Good egg layers are Rhode Island Reds [brown eggs] and Leghorns [white eggs].

A sample of Highsmith’s post (via SportsGrid):

Poultry farming is raising of turkeys, ducks, chicken and other fowl for meat or eggs. Poultry farms can be breeding farms where they raise poultry for meat, or layer farms where they produce eggs. The ‘best’ breeds depend on what you want from them. Good egg layers are Rhode Island Reds [brown eggs] and Leghorns [white eggs].

I do love that Highsmith took the time to get rid of the numbers. Like, “Okay Erik, if we’re going to get away with this, we’re going to have to disguise it. So first thing’s first. Let’s get rid of the numbering. Next, let’s — wait, let me check this text. Free Pizza in the quad? Fuck this noise. Publish.”

According to the News & Observer this is one of two posts that Highsmith plagiarized, but the other one was not written by tweens so it’s less funny/sad.

Highsmith’s response?

Erik Highsmith @Mook_Freak88 Follow

A 11 year old ? Lol really..? C'mon you can lie better than that

12:40 PM - 23 Oct 12

• Reply
• Retweet
• Favorite

This is just the latest in the CW teen soap that is the marriage of UNC academics and athletics.