Part of my job as the editor of the ACC Sports Journal and ACCSports.com includes keeping an eye on what everyone else is doing in the land of ACC media, especially the daily newspapers and other periodicals.

While I realize that sportswriters and their editors often rank barely above lawyers and politicians in the eyes of many fans, in my opinion the ACC region is blessed with a bunch of outstanding sports departments and an extraordinary number of hard-working and/or talented men and women who are "on the beat" every day. We're fortunate to have many of the latter as regular contributors to the ACC Sports Journal.

Unfortunately, the financial realities of the newspaper business -- rising costs, increased competition, declining readership, etc. -- have led many dailies to cut their staffs and place less emphasis (if any) on topics that extend well beyond the daily grind, especially so-called investigative or enterprise reporting.

Two recent exceptions to this rule came from two newspapers, the Washington Post (washingtonpost.com) and the New York Times (nytimes.com), that remain among the nation's industry leaders. Their articles on some of the outrageous improprieties of the prep school world -- think basketball-only student bodies, uncertified teachers, fraudulent classes, magically transformed GPAs, minimal NCAA or state-by-state oversight, etc. -- represented aggressive, meaningful sports journalism at its best.

(NOTE: You may need to register to visit those sites. If you do so and need to search, try "Mark Schlabach" -- the lead writer -- for the Post article, and "Schools Where the Only Real Test Is Basketball" -- the headline -- for the Times article.)

From a local perspective, one aspect of the articles -- actually, something that was MISSING from the articles -- reinforced a fact that's already well-known in media circles and throughout the college basketball world: The four ACC basketball teams in North Carolina do things the right way. In one small example of that fact, their rosters aren't dotted with products of these embarrassing diploma mills.

Years ago, when I was more involved in the day-to-day operations of my company's recruiting products (PrepStars.com, Recruiter's Handbook), we'd play a game in the office. We'd identify a prospect who had horrendously bad grades, a mysterious jump in his ACT/SAT score, four or five different high schools (including some on the "suspicious" list) and/or some criminal activity in his background. Then we'd ask everyone to make blind guesses as to which schools were recruiting the player.

Inevitably, I'd guess either Cincinnati or Fresno State or Kansas State or UNLV or others who were of that ilk at that time. Inevitably, I'd be right on one or all counts. I remember wondering at the time about how the graduates of those schools would have felt if they knew their school was gaining such a reputation, at least in the college basketball world.

The colleges mentioned in the recent Times and Post articles were, in a few cases, surprising. Here's a list of the teams that have signed players from the questionable/fraudulent prep schools: Alabama, Arkansas, Chattanooga, Florida Atlantic, George Washington, Georgetown, Massachusetts, Middle Tennessee State, Mississippi State, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Temple, Texas-El Paso and Washington State.

Before I read those articles, most of the schools above already were on my personal "questionable integrity" list, as formed over the last two decades of covering college basketball, and the recruiting game in particular.

We all know that every basketball program in America admits academic exceptions, and that everybody stumbles into a minor NCAA rules violation from time to time. But the accuracy of the "everybody does it" cocktail-party talk ends right there.

The fact is, everybody DOESN'T do things the same way, and the contrasts are stunning. At some schools, the president/chancellor, athletic director, compliance director, admissions department and/or head coach set a tone about the importance of following NCAA rules and maintaining an athletic/academic philosophy that's appropriate for their college or university. At other schools, those same people take the look-the-other-way approach, all in the name of winning more games, and, by extension, making more money.

In my book, here's the bottom line: At the college level, if you stop CARING about the "student-" half of "student-athlete," and you stop CARING about doing things the right way, you're an embarrassment to your school, your conference and yourself. And don't TELL me you care about those things; SHOW me you care. That's infinitely more difficult and far more important.

The schools listed above have some difficult questions to ask themselves. Meanwhile, here in North Carolina, we have four ACC basketball teams that have been pretty good at winning in recent years, and they've been doing it the right way, too.

That combination doesn't always make headlines. Considering the content of the Times and Post articles, though, staying out of the news can be a very good thing, too.