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CAPE FEAR MEMORIAL BRIDGE CLOSURE: UPDATES, RESOURCES, AND CONTEXT

Wake Forest Finds Football Radio Analyst Provided Game Plans To Opponents

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

A little sports espionage story now from North Carolina - a scandal at Wake Forest University that is nicknamed...

SCOTT HAMILTON: Wakeyleaks.

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

That was Scott Hamilton. He's a sports columnist with The Winston-Salem Journal. He says the leaks in Wakeyleaks came from one of the football team's radio broadcasters, a color analyst named Tommy Elrod.

SIEGEL: This week, the university accused Elrod of betraying the team.

HAMILTON: He was divulging details about the game plan to the opponent prior to games.

CORNISH: Yesterday, Wake Forest said they found evidence that he had been sharing game plans as far back as 2014, and they fired Elrod.

SIEGEL: Now, before calling Wake Forest games as a broadcaster, Elrod worked as an assistant coach for the team for more than a decade. And Hamilton says Elrod even played quarterback for the black and gold Wake Forest Demon Deacons.

HAMILTON: He's from Florida, but he was baptized in black and gold.

CORNISH: Hamilton says the irony in all of this is that Wake Forest has actually had a decent football season.

SIEGEL: And later this month, Wake Forest will play in the Military Bowl in Annapolis.

HAMILTON: People aren't talking about the ball game. Twenty-four hours ago, that was the buzz. Now it's Wakeyleaks. Go figure.

CORNISH: So far, Tommy Elrod has not publicly commented on the story, and sports columnist Scott Hamilton only reached Elrod's lawyer.

SIEGEL: Hamilton says there are a lot of unanswered questions, like what'll happen to the schools that received the leaked plays? And if the university's accusations are true, what could have been the motive?

CORNISH: Hamilton says he knows Elrod personally, and so he's puzzled himself.

HAMILTON: It's just a bizarre, bizarre story that gets more bizarre by the minute.

SIEGEL: Scott Hamilton, sports columnist at The Winston-Salem Journal and radio host.

CORNISH: He says there's a lot of speculation about why this might have happened. In a statement, the head football coach called the news simply incomprehensible. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.