Learning on the job: Smith finishing up college degree

Marcus Smith, president and chief operating officer of Lowe's Motor Speedway, explained recently how he has added another description to his string of titles -- that of student.

In response to a revelation -- even to him, he insists -- that he left the University of North Carolina without a degree in 1996, Smith said he went back to school during the summer. He also attempted to clarify exactly what transpired that led to his own confusion -- and that of others, including some concerned stockholders in Speedway Motorsports Inc. -- over whether or not he had earned the degree in the first place.

1on1: Marcus Smith

He is known mostly as one of Bruton Smith's sons who went into the family racing business. But the truth is Marcus Smith, president of Lowe's Motor Speedway, very nearly avoided going into racing years ago.

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"I'm not trying to hide anything. I've never tried to hide anything in the whole process," Smith said. "What happened is I had taken all my courses, had a full schedule every semester at Carolina, did the graduation thing and everything else. And I never really looked back. I got engaged shortly after that and got married, and started working, had kids pretty quick. I've just been living life and running hard ever since, not thinking a thing about it.

"Then this guy who was a short seller on Wall Street [revealed Smith did not have his degree] -- and what they'll do is look for negative news where they take a position on a stock, and if it goes down they win. So he launched this negative PR campaign. That's why it came out."

Smith was referring to Barry Minkow, co-founder of Fraud Discovery Institute, a San Diego-based licensed private investigation company, who this past spring first reported that Smith was lacking his UNC degree.

Minkow, who once served seven years in federal prison for fraud himself, admitted to Bloomberg News in March that he went public with the story right around the time he bought "put options" of SMI stock. Owners of put options have the right to sell their stock for a set price during a set period of time, and a put option increases in value as the price of the underlying security falls.

Smith said he was surprised to learn he did not have a degree from UNC, which he attended from 1992 through 1996. He majored in journalism and mass communications after initially enrolling in pre-med classes.

"Basically he tried to find some negative news about me and about the company. And he discovered I had not officially graduated from the University of North Carolina," Smith said. "So I called the dean's office and said, 'What's up here?' With a little investigating, they told me I had enough hours -- but I didn't have all the right hours. I was short a couple classes.

"So I started to work on that this summer, and finished up a little bit. I've got a little bit left to go, so it's in progress. I'm going to finish it up and put a big tattoo of my diploma on my arm."

Smith insisted it was never his intention to mislead anyone.

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"Nobody's perfect. Your life is your story. ... It is one of those things that happens," he said. "There are people out there who will be negative and will throw mud or rocks whenever they get the chance. I'm not too concerned about that stuff. Obviously everyone would love to get roses and flowers from everybody all the time. But you've got to take the bad with the good sometimes."

That includes taking correspondence classes to earn your college degree, even at age 35 while working full time at a big job and attempting to be a devoted father of two, all at the same time. Smith admitted it has not been easy at times.

"I spent a whole lot of time this summer learning about some cultural issues in Africa that I never thought I would ever be reading about. It was interesting. I probably wrote more for that particular class than I ever had as a full-time student at Carolina," Smith said.

The class he said he completed this past summer was African-American Culture. He declined to be specific about how many more classes he will have to take.

"I'd love to have it done as soon as possible. It's just that you're trying to juggle that, work and family," Smith said. "I don't have a lot left and I should be done soon. It's one of those things that I never thought twice of -- and now that it's been brought up, I'm hitting the books and it'll be done sooner rather than later."