NCAA Announces It Could Not Conclude UNC Violated NCAA Rules

Well, it finally happened. After multiple years of investigations and appeals and everything in between we have a ruling in the NCAA vs UNC case. And it was absolutely nothing.

If you don’t remember or haven’t heard yet, this investigation is focused on an independent study-style courses in the formerly named African and Afro-American Studies (AFAS) department on the Chapel Hill campus. The courses were misidentified as lecture classes but didn’t meet and required a research paper or two for typically high grades. In a 2014 investigation, former U.S. Justice Department official Kenneth Wainstein estimated more than 3,100 students were affected between 1993 and 2011, with athletes across numerous sports making up roughly half the enrollments.

We’ve seen sanctions regarding this case already. It started with the football team in 2012, before the case was reopened in 2014. Needless to say this investigation and all the appeals have been going on for way too long. At least now we have a ruling that it’s over and UNC and its rivals can all move on.

However, this is just another hilarious misstep by the NCAA. If you truly had nothing why did you do a 3.5 year investigation? Why were there five level I violations? Why not just drop it after the first appeal by UNC? But, God forbid some kid tries to transfer or goes and has a YouTube channel, they’ll fight tooth and nail to not let this kid play. That’s my problem with all of this. I have 0 problem with UNC getting nothing here, but let’s not act like the NCAA doesn’t pick and choose when it comes to violations. As Tark once said “The NCAA was so mad at Kentucky they gave Cleveland State two more years of probation.”

The problem with this ruling is how it’s going to open Pandora’s box going forward. Mark Emmert, who I’ll continue to say is a laughingstock of the highest degree, started this commission on college basketball to clean up the game. This is going to let boosters pay players and members of the student body to show that athletes didn’t have an advantage. That’s essentially what the NCAA is ruling here, because the general student population also took the class, there’s no problem. This can easily fall over to other things.

Good for UNC though. They fought this and won. This is what’s going to happen going forward, especially if you’re a blue blood program. Look at SMU, who had one player cheat in a class and they received a postseason ban and scholarship sanctions. This is a fake class and no punishment. With everything that’s going on in the NCAA, don’t you think programs that are at the same caliber of UNC will fight and draw out this long process? And yes, I understand this was a university problem, but athletics benefited greatly because of it. If the NCAA can pick and choose what is decides on, why not this? Also good for UNC – they have Midnight Madness tonight where they are unveiling the championship banner from last year. The fact the NCAA even scheduled this announcement today is a joke.

I’m very interested to see cases going forward, because a precedent has been set. As always, Mark Emmert stays a clown.

Live look at Roy Williams and the rest of Chapel Hill: