The Hammer Drops: NCAA Finds Lack of Institutional Control at UNC

Exhibits (emails/records)
NOA (notice of allegations)

The hammer has dropped and it looks like UNC just took a pretty devastating blow as the NCAA has found a lack of institutional control in their notice of allegations. After a few weeks of spin coming out of UNC that the NOA wasn’t going to be all that bad for football and basketball, we finally get to see the truth.

WRAL summed up the findings nicely:

The NCAA accused UNC of five violations of NCAA bylaws, most importantly of of providing benefits to student-athletes not available to the student body. UNC’s recent history of impropriety serves as an aggravating factor to the most recent round of allegations, the NCAA said.

In addition, the NCAA alleges that “persons of authority condoned, participated in or negligently disregarded the violation of relate wrongful conduct.”

So what does this all mean?

Well, it’s looking pretty bad for UNC. If you check twitter you’ll see that many people are thinking that Men’s Basketball and Football got off the hook a bit with women’s bball taking a major hit. This is not true. Sure the women’s basketball team did get their coaches name dropped in the NOA, but this is a case of ‘Lack of Institutional Control.’ This means all major sports are about to be hammered. Basketball and football are mentioned multiple times, and while somehow a lot of their email and records are redacted, and Roy isn’t really getting called out in there, it’s not going to save men’s basketball. UNC is likley about to get one of the harshest penalties of all time if this plays out how it’s looking. That mean’s forfeiting wins, losing scholarships and getting a few years of no postseason. A crushing blow to any school. UNC has until Aug. 20th to respond to the NOA then will face it’s hearing which will include which includes representatives of other universities and select experts outside academia, according to WRAL.

If you want to try to understand how bad UNC compares to other schools cheating scandals, there is this- This SB Nation article has a nice list of all the schools that have been found of having ‘LOIC’ and shows their punishments. Here is a TLDR version:

USC – Reggie bush was given benefits, Mayo was given benefits and a few others got small benefits. USC knew about these things. Football got a 2 year postseason ban, basketball got 1 (since they self-imposed).

Boise State– Tennis team allowed an athlete to play one years past eligibility and allowed players to enroll before qualifying. Football had a few recruiting violations. University knew and did not report. Tennis got one year ban. Football lost 3 scholarships for 3 straight years.

Baruch College– Women’s bball players got paid for work they did not complete. Correct paperwork was not filed on players. College knew and did not report. Reduction of scholarships, vacated wins in which guilty athlete participated.

IUPUI– Some players from all sports did not meet academic requirements and still played/traveled with team. Academic advisor did not cooperate. University knew and did not report. Reduction of scholarship in most sports and vacated wins.

Kean University– Women’s bball coach had players grade changed and Coach created 3 credit course for team’s trip to Spain without input from athletics dept. University provided money to cover trip’s cost for players. Athletes were given more financial aid than regular students. University knew and did not report. One year post season ban and coach got 4 year show-cause penalty. School had to return honor received for tournament.

Syracuse University (not in the above article)  – Basketball staff encouraged players to develop relationship with booster who paid them more than $8,000 in case for work at the YMCA as a volunteer. Coaches made guest appearances at the YMCA too and were paid. The university knew and did not report. Boeheim suspended 9 games. 108 forfeited games for basketball. A reduction of 12 scholarships in 4 years and reduction of recruiting contact.  Syracuse did self impose a one year post season ban along with some other things.

So what does this tell you? Well, none of these cases are even close to what UNC just was found guilty of. In all of these it was just a few things the University looked the other way on, except the Syracuse case which was a little worse. At Carolina you’re talking about a scheme involving a ton of people to create fake classes…FAKE CLASSES. Meaning these guys went to FAKE college and the coaches were cool with it. Everyone there knew about it but did not report any of it until it was too late. You also had a lack of cooperation early in the process which had the NCAA very angry. What we could be looking at is massive reduction in scholarships for most sports, vacating wins/titles for most sports and very likely a 4 year post season ban for most sports.

What penalty do you think the NCAA should bring down on the heels?