A 7-year timeline of North Carolina’s massive athletic academics scandal

Both of these things are true:

Two more things that are true, based on the NCAA’s self-assigned role in college sports:

May 29, 2010: North Carolina defensive lineman Marvin Austin tweets a line from Rick Ross’ “Sweet Life.” At the time, it’s highly doubtful Austin was actually at LIV.

Oct. 13, 2017: The NCAA announces it won’t sanction UNC for academic concerns it probably wouldn’t know about if not for Austin’s tweet about Rick Ross’ bottles at Club LIV.

The NCAA spent seven years investigating North Carolina for academic fraud. It announced Friday that it couldn’t prove any NCAA violations in the course of all that investigating, so the Tar Heels are walking free. They spent millions in legal fees and went through a bowl-banned 2012 football season, but that’ll be about it. Roy Williams’ championship men’s basketball program won’t face any sanctioning.

There is a real level on which that feels wrong. UNC has a blue-blood hoops team, and one of the things that helped keep players on that team eligible was sham coursework. The way the NCAA’s Committee on Infractions describes them:

The NCAA’s Committee on Infractions “could not conclude” academic violations at North Carolina, it announced Friday, after a years-long investigation:

The panel found just two violations, and neither will cause UNC serious trouble. They are that two former officials didn’t cooperate with NCAA investigators. One former department chair got a five-year “show cause” penalty, which will make it difficult for that person to work in college athletics during that period.

University of Maryland President Wallace Loh said in a meeting last week that he believes the NCAA investigation into North Carolina will eventually lead to the “death penalty.” He made his remarks about a former ACC rival in response to a question about how the university will “remain protected from the corrupting influence of athletics.”

“The death penalty” is the most serious punishment the NCAA can dole out. It essentially means a program is removed from NCAA competition for a full year. The most famous recent example is SMU football, which was hit with the death penalty in 1987.

If it feels like North Carolina’s NCAA case has been dragging on for years, it’s because it has. The last vestiges of the Tar Heels’ case won’t come to a conclusion until at least April of 2016 due to new violations disclosed by the school in August of 2015. Considering this all started in 2010, that’s a long time. So long, in fact, that former football assistant John Blake’s three-year show-cause penalty has already expired, and he was just hired as the defensive line coach at Lamar.

The academic scandal has embroiled many of the athletics programs at North Carolina, not just football. The punishment for the football team was handed down all the way back in 2012, but the storm has continued for both men’s and women’s basketball and men’s soccer.

The University of North Carolina announced on Friday that it had found additional violations in women’s basketball and men’s soccer, via CBSSports’s Gary Parrish. The violations will delay the NCAA’s decision on a punishment for the Tar Heels, likely pushing any penalty until after both Signing Day and the NCAA Tournament.

North Carolina’s men’s basketball team is a preseason No. 1 candidate, and the discovery basically eliminates the possibility of the Tar Heels being ruled not eligible for the NCAA Tournament in March. Signing Day for football is in February, and it seems head coach Larry Fedora will have a full set of scholarships to work with.

Penalties related to college athletics scandals usually relate to, you know, athletics. Postseason bans, scholarship limits, reduction in recruiting days, etc. Makes sense, as much as NCAA sanctions can make sense.

The Tar Heels are the athletic program currently making their way through the digestive system of the NCAA, but the school itself is having to deal with the fallout.

The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, the commission that accredits the University of North Carolina, has placed UNC on 12 months probation after seven violations including academic integrity and a failure to monitor sports, the board announced Thursday.

Yes, it’s the same scandal that’s involved the school’s athletics programs since 2010.

After a four-year wait which felt like it spanned multiple decades, we finally have the full gauntlet of allegations the NCAA is levying against the University of North Carolina. The allegations were made public by the school on Thursday, and UNC now has until Aug. 20 to file a formal response.

The trend of everyone having to re-learn the major bullet points from this story every time something major happens (once every 5-8 months) will continue through at least the summer of 2015. If anyone is even willing to partake in that endeavor by then.

Still going! Yes, the NCAA investigation into North Carolina’s five-year-old scandal is still rattling along, with the university releasing the NCAA’s official list of allegations on Thursday.

No, you’re not the only person to forget this fiasco was unresolved. No, you shouldn’t feel bad. You work hard and have a lot on your mind.

“Butch Davis came into a meeting one day and he said, ‘If y’all came for an education, you should have went to Harvard,’” the man said.

The school, he said, pushed athletes to take the fake classes in the African American studies department.

It seems that every day there’s a new suit alleging that the someone in college athletics has broken laws in a quest to uphold amateurism. Usually, those suits involve the NCAA. The latest doesn’t name the NCAA at all, but it could also have a profound impact on the organization’s future.

UNC could potentially argue that it gives athletes every right to choose which classes they want to take (though the Wainstein report casts doubt on whether that’s always been the case).

The Raleigh News & Observer has been on top of the North Carolina academic scandal since Day 1, and is causing even more waves this week. The publication is at it again this week, taking an in-depth look at the Wainstein report to reveal some particularly troubling truths regarding North Carolina’s 2004-05 men’s basketball national championship team.

Here are the three biggest takeaways from News & Observer’s latest report:

The fine details and the nation’s immediate reaction are now known. The athletic and academic scandal at the University of North Carolina is one of the largest and most egregious events of its kind in the history of college athletics. The sports world is fully aware of this, and has decided it would rather talk about whether multiple SEC teams really deserve to be included in the new college football playoff.

Over a span of 18 years, 3,100 students (47 percent of which were athletes) at UNC took advantage of Afro-American Studies courses which allowed them to receive quality grades without having to show up for class, turn in papers or take tests. It’s one of the most wide-ranging academic scandals of all-time, and a prestigious university and celebrated basketball program are at the heart of it. All this comes at a time when respect for the NCAA and faith in the principles it claims to uphold are at an all-time low. If ever there was a story that deserved full-circle treatment for at least a week after breaking, this would seem to be it.

Tough, but fair.

We knew a report was coming, but the details of the Wainstein report on the North Carolina academic fraud scandal were even more shocking than most expected.

The fraud lasted 18 years, and it included 1,500 athletes (most from the revenue sports of football and men’s basketball). Academic advisers steered athletes into easy classes and even emailed professors, telling them what grades they should give athletes:

Wednesday, North Carolina released the results of an independent investigation into widespread academic fraud at the university, finding that more than 3,100 students took classes under a “shadow” curriculum.

Former U.S. Justice Department official Kenneth Wainstein led the investigation after the NCAA reopened the academic misconduct probe into the university in June, when new information became available.

If your school is in the midst of a four-year long academic scandal involving fake classes, impermissible benefits and improper contact with professional athletes, you know what you probably shouldn’t do? This:

H/T Rum & Booty

Remember the UNC academic scandal that’s been going on since 2011? The NCAA sure does!

You know what that means -- it’s time to figure out who could be the previously uncooperative witnesses! We’re not saying any of these people did it, we’re just saying they have connections to the state and/or university.

The latest in an ongoing scandal at UNC that’s included dozens of revelations, McCants’ comments detail the “paper-class” system often used by student-athletes at the school, his own academic issues and apparent knowledge of the situation by legendary head coach Roy Williams.

Many of the claims match previous allegations concerning the school’s academic standards for student-athletes, which began with reports from ESPN and the Raleigh (N.C.) News & Observer a couple years ago. Since then, the details have only piled on.

However, when McCants arrived at UNC back in 2002, he says taking courses designed to pass student-athletes was business as usual. Among these were “paper-classes,” or courses that required no attendance and a single term paper in order to pass.

So UNC athletes took sham classes. We’ve kinda known that for a while. But just how shammy were these sham classes?

Apparently REALLY SHAMMY:

The chairman of North Carolina’s African studies department accepted football tickets, sideline passes and other favors from counselors in the school’s Academic Support Program for Student Athletes, according to emails obtained by the Raleigh News & Observer. Julius Nyang’oro, the professor in question, then negotiated with those same counselors to provide non-lecture or independent studies classes not originally scheduled:

The emails show that Jamie Lee, an academic support counselor, requested that Nyang’oro schedule a “research paper course” in place of a lecture course. Nyang’oro put a research paper course on the summer schedule, as requested. Lee, upon receiving the news, responded with a happy face emoticon. That class, Seminar in Afro-American Studies, included only two students. The News & Observer reports that at least one was an athlete.

Austin was initially at the center of the NCAA’s investigation into the North Carolina football program, and he was later dismissed from the team. The Tar Heels self-imposed sanctions that included vacating all wins in the 2008 and 2009 seasons. The NCAA banned the team from postseason play in 2012 and placed it on probation until 2015.

• Let’s have a spring football roundtable

Via.

For reference.