It's been 48 hours since UNC posted the NCAA's revised Notice of Allegations (NOA), and after reading it forwards, backwards and inside out, all I can deduce is that the NCAA must agree with Mr. Bradley. The NOA wasn't amended, in the sense that the word usually means. It was rewritten, entirely removing any culpability for violations from anyone associated with the Athletics Department and its Academic Support Program for Student Athletes (ASPSA), which, during the time frame specified by the NOA, was functionally, if not officially, a part of the Athletics Department.
Instead, according to the new, revised (hard to call it "amended") NOA, the Athletics Department, ASPSA and the student-athletes were impacted by, not party to, the negligence and academic malfeasance of faculty and leadership in the administration and College of Arts & Sciences. Jan Boxill would be the lone exception, though she straddled the boundary between the Athletics Department and the College, having a foot in both the Philosophy Department as faculty and in ASPSA as an academic advisor to Women's Basketball (WBB) student-athletes.
It's almost as if Bradley Bethel wrote the Notice of Allegations for the NCAA enforcement team. Even the application of Lack of Institutional Control (LOIC) in Allegation 5 was revised and corresponds now more closely with how Bethel has interpreted the NCAA principle, in contrast to the NCAA's own explanation of LOIC.
This turn of events all but blows the point of this blog out of the water. I don't consider my criticism of UNC's handling of the scandal to be that of a "banner chaser," meaning one who is guided by sports rivalry and taking delight in the prospect of athletics sanctions. I only reluctantly focused on the NCAA's enforcement process because I couldn't see any other mechanism for holding the university's athletics interests accountable for the scandal if the university, itself, was unwilling to police itself. The Southern Associations of Colleges and Schools (SACS) would be a preferable enforcement agency, given that it WAS an academic failure, but they lack the armament to punish sufficiently to address the incentives that, I argue, were the cause of the scandal and that which I maintain the University still has failed to acknowledge or address (athletics eligibility and academic time contraint relaxation for athletes). For SACS it's either probation or accreditation removal, and the latter is just never going to happen.
But if this NOA presages anything, it's that NCAA seems unwilling (or impotent) to compel the University leadership, administration and its booster power brokers & fans to acknowledge what really drove this scandal. It'll forever remain an academic failure, not caused by athletic motives of eligibility engineering. Barring some unforeseen turn of events or revelation of new information, I'm going to have to learn to live with that.
There are some mysteries about this NOA, though, that I hope will be answered in time.
- Allegations 4 (Failure to Monitor) and 5 (Lack of Institutional Control) involving Boxill providing impermissible benefits to student-athletes and the failure of oversight that allowed"anomolous" courses to persist are restricted to the period of time from the Fall of 2005 to the Summer of 2011. I can find no explanation for that.
- There are no Factual Information (FI) exhibits. Why? Perhaps they were redacted before public release of the NOA?
- Answer: Because the FIs require review for privacy protection, they were removed to facilitate release and will be made public after review is completed. (link)
- The "anomolous" courses are cited by Allegations 4 and 5 as one of the examples of misconduct that should have been caught were it not for failure in faculty and ASPSA supervision, but no where does the NCAA explain what it was about the "anomolous" courses that was improper from an NCAA bylaws perspective.
- It appears UNC officials agree and have echoed the NCAA's own claims that assessment of academic quality or rigor should be out of its (NCAA's) "wheelhouse" and did not result in violation of any NCAA bylaws. (link)
- How can the allegation of LOIC stand without the deeper and broader allegations of at least the first edition of the NOA? The allegations as they are rewritten don't amount to LOIC.
- It appears UNC officials agree and have challenged the Failure to Monitor and Lack of Institutional Control allegations on these grounds. (link)
- Why is "athletics" included in the phrasing of Allegations 4 and 5 "individuals in the athletics and academic administrations on campus, particularly in the college of arts and sciences" when nowhere in the NOA is anyone from athletics charged with responsibility for any infractions? All explanatory language assigns responsibility soley to College of Arts & Sciences and institutional leadership.
- Possible answer: if the NCAA considered the question about the independent-style courses raised at the December 2006 Faculty Athletics Committee meeting as an example of the instance in which campus leadership failed to act on knowledge of possible anomolous classes, then that could include culpability of then-Athletics Director Dick Baddour and then-Associate Director John Blanchard, as well as then-director of ASPSA Robert Mercer, who also could have been considered "athletics" administration.
- In its response, UNC affirms that it considers no athletics department personnel were responsible for the issues. UNC has not acknowledged ASPSA staff or leadership as being Athletics Department personnel during the timeframe covered by the allegations, and the termination, resignations or reassignments of Baddour, Blanchard, Mercer or former football coach Butch Davis have not been characterized by UNC as penalties for failures or misconduct related to the allegations. (link)
It could be Spring 2017 before a final Public Infractions Report is published and we learn if the Committee on Infractions recognizes these questions or accepts UNC's response.
For me, unless something changes, I must concede to UNC's "victory" in averting significant NCAA sanctions. As such, I will shift focus away from the Athletics Department, and back to Faculty, university and ASPSA leadership culpability, since I do agree with Bethel (except for his defense of ASPSA) that it was their failure that enabled this academic failure. Unlike Bethel, I don't look past the athletics-driven agenda of that portion of the institution. Letting the Athletics Department off the hook doesn't mean the scandal wasn't athletics-driven. Since the Athletics Department appears to be on the path to exoneration, I believe more accountability is required for those that the NCAA charges but doesn't name. I will expect the University to do so in it's response to the NCAA request for information in the last section of the NOA: (Note: the University's response has been published.)
