Since the UNC's hiring of Kenneth Wainstein and the firm of Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft in 2014 to "dig deeper" into the origins of the scandal, there was a new investigator on the UNC case and...well, I'm not sure, but the "cooperative and collaborative" engagement sure doesn't seem to have had the same tone as it appeared to have from 2011 to 2013.
In 2011, after NCAA investigators Mike Zonder and Chance Miller participated with UNC into the earliest inquiries into what was to become known as the AFAM department academic scandal involving "paper classes," NCAA officials affirmed that none of the behaviors identified amounted to violations of NCAA rules.
Again, in September 2013, Mike Zonder would again deliver the NCAA's confirmation it was not contemplating an new investigation. NCAA Enforcement and its Academic & Membership Affairs (AMA) staff had had some internal dialogue about that subject earlier in the year, after reviewing UNC's Martin Report. UNC wouldn't learn of this Enforcement/AMA internal discussion until a couple years later.
Disagreement between UNC and NCAA enforcement seems to emerge in 2014 in the midst of the Wainstein investigation. After Senior Associate Athletics Director and chief compliance officer Vince Ille informed the NCAA enforcement of the university's hiring of Kenneth Wainstein -- and after 3 1/2 years of acceptance of UNC's self-investigative efforts -- NCAA investigators wanted in on the interviews Wainstein was conducting. UNC insisted its representatives needed to sit in on any interviews in which NCAA investigators participated, but since UNC was precluded from doing that by the terms of Wainstein's investigation, UNC's insistence effectively barred NCAA investigators too.
That was just the start. NCAA enforcement-produced documents and UNC's responses that have been made public are rife with disagreement. UNC has campaigned that the earlier pre-Wainstein determinations were correct and the current allegations and justifications for those allegations are flawed. Enforcement has disagreed. (The Committee on Infractions has yet to rule on the merits.)
Which brings us to the topic of those 2013 emails. One of the more caustic complaints against NCAA Enforcement by UNC in its Response to the Amended Notice of Allegation was the claim that the Enforcement had violated Bylaw 19.5.9 when it had failed to disclose those documents to UNC when making case records available to the UNC.
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| http://carolinacommitment.unc.edu/files/2016/08/UNC-Response-to-2016-ANOA.pdf |
It was just a footnote, but it was a shot across Enforcement's bow. The rule?
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| http://www.ncaapublications.com/productdownloads/D117.pdf |
Enforcement addressed it in it's September 19th, 2016 reply:
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| https://carolinacommitment.unc.edu/files/2016/12/10.25.16-posting-first-link-_-p.-64-66.pdf |
To which UNC retorted in Evrard's letter to Tom Hosty on October 17th:
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| http://carolinacommitment.unc.edu/files/2016/10/10.17.2016-BSK-Letter-to-Tom-Hosty.pdf |
This squabble over:
- whether or not the case is a new one or an old one re-opened,
- whether or not the email was "factual information pertinent to the case, and
- whether or not the lack of disclosure was intentional
...illustrates the decay in agreement UNC and the Enforcement staff may have once shared. 2013 and earlier? UNC and NCAA Enforcement were all on the same page. 2014 and later? Enforcement and UNC are at odds over multiple issues. Did something change?
Enforcement personnel changed, for one thing.
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| Top Left to Bottom Right: Julie Roe Lach, Jonathan Duncan, Mike Zonder, Kathy Sulentic |
Jonathan Duncan became interim Vice President for Enforcement in March 2013 after NCAA President Mark Emmert fired former VP Julie Roe Lach in the wake of the scandal over Enforcement's investigative tactics in the University of Miami - Florida major infractions case. This change in leadership was just around the time AMA was confirming to Enforcement -- in those 2013 emails UNC would later find -- that the Martin Report hadn't revealed any Bylaw infractions. Duncan would be officially named VP in April 2014, just as enforcement's investigation team was trying to gain access to Wainstein's interviews. Did his presence make a difference when compared to Enforcement's previous agreement with UNC under Lach?
Mike Zonder was lead investigator on UNC's case in 2011, and it was he with whom Vince Ille can be seen corresponding, at least up until February 2014. After that, Kathy Sulentic was assigned to the "new" case. Sulentic had recently been named assistant director of enforcement and head of new unit in the department on academic integrity.
Did that make a difference?
The NCAA legal landscape was changing too. the NCAA was beginning its tightwalk, defending it's amateur model but also feeling pressure regarding its role in defending the value of the educations student-athletes receive from members institutions.
So what became of the squabble? UNC's complaint was a procedural one, but it wasn't on the agenda of the October 2016 procedural hearing before the COI panel. Will UNC resurrect it in it's response to the 2nd Amended NOA?
