Facing potential penalties, UNC argues due process, fairness — Jacobs

Leaders at the University of North Carolina merit a nod for deftly dressing recalcitrance in the robes of principle. From a strategic standpoint, not to mention a stylistic one, it’s probably worth a shot. If you didn’t know better, based on UNC’s legalistic response to five alleged major NCAA rules violations, you’d think the university is intent on championing due process and fairness rather than trying to avoid punishment.

Taming the NCAA’s enforcement methods is a worthy task, one the organization’s many critics consider long overdue. Unfortunately UNC is not in the strongest position to lead that charge while standing in the dock facing potential penalties.

Rare is the defendant who says, “You know what? You caught me. I’ll take my punishment.” UNC moved in that direction, declaring it “acknowledges, with profound regret” that it compromised “the trust of the people of North Carolina” through “events” including “anomalous courses” addressed in the NCAA’s Amended Notice of Allegations. But then, instead of letting go — allowing its good works subsequent to forced self-examination to ameliorate the consequences — the university decided to vigorously contest every significant point made by the NCAA.

As the university and its legal team portrayed the situation, all that was broken is fixed. Malefactors were removed and safeguards put in place. After much angst, the university’s academic accrediting agency, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges, pronounced itself satisfied with reforms at UNC.

Case closed.

“That’s like saying, we doubled the padlock on the door,” protested Tom Yeager, formerly a member of the NCAA Committee on Infractions for nine years and for three years its chair. “It doesn’t negate the fact that there was a bank robbery before that time.”

According to UNC, after misdeeds in the football program on Butch Davis’ watch resulted in probation in 2012, the NCAA enforcement staff said it was satisfied, only to return to poke around again in alleged violation of its own rules. Even if the NCAA did have oversight authority, the university asserted it was too late – the statute of limitations expired.

North Carolina also disputed the premises underlying the most serious NCAA allegations, particularly inadequate institutional control related to the longtime availability of academically hollow courses offered by the African and Afro-American Studies department. UNC contended that what a university did within the academic realm was beyond the reach of NCAA investigation and, by extension, the athletics-oriented NCAA.

The university’s stance reflected an ongoing debate in collegiate governing circles over limiting “the role of the NCAA relevant to academics,” said Tar Heels athletic director Bubba Cunningham. Still, one could easily argue investigators were focused less on the content of phantom classes than on their manipulation to maintain athletic eligibility and indirectly secure a competitive advantage, as documented in the university’s own Wainstein report, issued in October 2014.

UNC’s assertions certainly didn’t move Yeager, the retired commissioner of the Colonial Athletic Association, who’s previously heard the academics/athletics separation argument in infractions cases. This, after all, is just another step in a process of argumentation, point and counterpoint, that moves in approximately three months to a hearing before his former committee.

Yeager noted that “academics very much is the NCAA’s purview,” especially with regard to eligibility-enhancing class credits. “I believe there was knowledge within the athletic department about those courses,” he said. “I doubt, I doubt that a university board and others would stand up and say, ‘Yeah, these are normal classes at our institution.’ The NCAA part of this is a smokescreen, really, to the ultimate question. It’s just static.”

Yeager also contested the notion that in this case the clock had run out on the NCAA’s chances to look back. “Unless there’s a pattern,” he pointed out. Like 18 years of AFAM courses in which athletes made up nearly half the enrollees in what Wainstein dubbed a “shadow curriculum.”

The university’s response to the NCAA’s April 2016 allegations runs to 70 pages, a number coincidentally matching the number of reforms UNC repeatedly cites to calibrate its rediscovered rectitude. The document, replete with citations of NCAA bylaws and legal arguments, was released to the speed-reading public about 40 minutes prior to a Tuesday news conference by Cunningham.

“We have accepted responsibility as a university for what happened, and we’ve apologized,” the AD proclaimed. “Our response is a very important step in what has been a difficult chapter in Carolina’s history.”

A good soldier, Cunningham echoed UNC’s formal position, downplaying the severity of allegations involving individuals formerly in its employ – philosophy professor and women’s basketball adviser Jan Boxill, AFAM student services manager Deborah Crowder and AFAM dean Julius Nyang’oro. The university argued Boxill’s attempts to offer athletes academic assistance were largely minor, and the latter two’s refusals to speak with the NCAA after leaving the school constituted low-level violations at best.

Whatever their level, previous violations were counted as an “aggravating factor” by the NCAA in its April bill of particulars. A history of UNC stumbles was recalled, from a hefty 95 cases of Level III or secondary “self reports” over the last four years to a 1961 probation incurred by basketball coach Frank McGuire.

“I think a lot of what happened here absolutely shouldn’t have happened and should have certainly been caught much sooner,” chancellor Carol Folt told The News & Observer last summer, after UNC received the original Notice of Allegations. “That’s really the tragedy of this, is that it wasn’t identified as quickly as possible and completely halted.” The chancellor went on to lament the unfairness of penalizing current students for events that occurred prior to their arrival, a common knock on NCAA punishments.

In that regard, UNC’s response to the latest NCAA findings was good news for the approximately 800 athletes who earn the money for, and are served by, its $85 million athletic department. Deflecting any limitations imposed on the institution protects their immediate competitive interests. What it does to North Carolina’s longstanding reputation for integrity in both athletics and academics, once among the university’s proudest attributes, is another matter.

“Why sports are significant is they influence, they have a bigger influence on society than almost any other thing,” said none other than Jan Boxill in a September 2013 interview. “Therefore coaches, anybody that’s involved – the administrators, the coaches, the players, the famed players – they have a greater responsibility to do the right thing.”

Or, in the case of UNC’s reply to these latest NCAA allegations, to seem to do the right thing.

This story was originally published August 3, 2016 at 7:38 PM with the headline "Facing potential penalties, UNC argues due process, fairness — Jacobs."