After a seven year-long investigation into an academic fraud scandal, the NCAA has cleared the University of North Carolina from any NCAA sanctions. While everyone may jump to the conclusion that UNC wasn’t punished because of how close they are to the NCAA or how much money they make their league, it is pertinent to look at the facts presented in the official report.

“Since 2014, the NCAA membership has acknowledged the question whether academic fraud occurred is one appropriately answered by institutions based on their own academic policies. The membership trusts academic entities to hold themselves accountable and report academic fraud to the NCAA and has chosen to constrain who decides what constitutes academic fraud. Because of this limitation, UNC’s decision to support the courses as legitimate combined with a stale and incomplete record that does not allow the panel to drill down to the course and assignment level—even if the panel had wanted to second guess the courses—it cannot conclude academic fraud occurred. Similarly, the panel cannot conclude that extra benefit violations occurred surrounding the offering or managing of the courses as alleged. The courses were generally available to the student body, and non-student-athletes took the courses. Further, the record does not include specific and identifiable examples of benefits at the student-athlete level not generally available to the student body. Based on the general availability and the lack of specific examples, the panel cannot conclude a systemic effort to impermissibly benefit student-athletes.”

Taken straight from page two of the twenty-six page report, this excerpt explains why even though the NCAA did not condone these classes and they were not under the preferred guidelines of the sanctioning body, there is no course for punishment. This was for a few reasons. The first reason is that the University of North Carolina did not view this as academic fraud by their standards and stood behind the classes. That makes it difficult for the NCAA to overrule. Also, because the courses were available to the entire student body and were administered the same to every student, there was no finding of any special benefits given to the student-athletes. The problem lies more at the university level than with the athletic programs. A former department head and other academic staff members were reprimanded, but no one on the athletic-side was.

A large weight has been lifted off the backs of the UNC athletic program. For years this investigation hung over their head, not knowing if or when there would be penalties, and what those might be. If you are a Tar Heel fan, this is great news. There were rumors of vacated titles, wins, and possible postseason bans, so getting off without a penalty is almost a blessing. All in all, I believe that while the NCAA obviously wanted to do something, they showed their true lack of authority by not being able to cross-over into academic grounds. At the end of the day, people can be mad about this, but the official report, while knowing that there was wrongdoing, stated that there was no action to be taken from it.