On Friday, the NCAA will release its final infractions report on the long-running academic scandal at the University of North Carolina. Inside Carolina reports that the university was given 24 hours of notice on Thursday morning.
The report, which was scheduled to come out last Friday, will arrive about eight weeks after UNC met with the NCAA Committee on Infractions in Nashville, Tennessee. This investigation took many turns over the course of seven-plus years; tomorrow may finally provide some answers.
Last November, the COI wrote a letter to the NCAA enforcement staff to revisit the second notice of allegations from April. That led to the newest NOA, issued to UNC on Dec. 13, 2016.
North Carolina faces five Level I allegations, which were announced in that third Notice of Allegations. Men’s basketball and football were both named in this report.
Here are the allegations:
- Extra benefits provided by AFAM department manager Julius Nyang’oro and his assistant Deborah Crowder in the form of special arrangements for student-athletes. “Particularly in the sports of football and men’s basketball,” from the fall of 2002 through the summer of 2011. The NCAA deems this an ethical conduct violation.
- Extra benefits provided by women’s basketball athletic academic counselor Jan Boxill in the form of impermissible academic assistance to women’s basketball student-athletes. That existed from February 2003 to July 2010.
- Crowder failing to furnish information to the NCAA.
- Nyang’oro failing to furnish information to the NCAA.
- Lack of institutional control from fall of 2002 through the summer of 2011.
Later this year, in May, UNC responded to that NOA; at that time, the university denied multiple allegations.
Will we have a resolution tomorrow?
Well, probably not. North Carolina has 15 days to decide if it wants to appeal the the NCAA’s ruling, per NCAA bylaws. Beyond that, however: the appeals process could take up to 110 days. That would take this well into 2018.
Even then, a conclusive result could come further down the road. UNC could pursue a legal case after the appeals process, too.