Dive Brief:
- An amended Notice of Allegations against the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill was released this week by the NCAA, indicating potentially lenient punishment following the paper class scandal that rocked the academic and college athletics worlds in 2014.
- The Chronicle of Higher Education reports serious sanctions against the football and men’s basketball teams are likely off the table, including the revocation of the 2005 national championship from the basketball team, because neither team is named in the Notice of Allegations anymore and the period of investigation has been narrowed.
- UNC’s accreditor already put the university on a one-year probation — its most serious penalty — and most of the major players in the scandal have resigned or been fired, but the NCAA sanctions left to be levied are likely to impact future players more than anyone else.
Dive Insight:
University of North Carolina athletes were placed into sham classes in the African American Studies department that required students to do little to no work but gave them A's to ensure they’d be able to meet GPA minimums for play. An investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice found these paper classes were in play from 1993 to 2011. Student athletes who were enrolled in these courses were cheated out of college educations that were supposed to have set them up for life beyond athletics. A tiny fraction of student athletes go on to play professionally, and if they don’t have skills to do other jobs, they are left with very few options.
While the football and men’s basketball teams were taken out of the Notice by the NCAA, the women’s basketball team is still mentioned. These three teams were the ones included in the original report from the Justice Department.