Commission on College Basketball takes a clear shot at UNC and its academic misconduct defense

Included within the Commission on College Basketball’s report Wednesday designed to identify areas for positive change in the sport was a passage clearly aimed at the University of North Carolina and its recent academic misconduct case.

The Commission called for the NCAA to “revise and clarify” its role in addressing academic fraud at its member schools.

“Member institutions cannot be permitted to defend a fraud or misconduct case on the ground that all students, not just athletes, were permitted to ‘benefit’ from that fraud or misconduct,” the Commission’s report states. “Coaches, athletic directors and university presidents must be held accountable for academic fraud about which they knew or should have known. The standards and punishment for academic fraud must be clarified and then enforced consistently.”

Last fall — after a years-long investigation — an NCAA Division I Committee on Infractions hearing panel said it could not conclude that UNC violated NCAA academic rules when it made “deficient” courses in the Department of African and Afro-American Studies available to the general student body, including student-athletes.

“While student-athletes likely benefited from the so-called ‘paper courses’ offered by North Carolina, the information available in the record did not establish that the courses were solely created, offered and maintained as an orchestrated effort to benefit student-athletes,” said Greg Sankey, the panel’s chief hearing officer and commissioner of the Southeastern Conference. “The panel is troubled by the university’s shifting positions about whether academic fraud occurred on its campus. … However, NCAA policy is clear. The NCAA defers to its member schools to determine whether academic fraud occurred and, ultimately, the panel is bound to making decisions within the rules set by the membership.”

The defense put forth by UNC, which spent years and millions of dollars processing the case, that the general student population — and not just student-athletes, particularly basketball players — benefited from those courses is exactly the defense the Commission on College Basketball stated Wednesday should not be permitted in the future.

In a meeting at the NCAA Convention in January that was attended by the Herald-Leader, the NCAA’s vice president of enforcement, Jon Duncan, outlined the case against North Carolina and expressed a level of frustration with the Committee on Infractions for not concluding that academic fraud was committed.

The NCAA’s enforcement division had charged UNC with "lack of institutional control" and "failure to monitor" athletes before sending its case to the Committee on Infractions for final judgment.

Duncan vowed that he and his enforcement staff would continue to pursue similar cases in the future.

“What is the impact of that decision on our focus on academics moving forward? The answer is, ‘none.’ We will not take our foot off the gas in matters of academic misconduct, academic mischief, improper academic assistance, just because of the outcome of that case,” Duncan said. “We don’t believe that that case outcome was designed to change our area of focus. We certainly haven’t heard from the members that we should lighten up or back off in the area of academic integrity, and we don’t plan to.”

Duncan said his department remains focused on helping prevent violations — especially in the area of academic misconduct — before they happen.

“But it will happen, and when it does we’ll be there to process those cases,” he said. “And the outcome of North Carolina isn’t going to slow that down.”

The Commission on College Basketball was formed last fall in the aftermath of the federal investigation into corruption in the sport that led to the arrests of several assistant coaches, agents, shoe company officials and others.

UNC’s academic case, which resulted in no penalties for the school, was unrelated to the formation of the Commission.

This story was originally published April 25, 2018 at 10:51 AM with the headline "Commission on College Basketball takes a clear shot at UNC and its academic misconduct defense."