UNC Academic Scandal: Will We Ever Know Why?

First I want to start off by saying no, I am not a college academics or NCAA rules expert.  What I do know is that only a few people have all the details on this thing.  The University of North Carolina and the NCAA joint investigation into academic fraud at the University involving the athletics program found that UNC did not violate any NCAA rules.  Hmmmmm

My first thoughts when the school made the announcement Friday and the NCAA later confirmed were okay but the investigation is going to have many layers and UNC is not out of the woods.  And while that may still be correct if some computer hacker finds someone else’s transcript or incriminating evidence that reopens the investigation.  But for right now, UNC has been found not guilty.

To be brutally honest, I don’t know what happened, but neither does anybody else.  Many possibilities exist, the NCAA made over $740 million dollars last year and basketball, March Madness specifically made them a huge piece of that pie.  UNC being one of the great programs in the country would be better off with the banners hanging at the Dean Dome.  That’s about as much motive as I would need to cover up just about anything.

Then again, what are the NCAA rules governing this sorta thing?  If this were a court case, what would the prosecutor say if we were going strictly by NCAA law?  What exactly happened?  Where are the rest of the documents?  Only select UNC and NCAA officials have that evidence and I’m betting they aren’t going to blog about it anytime soon.

Another possibility I’ve considered is that UNC knows the rules well, bent them, but didn’t shatter them like most think.  Back to my original point, we don’t really know everything and I don’t think we ever will.

For all that we don’t really know about this case, one thing is for sure, this isn’t Penn State.  I’m getting really sick and tired of hearing the comparisons.  Whether you want to accept it or not, favoritism towards athletes has and always will happen in college sports.  It happened in my high school for crying out loud.

If UNC is 100% guilty of everything and had the worst kind of academic fraud running through it’s entire athletic program, it’s still not child molestation.  I don’t know what else to say, Penn State covered up evidence that Jerry Sandusky was essentially torturing little boys on a regular basis, sometimes in their own buildings.  They let him walk around campus, keep an office there, sit in the booth during games, bring little boys to the sidelines knowing what he was going to do to them.

So you say UNC is guilty of a wide variety of academic fraud involving it’s athletes.  Show me who’s lives that’s ruined, who’s innocence that stole.  So the UNC thing involved more people and was supposedly stretched out over a very long period of time.  Someones in jail for the rest of life for what happened at Penn State and several more should be on their way inside, and millions of dollars will be won in court by the victims.   I’d laugh if the comparisons didn’t make me sick.

I’m not denying that UNC is guilty of some infractions, they very well might have.  The sad truth about this whole thing is, we don’t know because we don’t have all the evidence.  I don’t think we’ll ever know and one day this will all be forgotten and that’s sad no matter what the truth is.