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Even by NCAA standards, the ruling of sorts handed down on Friday in the UNC case was hysterically feckless. I have no idea why any of these people have jobs. This shit is hilarious. Not terribly surprising, mind you, but still hilarious.
Committee on Infractions could not conclude North Carolina violated NCAA rules: https://t.co/iPE127Txqr pic.twitter.com/suI59ucHvs
— NCAA (@NCAA) October 13, 2017
UNC spent like a zillion dollars in legal fees and basically stared down the sham that is the NCAA in some paperwork-based game of chicken, and the NCAA being what it is, of course flinched first. It had to. The NCAA is not interested in a court case of any sort. It is not invested in any serious legal matters, nor will it ever be, if it can help it. I think Andy Staples put it best.
UNC was going to fight back harder if the COI came down hard. The NCAA doesn't want its kangaroo court taken to real court.
— Andy Staples (@Andy_Staples) October 13, 2017
None of which changes the facts of the matter; these are merely the politics involved. (And the NCAA’s own foolish nature.)
"More likely than not" that athletes received fraudulent credit, Sankey says. But UNC maintained courses didn't violate its own policies.
— Andrew Carter (@_andrewcarter) October 13, 2017
They know, everybody knows. Nobody’s questioned the very obvious academic fraud that happened in this case; the NCAA is simply not built to handle this side of the whole “student-athlete” dealio. Despite a rule book seven inches thick, the NCAA is always in an awkward spot when it comes to stuff like this, which is so deeply amusing.
The NCAA is just utterly lost when it does not have a useless arbitrary bylaw to refer to, and there has never been a better example of that than the UNC case. Be mad about this if you want. Ain’t gonna change a thing, though. These are your bureaucratic overlords, and they are here to stay.