Blue Noise

May 22nd, 2015 at 12:27 PM ^

I'm not really sure what more can happen here. There were over 3,000 students taking these sham AFAM classes over the years and about half were athletes; unless they can prove the athletes were being more leniently graded by Crowder, I don't see what justification the NCAA has for additional penalties.




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Blue Noise

May 22nd, 2015 at 12:40 PM ^

Certainly no jurisdiction; the NCAA has no jurisdiction to decide anything. It shouldn't exist, let alone decide what constitutes an appropriate amount of work for a college class, however obviously and flagrantly deficient the classes in this case were.
But to the extent that the NCAA has been given the power by its member schools to punish those who give athletes benefits not given to other students, no,
I don't see a justification for punishing UNC if athletes weren't given preferential treatment in the sham classes, steered into the sham classes, or if athletic department employees weren't clearly involved in some way, like with Syracuse. We'll see what these proceedings yield.




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Blue In NC

May 22nd, 2015 at 12:59 PM ^

Let me take a stab at a completely wild hypothetical.  What if the sham courses were created for the purpose of benefitting athletes and keeping them eligible.  Other students ended up getting in on the fun but the purpose was to benefit athletes and skirt the NCAA's eligibility requirements.  And a very disproportionate number of athletes (compared to student body at large) ended up in these classes for decades.  Would you still think that the NCAA should not have the power to penalize for that?

Blue Noise

May 22nd, 2015 at 1:14 PM ^

I'm pretty sure I said that if the case were made that these classes were providing "impermissible" benefits to athletes--ie those not available to other students--whether the classes were established to help athletes' GPA, or whether they just ended up doing that, then there would be reason to penalize UNC by the letter of the NCAA laws.
But I think making that case is going to be really difficult for an organization that has proven to have very little investigative power.
Maybe I'm just bemused that people ever root for NCAA enforcement, or complain when it doesn't happen, widely and justifiably loathed an organization as it is.




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Blue In NC

May 22nd, 2015 at 1:36 PM ^

But then it's already over.  These classes were roughly 50% athletes and 50% non-athletes.  I can guarantee that the UNC student body is not 50/50 for athletes and non-athletes.

And I pretty much despise the NCAA but if they are going to justify their existence at all, it seems like academic integrity is a good place to start.  Otherwise, just make classes optional if the athletes want to attend and have colleges serve as a minor league farm system.

maizenbluenc

May 23rd, 2015 at 8:38 AM ^

Athletic academic advisers knowingly steered athletes into sham classes to stay eligible to play NCAA sports for decades. If that is not loss of institutional control,  I don't know what is.

The funny thing - if you go to the UNC Basketball Museum, and look at the Academic All American wall in the back corner of the room, the one diploma they have out is an AFAM diploma. You would think they would have swapped that out by now. Would have been funny to have a picture - wish I had taken one.

danimal1968

May 22nd, 2015 at 3:01 PM ^

regardless of whether other students benefitted or not.  This is not an extra benefit violation.  The mere fact that a school has a problem that touches on athletics but also goes beyond athletics is hardly a reason for the entity supervising collegiate athletics to wash its hands of the issue.

MaizeAndBlueWahoo

May 22nd, 2015 at 4:35 PM ^

I don't see a justification for punishing UNC if athletes weren't given preferential treatment in the sham classes, steered into the sham classes, or if athletic department employees weren't clearly involved in some way, like with Syracuse.

Yeah, but, that's literally what happened.  Some quotes from the Wainstein report:

 

These paper classes were taken by students of all types, but were especially popular among student-athletes, particularly those who played the “revenue” sports of football and men’s basketball. Many of these student-athletes were referred to these classes by academic counselors in the Academic Support Program for Student-Athletes (“ASPSA”) who were always under pressure to maintain student-athlete eligibility and saw these classes – and their artificially high grades – as key to helping academically-challenged student-athletes remain eligible and on the playing field.

Crowder and Nyang’oro were primarily motivated to offer these classes by a desire to help struggling students and student-athletes. Both felt sympathy for under-prepared students who struggled with the demanding Chapel Hill curriculum. Crowder felt a strong affinity for student-athletes in particular, and she gave them ready access to these watered-down classes to help them manage their competing athletic and academic time demands.

Student-athletes accounted for a disproportionately high percentage of enrollments in the AFAM paper classes. Of the identifiable enrollments in the lecture paper classes, 47.4% were student-athletes, even though studentathletes make up just over 4% of the Chapel Hill undergraduate student body. A good number of these student-athletes were “steered” to the AFAM paper classes by certain academic counselors in ASPSA. This steering was most prevalent among the counselors for the revenue sports of football and men’s basketball.

So, uh, yes, basically what happened is these fraudulent classes existed, and the athletic department got wind of it and used them to keep athletes eligible.  If the NCAA believes even one word of what they say about how important studies are and the mission and blah blah blah, they will leave nothing but a smoking crater in Chapel Hill to make sure other schools think twice about this kind of thing.

Mr Miggle

May 22nd, 2015 at 12:58 PM ^

they're in very deep trouble. The NCAA is well aware of those numbers. They're a reason they gave for not pursuing the case the first time around.

Let's consider some hypotheticals. The class was created to give athletes an easy A. The AD steered struggling athletes to the class. The AD or administration knew it was a sham class.

50% of the students in the sham class were not athletes. Was that always the case? If it started out entirely athletes, then expanded, that's a lot worse than if it was always an even mix. This should be easy to prove one way or another.

I'm not sure of the significance of the 50% figure. What if it were 90%? What would be a representative number? Were athletes given preferential treatment in getting into the class?

 

 

Cranky Dave

May 22nd, 2015 at 1:15 PM ^

I took an AFAM class at Chapel Hill in 1988 with several basketball players-JR Reid and Steve Bucknall are the ones I remember.  Obviously I don't know their grades but they were in class as Dean Smith required.  However, there was a short white kid who follow them into class and sat next to them while he took notes and the players generally slept or talked.  I will admit to not being the best student, but do remember getting an A- for very little effort. 

bronxblue

May 22nd, 2015 at 12:49 PM ^

I look forward to the NCAA coming down with all the fury and authority a bunch of near-sighted, hypocritical, old men can muster between rolling around in piles of money earned by amateur athletes.

HenneGivenSunday

May 22nd, 2015 at 12:49 PM ^

I guess we'll find out if/what they say in their announcement. I wouldn't expect much to happen.  If they let Cam Newton off the hook, it pretty much proves they don't really give a damn IMHO.

LSAClassOf2000

May 22nd, 2015 at 1:16 PM ^

The Sporting News had a short piece on this earlier today - LINK - wherein UNC is directly quoted as to how they plan to release the particulars of the NOA:

“The University will publicly release the NCAA’s notice as soon as possible. The notice is lengthy and must be prepared for public dissemination to ensure we protect privacy rights as required by federal and state law. When that review for redactions is complete, the University will post the notice on the Carolina Commitment website and notify the news media. When we respond to the NCAA’s allegations, we will follow this same release process."

I will admit to being intrigued - the outline of of these, if it involves all the things that have been reported on at UNC for years now, will likely be very damning for the university in general, not just the football and basketball programs, at least in my opinion. Not sure if the punishment levied on Syracuse is any good indication as the NCAA is a random entity in that regard, but on the surface it sounds like a bad time for UNC, to say the least.

JamieH

May 22nd, 2015 at 2:23 PM ^

After the NCAA basically ruled that Auburn could legally buy Cam Newton for $200K, I have no expectation they will ever do anything right.

 

UNC will not get any significant penalties, even though they probably deserve something like a 4 year post-season ban in all sports.  

 

Now, if their players were caught smoking some weed, THEN they would get the death penalty.