The NCAA’s Committee on Infractions on Monday released its final verdict in a case that embarrassed the Tar Heels’ football program and tarnished the school’s academic reputation. It led to the early retirement of former athletic director Dick Baddour and the firing of football coach Butch Davis.
The committee ruled that the UNC football team must serve a one-year postseason ban in 2012, and eliminate five football scholarships per year in each of the next three academic years. The committee also increased UNC’s self-imposed probationary period from two years to three.
bottles comin (sic) like its (sic) a giveaway.”
That message ignited an NCAA investigation that determined Austin had received impermissible benefits from an agent. The investigation expanded as the weeks and months passed, and it eventually uncovered several major violations within the UNC football program.
Sports agents, cheating
In its report, the infractions committee detailed seven of those major violations, which included academic fraud, impermissible benefits from agents and a failure to monitor the football program.
The NCAA’s investigation found that six UNC football players over three seasons competed while ineligible because of those violations, and that multiple football players received impermissible benefits amounting to more than $31,000.
Banowsky praised UNC’s cooperation and participation in the NCAA’s investigation, but aid those mitigating factors didn’t outweigh the egregious nature of the misdeeds at UNC.
Thorp: No appeal
Holden Thorp, the UNC Chapel Hill chancellor, said on Monday that the university considered appealing the NCAA sanctions but decided against it.
All along, UNC’s NCAA woes centered on the relationship between football players and agents. And the NCAA’s report reflected those issues.
The committee found Blake received payment from an agent for access to football players.
For his involvement in the scandal, the committee gave Blake a three-year “show-cause” penalty, which essentially bans him from coaching at an NCAA-affiliated school during the next three years.
Davis, the Tar Heels’ former head coach, was not named in final NCAA report, and the NCAA never accused him of wrongdoing. UNC also punished itself
In addition to the penalties the NCAA levied against UNC on Monday, the university had previously announced that it would vacate the 16 games the football team won during the 2008 and 2009 seasons. The university also fined itself $50,000.
After UNC officials appeared in Indianapolis before the infractions committee on Oct. 28, the university had been waiting to learn its fate. Cunningham was among those who met on Monday morning to decide whether to appeal the sanctions. Larry Fedora, the football coach whom the university hired in mid-December, was also a part of that discussion.
Members of the NCAA committee on infractions, meanwhile, stood by the sanctions and dismissed the notion that they hadn’t been stern enough.
“Show-cause orders have significance. ‘The Carolina way’
“It’s definitely a tough time,” former UNC player Robert Quinn said on Monday. Fourteen UNC players sat out at least one game that season because of suspension. Austin, Quinn and former receiver Greg Little were central figures in the investigation.
Dick Baddour, UNC’s former athletic director, also defended “the Carolina way,” even after the football program lost its way under Davis.
(charlotteobserver)
