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NCAA hits Missouri with one-year postseason ban, recruiting restrictions for academic violations
Wasn't sure if this had been posted yet. Bet Kelly Bryant is wishing he had looked around a little more. Silly Missouri , you're barely an SEC school. Don't you know you can't do this your first 30 years in the SEC?
UNC got away with it because they went big. Sounds crazy but is true. The fake classes were open to all students, not just athletes. Athletes were pushed into/encouraged to take them, but the academic fraud wasn't limited to athletes. It was actually more of a threat to their SACS accreditation than any NCAA trouble. That might have even part of the calculation on their part. Create the joke classes for the athletes to take and keep them eligible, but not necessarily cheat on behalf of anyone specific by letting anyone take them.
What Mizzou did was centered around athletes - this tutor completed work/cheated for specific athletes.
UNC got away with it because they went big. Sounds crazy but is true. The fake classes were open to all students, not just athletes. Athletes were pushed into/encouraged to take them, but the academic fraud wasn't limited to athletes. It was actually more of a threat to their SACS accreditation than any NCAA trouble. That might have even part of the calculation on their part. Create the joke classes for the athletes to take and keep them eligible, but not necessarily cheat on behalf of anyone specific by letting anyone take them.
What Mizzou did was centered around athletes - this tutor completed work/cheated for specific athletes.
The excuse worked because the NCAA, which appears incapable of running a competent investigation, was unable to prove that the sham classes were created for the express purpose of putting athletes into them.While what you said is true, the part no one talks about much is that the athletic department placed the athletes in those classes and either knew they were bogus or should have. UNC athletics used the excuse we didn't know and for some reason that worked. That does not usually work, how many times have schools gotten busted for a booster giving a recruit money and the school states, "we didn't know he was doing that". That excuse does not work in that situation and I'm not sure why it worked for UNC.
Roy is full of s**t. He knows damn well they did wrong but got off on a technicality.I think UNC got away with it because they went BIG LEGALLY against the NCAA. Told the NCAA we will keep you entangled in legal cases forever and the NCAA blinked because of that and because UNC is a big money program for them in basketball.
The fake classes were open to other students but if you look carefully, most of the others who took the classes were friends of athletes. The scheme went like: create these classes with the cooperation of the department, make the description of them obscure in course offerings, then tell your athletes to get in them and recruit their friends into them so they fill up quickly.
Roy Williams goes around telling everyone UNC did nothing wrong. If that is so, why aren't those classes still around?
With the exception of Miami.Roy is full of s**t. He knows damn well they did wrong but got off on a technicality.
The athletes were pushed into those classes, no question. However, since they were open to any student, it was difficult for the NCAA to prove that those classes were created for the express purpose of helping athletes cheat. UNC athletics' defense was actually pretty easy, just say "No no no, we weren't cheating, anybody could take those classes, and we didn't know they were a sham."
When a tutor takes a test for an athlete or a booster pays a player, even if the admin or a coach didn't know it was going on, it falls under NCAA jurisdiction because the cheating was done specifically for athletics.
The "moral" of the story is that if you're going to cheat, do it big, and do it in a way where it appears that not just the athletes were cheating. Mizzou and other schools got busted because they cheated in a way that made it very obvious it was being done to benefit athletes.
Here's Missouri's take on the whole inequity of ncaa sanctions and their instutional hypocrisy, vis-à-vis North Carolina.
Their collective outrage is clearly justified:
What the NCAA sanctions mean for Kelly Bryant, Missouri football and the future of the program
The excuse worked because the NCAA, which appears incapable of running a competent investigation, was unable to prove that the sham classes were created for the express purpose of putting athletes into them.
A booster giving cash to a player/recruit or a tutor taking tests for an athlete is cheating for the express purpose of athletics. When the cheating is done specifically for the benefit of athletes, that's where the NCAA has jurisdiction. If you create an entire sham department open to anybody, you put your accreditation at risk, but the NCAA has limited power there because technically no specific NCAA rule was violated. UNC got off on a technicality, not because they did nothing wrong.
Like I said above, UNC having sham classes open to anybody (instead of, say, a tutor cheating for specific athletes) was probably part of their calculation to ultimately get away with it. They knew that if the classes were open to anyone, the NCAA would have limited jurisdiction.