Kansas, Baylor and North Carolina are proof that the NCAA’s scandal era is over
The old NCAA scandals have unofficially received the death penalty.
Sure, schools will go on to get tagged for infractions, but the era of the program-altering sentence associated with NCAA scandals is over.
Three of the four teams in the Fort Worth region of the 2022 NCAA men’s basketball tournament have all recently run afoul of potential NCAA rules violations, and nothing happened.
North Carolina, Baylor and now Kansas have had to go through the NCAA’s kangaroo court, and the rulings are almost as amusing as the NCAA’s attempt to cling to amateurism.
The NCAA still has its rule book that features hundreds and hundreds of bylaws and codes, but violating any of them no longer matters.
North Carolina, Kansas and Baylor all proved it.
The money is too great, and that’s that. The NCAA no longer wields a hammer but a throw pillow.
The next major NCAA athletics crisis will not come from a team that skirts the rules, but rather it’s more likely to involve players and gambling.
As North Carolina, Baylor and Kansas all proved, there are ways around these rules.
The North Carolina case
In December of 2016, the UNC athletic department received its third notice of infractions from the NCAA, with allegations of widespread academic fraud.
The UNC administration thought it was better to potentially sacrifice the reputation of its academic brand than to have its football or men’s basketball team hit with major sanctions.
Between 1999 and 2011, mostly members of the football and men’s basketball team took over 1,800 bogus classes to keep their eligibility.
In October of 2017, North Carolina admitted to academic fraud throughout the athletic department, and the rest of a university that routinely ranks among the best public schools according to the U.S. News college rankings.
UNC’s “out” was that these fraud classes were available to any undergrad, and not just members of the athletic department. As a result, the NCAA did not levy a single penalty.
The Baylor case
In September of 2018, Baylor received the dreaded notice of infractions from the NCAA and included in that was the vague but potentially powerful allegation of a “lack of institutional control.”
These claims stemmed from what appeared to be Title IX issues at Baylor amid sexual assault claims against members of the Baylor football team under then coach Art Briles.
After years worth of investigations by the Big 12, an outside law firm hired by Baylor, the departures of president Ken Starr, athletic director Ian McCaw and the firing of Briles,the NCAA hardly announced much of anything last August.
When the NCAA finally ruled, it did not conclude anything of note beyond that some minor recruiting violations, and some impermissible benefits were given.
Among the penalties included a four-year probation period for the football team, some minor recruiting restrictions, and a $5,000 fine.
This season, its football team won the Big 12 title game, beat Ole Miss in the Sugar Bowl and finished fifth in the final AP poll.
The Kansas case
In September of 2019, the NCAA alleged that Jayhawks men’s basketball head coach Bill Self and assistant Kurtis Townsend, along with Adidas employees, violated and “blatantly disregarded NCAA” bylaws.
Along with Memphis, North Carolina State, Arizona, LSU and Louisville, KU was part of the FBI wiretap investigation into college basketball recruiting which, to most people, didn’t sound like anything illegal was done.
It sounded more like NCAA laws were broken rather than actual laws.
This is how concerned Kansas is about this case: It handed Self a lifetime contract in April of last year.
This season, Kansas won the Big 12 Tournament and a share of the Big 12 regular season title. Whenever the NCAA does rule, KU will likely receive a slap on its left ankle.
The future of NCAA scandals
There is no universal point of origin for the death of the NCAA’s penalties, but 2014 feels right.
In September of 2014, after pressure from Pennsylvania lawmakers, the NCAA essentially repealed its sanctions against the Penn State football program as a result from the Jerry Sandusky scandal.
In 2012, the NCAA ruled that the Nittany Lions had to forfeit wins from 1998 to 2011. It also levied a $60 million fine, banned the program from the postseason for four years, and reduced scholarships.
Two years later, the sanctions were dropped.
With the occasional exception, what schools have demonstrated over the last decade is that fighting the NCAA with lawyers is better than cooperating.
Fans just assume schools cheat, and don’t care if they do.
Schools fight because the potential loss of revenue could be devastating.
In order to justify paychecks and jobs, the NCAA will continue to “investigate,” and the occasional program will have to pay a small fine, or deal with some minor penalties.
The more likely future NCAA scandal will involve a player either betting on games, or accepting a bribe to shave a point or two.
There is precedence for such scandals, famously involving the New York University basketball team in 1950, Boston College in 1978, and Arizona State’s Stevin “Hedake” Smith in 1993.
Tom McMillan, the CEO of LEAD1, an organization for college athletic directors, told a conference during the Sports Lawyers Association in 2018, “If gambling on colleges is [allowed] in 20 or 30 states, there is probably a 100 percent chance of a point-shaving scandal at some school.”
That’s the future of NCAA scandals.
The player will be punished but the school can still play.
This story was originally published March 18, 2022 at 5:09 PM.
