North Carolina Tar Heels: The Shadow of the Third Letter
A third letter of allegations has hit the North Carolina Tar Heels from the NCAA.
By all rights, the North Carolina Tar Heels should be focused on two things. There is the upcoming football game against Stanford where the Heels will try to punctuate their season with a victory over a top 25 opponent. There is also the basketball team finishing up their nonconference schedule before jumping into conference play.
One of the things that we did not think we would be talking about is a renewed push by the NCAA. This push has emerged in the appearance of a third letter of allegations sent to the school about the same issue, the rogue activities of the Afro-American Studies department. The third letter is a broader more stringent document than the second letter was.
The second letter shrank the time scale and the scope of the charges to exclude men’s basketball and football while putting a bullseye around women’s basketball and other sports. This third letter puts the major revenue sports back in focus while expanding its timeline back to 2002. This means it theoretically threatens both men’s basketball titles from that era with much attention given to the 2005 title.
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Why did the NCAA broaden its scope? It probably has to do with the response that North Carolina gave to the second letter. The school openly questioned the jurisdiction of the NCAA to do anything about the situation and claimed it was an accreditation matter. This sudden subtle reminder of the danger of the NCAA over stepping its bounds did not get the wanted reaction.
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Instead the NCAA has piled on, likely because it is angered that the school did not take a good deal with the second letter.
The only positive thing about this development is that the NCAA timeline gets pushed back any further before it will be resolved, if that is a positive. The NCAA enforcement process already cost the team Brandon Ingram and probably the 2016 National Title.
The adventure continues. With the change of tides that have happened so far, it may not be over soon.