For two years, UNC-Chapel Hill and NCAA officials talked about the investigation into nearly two decades of fake classes as a joint probe, with both working together to find out if rules were broken.
That cooperative spirit wasn't in evidence Tuesday, when newly released correspondence showed the NCAA no longer views the university as a partner in the investigation. It instead cited the university's "willful violations" and "blatant disregard" for NCAA regulations.
On Friday, both sides are expected to be battling again before the NCAA's Committee on Infractions in an unusual preliminary hearing. UNC is seeking to have a major infractions case thrown out through due-process issues. One of its arguments: The NCAA knew about the fake classes in mid-2011 while investigating other misconduct involving the football team but did not take action.
The NCAA rejected all of UNC's arguments _ and asserted that the university didn't tell the NCAA everything it should have about the classes in 2011. The commission that accredits UNC made a similar charge in putting UNC on probation for a year in 2015.
"It is now clear that the institution did not provide the (NCAA) enforcement staff with the entire body of pertinent information at that time, and the NCAA relied to its detriment on the thoroughness of the institution's production," the NCAA's enforcement staff wrote.
A recent News & Observer series, "Carolina's Blind Side," showed how UNC officials either downplayed the classes' link to athletics or refused to believe something like that could happen in Chapel Hill.
UNC received the NCAA's response a month ago. The News & Observer had been seeking its release for three weeks. During that time, UNC's attorney had filed more legal arguments and sought to interview NCAA officials who were handling the case.
UNC's attorney, Rick Evrard, wrote in the correspondence that the NCAA has only itself to blame for not becoming aware of the depths of the misconduct until former federal prosecutor Kenneth Wainstein's investigation in 2014. Wainstein found that several staff within the Academic Support Program for Student-Athletes were culpable.
"The fact that the Enforcement Staff made resource allocation decisions not to spend extensive time looking at huge numbers of emails and documents relating to every ASPSA employee does not mean the information was 'not available' or that the University withheld or failed to uncover or locate any information," Evrard wrote.
