Latest twist in UNC’s NCAA case is a head-scratcher

7:30 PM ETNorth Carolina’s men’s basketball and football teams were not named in the new Notice of Allegations. Peyton Williams/Getty Images

On May 20, 2015, North Carolina received a lengthy Notice of Allegations from the NCAA, detailing five serious penalties including, “impermissible benefits to student-athletes that were not generally available to the student body,” and that “anomalous courses in the African-American studies department went unchecked for 18 years, allowing student-athletes — particularly on the football and men’s and women’s basketball teams — to take those classes at a disproportionate rate to the rest of the school’s student body.”

On August 14, 2015, North Carolina announced that, while replying to that Notice of Allegations, it had discovered two new penalties, another involving the women’s basketball team and unrelated recruiting violations in men’s soccer.

On April 25, 2016, the NCAA issued a new Notice of Allegations, theoretically taking into account the new allegations involving women’s hoops and men’s soccer. The women’s basketball team figures prominently in the new document.

North Carolina athletic director Bubba Cunningham has been at the school since 2011. Grant Halverson/Getty Images

Magically, the words “impermissible benefits,” “football” and “men’s basketball” no longer appear in the documents.

So gather ’round the rulebook, all ye NCAA conspiracy theorists, we have found Jerry Tarkanian’s Holy Grail: The NCAA is so mad at the Carolina football and hoops teams, it’s going to penalize the bejesus out of women’s basketball.

Indeed, what initially looked like an insignificant announcement, dumped in between Deflategate and Steph Curry’s MRI results, actually is quite huge. The amended document (not an amendment, a significant semantics differentiation) left more than a few people who know the inner workings of the NCAA more than a little bit stunned. As one person put it via text, “big win for UNC today.”

Because somewhere in the past year, in what most assumed would merely be a reworking of the Notice of Allegations to include the new potential violations, the NCAA flat-out removed …

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