Why the league took it easy on North Carolina.
www.vanityfair.com
I think this summarizes it pretty well:
“Can it be true that a widespread case of academic fraud, perpetuated over 18 years and disproportionately benefitting the two highest profile sports—football and basketball—was both systemic and yet only narrowly and vaguely understood by a handful of low-level actors? Even if we take UNC at its word that that was the case, we’re invariably left with unsettling answers about why that might be true.”
It would be unbelievably naïve to think Williams didn't know that his players were being enrolled in fake classes to stay eligible.
Want more?
From June 1014: Former North Carolina star Rashad McCants told Steve Delsohn of "Outside the Lines" that he could have been academically ineligible to play during the '04-05 national title season had he not been provided fraudulent academic assistance.
www.espn.com
"McCants said his first year he did go to class and took several legitimate, core-curriculum courses. But overall, his transcript shows he ended up with more than 50 percent of his courses being African-American Studies classes.
McCants said he was headed toward ineligibility during the championship season because he had failed algebra and psychology, which accounted for half of his credits, in the fall of 2004. He had two A's in African-American Studies classes in addition to the F's. He said coach Roy Williams informed him of his academic troubles during a meeting ahead of the spring semester.
"There was a slight panic on my part ... [he] said, you know, we're going to be able to figure out how to make it happen, but you need to buckle down on your academics."
He said Williams told him "we're going to be able to change a class from, you know, your summer session class and swap it out with the class that you failed, just so the GPA could reflect that you are in good standing."