The NCAA Is Scapegoating Women's Basketball for North Carolina's Academic Fraud Scandal

North Carolina announced Monday that it had released an amended notice of allegations from the National Collegiate Athletic Association regarding the nearly two decades of systematic academic fraud that funneled athletes into fake classes in the school's African-American Studies department to help them maintain their eligibility.

Now, the NCAA is notoriously reluctant to crack down on its major money-makers—former University of Nevada, Las Vegas basketball coach and association bête noire Jerry Tarkanian once quipped that "the NCAA was so mad at Kentucky, they gave Cleveland State two more years of probation." And this time around, Cleveland State is in big, big trouble.

When the NCAA's initial notice of allegations against North Carolina came out, it appeared that the association had decided, perhaps predictably, to focus on women's basketball rather than the revenue sports of football and men's basketball—the latter a cherished, national championship-winning North Carolina institution.

The new notice of allegations looks even more favorable for the Tar Heels' revenue sports. There are no mentions of men's basketball or football in the latest notice of allegations, and the allegations of institution-wide academic fraud—which could impact the football and basketball teams—now begin in the fall of 2005, as opposed to the previously determined 2002. That's especially notable, since North Carolina men's basketball won a national title in the spring of 2005.

There is virtually no chance the men's basketball or football programs will receive harsh punishments for the academic fraud, despite a mountain of evidence that they participated, even in UNC's national title season of 2005.

Let's take a hike to the summit:

● According to the university-sanctioned Wainstein report—thus far the definitive investigation of the North Carolina scandal—the fraud went on long before 2005, and as far back as 1993. According to former school learning specialist turned whistleblower Mary Willingham, it went as far back as 1988.

● Fifty-one percent of the athletes who participated in the paper classes were football players. Twelve percent were men's basketball players. Six percent were women's basketball players.

● According to the Wainstein report, football and men's basketball academic counselors arranged paper classes for athletes. "All you have to do is look at the transcripts," Willingham said. "Sure, the women's basketball players took paper classes, but football took more and men's basketball took more."

● Rashad McCants, the second-leading scorer on North Carolina's championship team, claimed that he took the so-called "paper classes" and that coach Roy Williams knew about them. A copy of McCants' transcript backs this up. The NCAA is simply not including McCants' words—or his academic resume—in its punishment.

● Willingham said that she was directed to help athletes, including men's basketball players, enrolled in paper classes from 2003 to 2010, and that she believes the coaches knew about the fraud.

● A version of former football and basketball star Julius Peppers' transcript, verified by Peppers, show that between 1998 and 2001, Peppers took mostly AFAM classes, including two B's in the allegedly fake independent studies courses, which helped raise his otherwise awful GPA.

It's one thing to not exclusively focus on the revenue sports, but to ignore so much evidence that there was systematic academic fraud before 2005 is almost inconceivable. At best, this counts as utter incompetence by NCAA enforcement. At worst, it shows willful ignorance and a desire to not hit North Carolina where it hurts the most, regardless of the association's (frequently) self-proclaimed and (conveniently) tax-evading educational mission.

The NCAA has even characterized the roles of athletic department employees in ways that fit them to allegations that hurt women's basketball but not men's basketball or football. For instance, the association describes former academic counselor Jan Boxill as a "women's basketball academic counselor," and while that was her official title, it does not adequately describe the breadth of her involvement in the scandal.

"Jan, she answered questions from men's basketball about helping those players," Willingham told VICE Sports. "She was definitely a go-to person. I see her, yes, as complicit—yes, she could have spoken out sooner—but I see her as scapegoat."

While the NCAA was able to dig up a lot of dirt on the women's basketball program post-2005—kudos?— it seemingly tried not to find more about men's basketball and football, or anything on what happened before the fall of 2005, despite the fact that all of that information was readily available.

"The NCAA is just protecting the revenue sports," Willingham said. "Follow the money, I guess."

It's hard not to come to that conclusion when considering everything the NCAA just ignored, and it would make sense: North Carolina is a major brand in college athletics, and according to the Department of Education, its football program brought in $36 million in 2014-15, while the men's basketball program brought in $20 million. The women's basketball program brought in just $800,000.

While the NCAA has said that it cannot regulate the quality of education athletes receive—a hilarious statement, given that it recently tried to review a prospective player's sixth grade school work in Mali—the association needed to come up with some sort of allegations against North Carolina to show the world that it really, really does care about academics, and not just the cash-producing patina they provide. Enter women's basketball.

"All the people who make the money, we haven't seen them thrown under the bus," Willingham said.

So thanks for the assist, Tar Heels women. Eighteen years of fraud, resolved just like that.