UNC Scandal Cited In Pennsylvania Antitrust Litigation With The NCAA

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The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s lawsuit against the NCAA’s treatment of Penn State University in the wake of the school’s Jerry Sandusky sex scandal has an extremely interesting local angle: it cites the  UNC athletics academic fraud scandal.  The litigation claims that the Penn State is being punished for matters outside of the scope and reach of college sports governing organization while it simultaneously ignores other schools’ transgressions that are well within the enforcement powers of the NCAA, but upon discovery, it has done very little:

Original lawsuit text (in PDF form)

56. The NCAA’s attempt to insert itself [in the Penn State scandal] is so inconsistent with its prior conduct in similar situations that it can be only be seen as a clumsy attempt to garner positive publicity for itself by harming a competitive member school.  There are a number of publicly reported examples of criminal conduct conducted by college athletes where the university leadership is alleged to have covered up or enabled the crimes–and the NCAA did little, if anything, about it:

[…]

(d) A recent internal investigation at the University of North Carolina revealed massive academic fraud, including unauthorized grade changes by forged signatures, and classes in which no instruction took place; approximately forty percent of the students enrolled in these classes were football and basketball players. In August 2012, one month after sanctioning Penn State, the NCAA took the public position that none of the alleged conduct violated NCAA rules.

Whether one agrees with the central claim of the lawsuit, that the NCAA is in violation of antitrust laws and that it is harming the citizens of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, it is nevertheless interesting that the UNC case with the NCAA has not only become ongoing fodder in the news, it is also now part and parcel of a lawsuit sure to gather a great deal of news in the coming weeks.

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33 Responses to UNC Scandal Cited In Pennsylvania Antitrust Litigation With The NCAA

  1. Pack1998 01/03/2013 at 10:05 PM #

    Brilliant by PSU. Nothing to lose. NCAA has to react. I guess the NCAA uses the Martin report? By Jim Martin, who is now on record with his opinion to the N&O on the limited scope.

    Connecticut should have a lawsuit about inconsistent sanctions — using financial impact to local business and lower tax base based on lower UConn attendance and no NCAA fin impact (and they’d need proof of course.)

    Choppack – you nailed it. NCAA loves a willing victim.

    I’ll always say – UNC really played their cards wrong in this situation. The train is just moving slow now.

    This does put the NCAA at risk. They are not playing their cards well either and are putting a good situation for them at major risk.

  2. JeremyH 01/03/2013 at 10:50 PM #

    Wake me up when they vacate a couple of UNC basketball national championships and kill the program for at least three years. The hypocrisy is palpable! The interesting question is how will that punishment affect our recruiting, and maybe those poor bastards at Wake Forest.

  3. JeremyH 01/03/2013 at 10:51 PM #

    If there was reason to investigate the NCAA, who could do it?

  4. wuffapotamus 01/03/2013 at 11:01 PM #

    SBI report supposed to be done end of this month or early Feb. DA says he will.need at least a few months once he’s recd the report….according to news juggernaut news 14 Martin interview today.

  5. Alpha Wolf 01/04/2013 at 6:55 AM #

    If there was reason to investigate the NCAA, who could do it?

    Congress.

  6. Gene 01/04/2013 at 11:57 AM #

    “Brilliant by PSU. ”

    PSU isn’t suing the NCAA.

    Gov. Corbett is having the State of Pennsylvania sue the NCAA because he believes the NCAA overstepped its authority, with regards to the Sandusky scandal.

    I personally don’t know why Gov. Corbett wants to keep the Sandusky scandal or anything relating to it front and center at any time.

    When he was AG, in the late 1990’s, he could’ve brought the law down on Sandusky but refused, even though there was one alleged victim in the case.

    What Gov. Corbett’s doing is a pretty cheap way to try and “buy” some PSU alum votes, I guess. Though most PSU alums I know are O.K. with the penalties, because their world of “Holy” Joe Paterno’s been permanently shattered and they figured they’d have to take something on the chin because of how the need to protect PSU football trumped doing the right thing.

    In short the penalties, though harsh, could’ve been worse.

    I honestly don’t want Gov. Corbett’s lawsuit to set any kind of precedent about how the NCAA handles things, because it’s a cheap political gimmick, from a governor who has some serious unanswered questions about what he knew and what he did with regards to allegations of Sandusky’s pedophilia, when he was AG.

  7. GAWolf 01/04/2013 at 9:55 PM #

    I agree with this law suit 100%. While the atrocities that occurred at PSU are indeed terrible, they literally have no connection whatsoever to the NCAA and its authority. The action taken against PSU by the NCAA was done for the sole reason to regain trust from the public. The NCAA’s reputation has long since gone up in smoke. They kicked a down dog in PSU and piled onto a loud public outcry. I agree with the suit in that they did it for selfish reasons. Clearly none of this furthered a goal of restitution. In fact, the loss of income via fines and ticket revenue will actually hurt the victims’ efforts at collecting reparations.

    The UNC scandal is just one straw that will ultimately break the camel’s back.

    This PSU punishment was just the NCAA’s last ditch effort to reestablish some facade of control.

    Pitiful.

  8. Alpha Wolf 01/05/2013 at 7:46 AM #

    I personally don’t know why Gov. Corbett wants to keep the Sandusky scandal or anything relating to it front and center at any time.

    Ever been to Pennsyltucky and seen how popular PSU is up there? As you point out, Corbett is playing to the home team, pure and simple. He’s “doing something about it” because PSU, its alumni and its supporters feel rather butthurt by the NCAA’s punishment and they claim what the litigation claims: that the NCAA overstepped its bounds, and did so without any investigation on its own.

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