North Carolina gets new Notice of Allegations in NCAA case

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. -- The NCAA has charged North Carolina with five violations, including failing to sufficiently monitor its academic support program for athletes, in its long-running fraud scandal.

The governing body added the failure-to-monitor charge in its latest Notice of Allegations that UNC released Monday. The NOA also included a women's basketball adviser tied to improper assistance on research papers.

The document used to specify violations is similar to a version sent last May in the multiyear case, containing lack of institutional control among five potentially top-level charges.

"This is maybe the most complicated and involved case in history -- certainly in our history," UNC athletic director Bubba Cunningham said. "There has been a lot of reporting, multiple investigations and the NCAA is now completing their work by issuing the amended notice. It's voluminous in nature and it's also over a period of time so I think the volume and the time is why it has lasted this long."

But the NCAA removed a charge of school athletes receiving improper benefits through access to problem courses in the formerly named African and Afro-American Studies (AFAM) department between 2002 and 2011.

Cunningham was asked if he knew why the change in the amended version:

"That is a question for the NCAA I have to deal with the five that we have. As I said, we've exchanged a lot of information back and forth and they make determinations if a by-law has been violated. I'm working with these five that I have in front of me."

UNC has 90 days to respond, jump-starting a case stalled since August.

Cunningham hinted that the university would probably take the full time extended.

"We have 90 days as does everyone else in the amended notice," he said. "I would think that the 90 days would be a good time frame to use for a response."

NCAA spokeswoman Emily James declined to comment on pending or potential investigations in an email Monday.

The school's academic case centers on independent study-style AFAM courses misidentified as lecture courses that required no class time and one or two research papers. Run largely by an office administrator -- not a faculty member -- the courses featured GPA-boosting grades and significant athlete enrollments across numerous sports, while poor oversight throughout the university allowed them to run unchecked for years.

A 2014 investigation by former U.S. Justice Department official Kenneth Wainstein estimated more than 3,100 students were affected between 1993 and 2011, with athletes making up roughly half the enrollments in problem African and Afro-American Studies courses.

Cunningham had said previously that the school hoped for a spring resolution in the academic case, an offshoot of a 2010 probe into the football program. But the arrival of the new notice is just a step in a process with months still ahead.

UNC again has 90 days to respond -- which is often the point when schools self-impose penalties if they choose to do so -- then the enforcement staff would have 60 days to respond to UNC's filing. That would ultimately lead to a hearing with the infractions committee and a ruling that could come weeks to months afterward.

In the original football case, the NCAA issued sanctions in March 2012 roughly nine months after an NOA arrived. A similar timeline would carry this case through January, approaching seven years since NCAA investigators first arrived on campus.

The NCAA's first Notice of Allegations treated issues surrounding the courses as improper benefits, limiting the focus to between 2002 and 2011. It charged that the women's basketball adviser provided improper help on assignments. No coaches were cited, but the institutional-control charge mentioned counselors using the courses to help keep at-risk athletes eligible "particularly" in football, men's basketball and women's basketball.

That mention didn't appear in the new Notice of Allegations.

Speaking at the NCAA tournament's Final Four about the chances that North Carolina gets hit by NCAA sanctions, men's basketball coach Roy Williams told ESPN he would be speculating, but "I don't think we're going to get hit in any way at all. Hard to penalize somebody when you have no allegations against them.''

UNC was near its response deadline in August before reporting additional improper assistance from the women's basketball adviser and possible recruiting violations in men's soccer.

The case also led to trouble for UNC with its accreditation agency, which put the school on a year of probation last June. There have also been three lawsuits filed by ex-UNC athletes, two of which are in pending in federal court.

Information from ESPN's C.L. Brown contributed to this report