NCAA will keep digging, but relative closure near for Heels

It’s still too early to say with absolute certainty that the UNC athletics scandal has reached road’s end – keep in mind that the NCAA continues to look into the mess.

But based on Wednesday’s findings in the Kenneth Wainstein probe, there’s solid reason to predict there will no more dire sanctions from the NCAA.

The biggest competitive impact on athletics will be on football and basketball recruiting, a scandal aftershock that actually began in the 2012-13 school year.

The bar for admission in both sports already has been raised and likely will continue in that direction. UNC’s “academic exception” athletic population eventually will become virtually nonexistent. And once on campus and enrolled, UNC athletes will have do the work to get the grades. The faculty and Chancellor Carol Folt will see to that much whether it results in fewer bowl bids and NCAA Tournament appearances or not.

But unless the NCAA can establish specific cases of athletes and/or former athletes having dodged academic ineligibility as a result of “paper class” grades, there doesn’t seem to be much more dirt to dig unless Rashad McCants or others provide the NCAA with more proof of basketball coaching involvement than Wainstein said his group could find.

And even if the NCAA finds ineligible players were kept eligible through fraudulent classes, the most serious reprimand probably would be having more wins vacated. But would the NCAA or UNC go so far as to vacate the 2005 NCAA basketball title? No.

Carolina athletics director Bubba Cunningham said there is no way to predict when this NCAA investigation will end, but it shouldn’t take months.

But on the image front, the school will bear this cross for years. Deborah Crowder first and Julius Nyang’ro second — according to Wainstein’s findings — may have been the ringleaders in an incomprehensible 18-year sting, but they had willing accomplices up and down the campus community hierarchy.

Regardless of its root or design, there’s no doubt that Carolina was practicing flagrant football factory academic cheating for years while dabbling in it in other sports. The victory reward in football was embarrassingly scant – a dubious outcome that will leave Carolina to long fill the role of a Wiley Coyote in designer cleats.

The basketball impact may have been somewhat significant, but the program was good before Crowder and Nyang’ro stepped on campus and probably will stay good long deep into the future. Football will take a much tougher long-range competitive hit. That’s not totally fair to Larry Fedora and his current players, but at least it’s understandable.

As for basketball, the academic environment is different. It’s more legitimate. It will tougher than ever to win another national title, although hardly impossible.

But unless the NCAA can find a smoking gun somewhere, there’s probably no one left to directly target.