On Friday, the NCAA's committee on infractions said it could not conclude there were any NCAA violations against North Carolina in a nearly four-year case involving alleged sham courses in the school's African and Afro-American studies department.
"While student-athletes likely benefited from the so-called 'paper courses' offered by North Carolina, the information available in the record did not establish that the courses were solely created, offered and maintained as an orchestrated effort to benefit student-athletes," said Greg Sankey, the Committee on Infractions (COI) chief hearing officer and commissioner of the SEC. "The panel is troubled by the university's shifting positions about whether academic fraud occurred on its campus and the credibility of the Cadwalader report, which it distanced itself from after initially supporting the findings.