Spaceman Spiff wrote:Here's a serious take.
The glaring flaw in NCAA logic is that fake classes may be open to all, but they only benefit athletes trying to retain eligibility by any means necessary. A student attempting to develop an actual academic skill set has no use for a sham class that does nothing to educate. The university itself derives no benefit from a bs class.
Just because it wasn't limited to only athletes doesn't change the fact that the only reason for its existence was athletes. There is no additional benefit to the institution or a student interested in anything other than gpa inflation.
For people who were concerned about college sports becoming separate from the university, like a G League team on campus, this is worse. I'd rather have a loose association of kids who get paid as opposed to a system that eviscerates its own educational message to comply with the false idol of amateur student athleticism.
There's a Business Insider article that went into great detail explaining how the Frat boys at UNC in essence saved UNC athletics. The 2 groups most disproportionately taking these fake classes were athletes, and frat boys. Wainstein specifically called it out in his report, said frat boys said the classes were well known on campus among frats, and Wainstein believed they used them to keep their GPA's up because in order to keep their campus charter, Frats have to keep a certain GPA. Lots of people thought that was a huge issue for UNC as they would obviously also conclude that's why the athletes were in the classes and the NCAA would nail them.
The NCAA went the other way and said if word of mouth got frats into those classes, it probably also got athletes so there's no proof the AD steered them. The frats are non athletes so if they were in the classes in high numbers it proves it's not extra benefits.
So in esssence because the culture of cheating was not just in the athletics department, they got away with it.
