A history professor whose area of study is pre-Revolutionary France, Smith had been agitating about the scandal for several years. He had even written a book about the affair, “Cheated,” with a former learning specialist who helped blow the whistle on the classes.

“I thought, I cannot rely on this institution to do the right thing,” Smith said, “and I think it would be an abdication of responsibility for us to pass up the opportunity to provide students at this institution an opportunity to learn about their scandal — how it happened, what it says about college sports, what it tells us about the plight of athletes.”

And that is why earlier this week, as the men’s college basketball world turned its attention to the Final Four — an event the Tar Heels qualified for in 2016 and 2017, winning the title in the latter year — well over 100 undergraduates heard Smith lecture on the scandal as part of his increasingly popular course, History 383: Big-Time College Sports and the Rights of Athletes, 1874 to the Present.

Students in the class read “Cheated” and “Pay for Play: A History of Big-Time College Athletic Reform,” by Ronald A. Smith, as well as articles about the post-Civil War underpinnings of college football and the struggles of female and black athletes. The last quarter of the class, beginning this week, concerns the North Carolina scandal, including the much smaller controversy that arose over the course itself.