Jay Bilas discussed UNC and the NCAA ahead of the Committee of Infractions hearing.

ESPN College Basketball analyst Jay Bilas is an fervent opponent to many aspects of the NCAA. From paying college athletes to the selection process for NCAA tournament teams, Bilas is a consistent outspoken voice.

Another case that Bilas, who is also an attorney, has paid particular attention to is the NCAA's investigation of the University of North Carolina for the AFAM classes and alleged extra benefits.

Bilas went on the David Glenn Show on Thursday to provide his opinion on the case as UNC is set to meet with Committee on Infractions later this month.

"I was making Carolina's argument before they ever made it, from the very beginning of the thing," Bilas said on Thursday. "You don't have to be a legal genius, which I am certainly not, in order to spot that the NCAA has no jurisdiction here and they have no case here. Because the NCAA is not alleging that North Carolina committed academic fraud. In fact the term academic fraud or academic misconduct can be found nowhere in the notices of allegations that they put out."

The issue, according to Bilas, is that the NCAA has no jurisdiction over academic matters and should only be concerned with whether or not extra benefits were given to athletes.

"The NCAA admits that it has no business in any school's curriculum, in academic rigor," the former Duke forward said on the David Glenn Show. "So they are not saying that any of these course are fraudulent. It's a question of an extra benefit. So did the university have special arrangements for athletes to get into these classes?

"First of all, there are special arrangements for athletes to get into classes all the time, all over the place. That happens everywhere.

"An extra benefit means something prohibited that is not generally available to the rest of the students. These classes (at UNC) were specifically available to everybody. In fact half of the enrollees were not athletes. So this is not even an extra benefit."

What North Carolina did was wrong, Bilas says, but legally the NCAA has no case.

"The whole thing is built on a theoretical house of cards," he said. "People hear this and they go 'wait a minute, what happened there was wrong.' I agree it was absolutely wrong, absolutely wrong, but the NCAA doesn't have any jurisdiction over it...The NCAA intentionally made these rules this way. The presidents came and told the NCAA office and said 'stay out of our curriculum, stay out of academic rigor...stay out of our classes, and stay out of our classwork.'

"So according to NCAA rules this is not academic fraud. I may not like it and you may not like it, but that's the way it is.

"A rules-based organization doesn't get to break its own rules because it doesn't like something. That is not the way the world works. The NCAA is going to have to tread very carefully in fashioning penalties and I think they have already decided to do that. If they overdo this like they did with Penn State or some others, Carolina will win in Federal Court."

Listen to David Glenn's full interview with Jay Bilas here.

The UNC's Committee on Infractions hearing is scheduled for Aug. 16-17 in Nashville, Tenn. UNC basketball coach Roy Williams, football coach Larry Fedora and women's basketball coach Sylvia Hatchell will join athletic director Bubba Cunningham and other school officials at the hearing.

The NCAA typically delivers its infractions report and announces any potential penalties 8-12 weeks after the hearing.