As it turns out, honesty isn’t always the best policy.



That’s a strange message to send to the hundreds of schools that make up the NCAA, but that was one of the obvious and confusing takeaways from Thursday’s Committee on Infractions (COI) ruling in Missouri’s academic misconduct case.



Missouri was penalized significantly more harshly than North Carolina, which was not punished by the NCAA after a multi-year academic scandal featuring “paper courses.” The Tigers received three postseason bans, for the football, baseball and softball programs, as well as probation, scholarship reductions and recruiting restrictions. The football team will be ineligible to play in a bowl game in 2019 if the ruling stands.



Both cases, broadly, involved student-athletes receiving improper advantages regarding academic coursework. UNC got off scot-free because it defended the classes themselves — sacrificing the school’s academic...