For years, people have been asking when NCAA justice would be delivered unto North Carolina for its 18 years of academic misconduct that benefited more than 1,000 athletes.

Those questions intensified as the Tar Heels men's basketball program – whose players were proportionally one of the most enthusiastic participants in the African and Afro-American Studies bogus classes scandal – advanced to this year's NCAA tournament championship game. The sense among many fan bases was that the Tar Heels were getting away scot-free, and those fan bases wanted to know when the hammer would fall.

View photos The long NCAA investigation has made recruiting more difficult for Roy Williams and North Carolina. (AP) More

Today, we are closer to an answer.

And that answer looks even more like never.

The school received an amended NCAA Notice of Allegations Monday, nearly 11 months after the initial notice arrived. There still are five Level I allegations – the most serious violations in the NCAA penalty structure – but some things have changed.

The charge of "impermissible benefits" to athletes who were enrolled in the so-called "paper classes" is gone. Taking that off the table certainly has the appearance of a softened stance by NCAA Enforcement.

I asked North Carolina athletic director Bubba Cunningham on a conference call Monday what his reaction was to the removal of the impressible benefits charge.

"I think that is a question for the NCAA," he said. "I've got to deal with the five we have."

Also of note: The most complete of North Carolina's myriad internal investigations (the Wainstein Report) dates the fake classes back to 1993. But the two allegations within the NOA which could pertain to football and basketball misdeeds – lack of institutional control and a failure to monitor – date from the fall of 2005. That happens to be several months after the Heels won the '05 national title, with multiple players who were AFAM majors. So there appears to be little if any leverage for the NCAA to take down that championship banner.

So what North Carolina basically has are a couple of broad institutional charges that target no specific sport, and do not mention basketball coach Roy Williams anywhere in the new report. And a whole lot of ammo aimed at women's basketball.

Now more than ever, it looks like that program is going to pay the piper. While it's possible that nobody else does.

How will that go over outside of North Carolina state lines? Not terribly well.

The release of this NOA looks like the latest step in a savvy legal maneuver by the school to navigate through this mess with minimal risk to its flagship program.

View photos North Carolina athletic director Bubba Cunningham. (AP) More

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