Give Carolina credit: it took four years and despite the reluctance to come clean, the university finally did get to at least most of the truth about the scandals engulfing the athletic department.

After hearing the press conference and reading the report, it's almost understandable: Kenneth Wainstein established that the fraud perpetrated via the AFAM department had gone on for nearly two decades. A lot of people knew about it and did nothing; a lot of people were perfectly willing to take advantage of it.

The blame goes primarily to Deborah Crowder and her former boss Julius N'yangoro, who both cooperated in exchange for charges being dropped.

Crowder did all sorts of things she shouldn't have done, including signing her boss's name on documents.

But it was mostly her doing, by her own admission, and one of the most stunning parts of this whole debacle was when she decided to retire (partly because she was increasingly scared of being caught). The football program, having come to regard Crowder as academic crack, panicked and put together a presentation with a power point slide that said this:

"We put them in classes that met degree requirements in which ... they didn’t go to class ... they didn’t have to take notes, have to stay awake ... they didn’t have to meet with professors ... they didn’t have to pay attention or necessarily engage with the material," a slide in the presentation said. "THESE NO LONGER EXIST!"

After her retirement, the football's team GPA fell to a 10-year low.

N'yangoro picked up the slack for awhile and kept things rolling. But as you know it crashed and burned and here we are.

There are a few points from the report which are worth noting. First, neither party appears to have had any financial motive for their fraud. Crowder is a big UNC fan and apparently N'yangoro is as well. We had wondered if agents had crept in somewhere and passed cash around. That wasn't the case.

Secondly, Matt Doherty, who was ready and willing to disregard Dean Smith and Bill Guthridge on most things, did take their advice and didn't shake up the academic support department:

Matt Doherty is a former Tar Heel player who went on to coach at the University of Notre Dame before being recruited to Chapel Hill as head coach in 2000. Doherty explained that upon assuming the coaching position, he inherited the academic support system developed by prior Coaches Dean Smith and Bill Guthridge. That system had academic oversight being handled by McSwain, the counselor with close ties to Debby Crowder. While he felt free to make significant changes to the rest of the team’s coaching and support staff, Doherty was told by Smith and Guthridge, who both had a continued presence on campus, that he should not change the academic support system. As a result, the McSwain-Crowder pipeline continued to operate, and there were 42 enrollments of men’s basketball players in paper classes during Doherty’s tenure. When asked about his approach to academics, Doherty explained that he met with each player at the start and end of every season to discuss their classes and general academic progress. Through these meetings and general word-of-mouth, Doherty knew that many of his players were taking AFAM classes. It was his understanding th at AFAM was the easiest major at Chapel Hill, and that the AFAM professors were particularly athlete- friendly with class demands and scheduling. He never knew that there was any sort of process in place to channel the players to these AFAM classes, and simply believed that his players were finding their way to these easier classes "just like water finds the lowest course." Doherty stated convincingly that he never had any reason to doubt that the classes were academically legitimate or that they required class attendance like any other lecture class. He also never heard that they were being used specifically to protect the players’ eligibility.

We can't help but wonder what the system was like under Smith and Guthridge. Did they know? Did they suspect? Unfortunately, ill health makes it impossible for either to answer. It's interesting though that they made this a point for Doherty. Of course, it could just be Smith's intense sense of loyalty to people he worked with.

After he replaced Doherty, Roy Williams, to his credit, realized something was rotten and got his players away from AFAM. It was a smart thing to do, but yet, we have to wonder: if he thought there was a problem, did he not tell someone? Shouldn't he have gone to his boss? As an aside, what must Williams have thought as he saw what his former assistant had tolerated and perhaps advanced?

This scandal has been compared in some ways to the Sandusky scandal at Penn State, and to be clear, that one, because it involves the sexual molestation of young boys, is far worse. There is, however, an important similarity: people knew.

They knew and did nothing, in part (we expect) because they didn't want to damage in institution they loved.

Actually, this is true of the pedophilia scandals in the Catholic church as well: people were more concerned with protecting the institution. As a result, in all three cases, the institutions suffered more.

For the duration of the false classes, UNC saw more than 3,100 students take them. Nearly 50% of those were athletes; about half of the athletes were football players.

One of the few funny parts of the whole thing was that fraternities caught on and began to take the classes as well. It was stupid and immature, but can you imagine the glee around the frat house of being able to pad your grades like that?

Clearly it wasn't a secret.

From the impact analysis:

A total of 2,152 individual students who enrolled in the paper classes were included in this impact analysis. Of that number, 329 students (including 169 student-athletes) had at least one semester in which the grade they received in their paper class either pushed or kept their GPA above 2.0. In other words, for at least one semester in their college career, each of those students had an actual cumulative GPA above a 2.0 but a recalculated GPA (excluding the paper class grade(s))below a 2.0. This number includes 123 football players, 15 men’s basketball players, eight women’s basketball players, and 26 Olympic sport athletes. Of that number, we identified 81 students who earned degrees from Chapel Hill whose recalculated final GPA excluding the grade(s) from their paper class or classes was less than the 2.0 required to graduate.

Now the 12 basketball players - who are they? It's reasonable to think that one might be Rashad McCants, who has admitted to taking paper classes and not doing the work.

McCants, who has made an ass of himself during this process, gave it the old college try on Wednesday, appearing on TV and saying that no one had contacted him.

But Wainstein said that his people had called, texted, e-mailed and snail-mailed McCants, who did not respond.

This brings us back to the McCants-Williams controversy. We didn't believe him then and given Ol' Roy's efforts to get his team away from trouble, we believe it less now than we did then.

However, given McCants' previous comments and self-indictment, it's time to discuss the status of the 2005 national title. If McCants is correct about his own ethics, then UNC should do the honorable thing and vacate the title. The banners should come down. If Memphis lost a Final Four banner over Derrick Rose's SAT score, then there's no way UNC should keep theirs - if McCants is to be believed.

Or any of the other guys on that team who were AFAM majors. If our list is incorrect, we'd appreciate knowing where we got it wrong:

Jackie Manuel - AFAM

Sean May - AFAM

David Noel - AFAM

Melvin Scott - AFAM

Reyshawn Terry - AFAM

Quentin Thomas - AFAM

Jawad Williams - AFAM

Rashad McCants - AFAM

Marvin Williams - AFAM

We should also recall the precedent of Minnesota. The big difference there was the role of the head basketball coach, but some other aspects were similar. Minnesota was heavily sanctioned. Gopher fans may be forgiven for wondering why UNC is (to date) getting off with very minor punishment.

Someone else who comes off very poorly in all this is faculty member Jan Boxill. Boxill, who was a counselor for the women's basketball team and also worked with the women's radio crew, actively colluded with Crowder to bring a grade up. Check this out:

Crowder: "Did you say a D will do for (the basketball player)? I’m only asking because 1. no sources, 2, it has absolutely nothing to do with the assignments for that class and 3. it seems to be a recycled paper. She took (another class) in spring of 2007 and that was likely for that class."



Boxill: "Yes, a D will be fine; that’s all she needs. I didn’t look at the paper but figured it was a recycled one as well, but I couldn’t figure out from where."

Not only is she fixing a grade, she's acknowledging plagiarism in the same breath.

Until earlier this year, Boxill was chair of philosophy.

She has also been the director of UNC's Parr Center for Ethics. Having few herself, she won't be in that job much longer.

In fact, the site no longer lists a director; the first person on the staff page is an assistant to the director.

Last year, Boxill presented a lecture on "Ethical Decision-Making." Perhaps she might want to revisit that.

Also due for re-evaluation, if not yet rehabilitation, is Mary Willingham. It would appear that some of her charges about UNC athletes being unqualified academically have merit. She seems to have a larger agenda though, so we'll reserve judgment for now.

Just because we're Duke fans doesn't mean that we take pleasure in this. Far from it.

You have to separate sports from the greater university.

We live in this state. We are taxpayers. We take pride in what Duke, N.C. State and the University of North Carolina have built in the Triangle. Where there were once tobacco and corn fields there are now great research facilities which, among other things, are working on a serum for Ebola which comes from tobacco.

We take a certain pride in the university. Its mission to be the people's university is noble and in the finest democratic spirit. It has made our lives unquestionably better.

In particular, UNC and Chapel Hill have historically been leaders in this state when it comes to racial issues. Dean Smith in particular deserves everlasting respect for his convictions and courage.

He got to UNC not all that long after the last lynching in the Triangle. What seems obvious now was profoundly difficult in the late '50s and early '60s, and he was no legend then.

In fact, years later, when former Duke great Art Heyman was asked about that time, he said "Dean Smith? Why, he was the biggest joke around."

So given UNC's proud history when it comes to race, given Dean Smith's legacy, it's particularly disheartening to see how the university treated the AFAM department.

Crowder ran an 18-year scam. There's no evidence that the department was audited or monitored or even under meaningful university regulation.

The sad, brutal truth is that UNC has treated the department as separate and not equal. It's been given lip service but not held to the standards of the rest of the university. That's very sad and contemptible.

UNC has made it clear throughout the scandal that it will not share any more information than absolutely required, but it's a reasonable bet that a lot, if not most of the athletes who were put into the AFAM paper classes were African-American.

That's a double indictment. Not only did UNC's neglect of AFAM allow it to be thoroughly abused by the various parties, but many students who came to UNC marginally prepared were exploited on fields and courts and then again in the classroom. How do you fix that? How do you apologize for taking advantage of naive teenagers in that way?

Maybe the next chair of the Parr Center can offer some advice.