UNC's Likely NCAA Defense: Who Knew?

Read More: North Carolina Tar Heels

It might be useful to remember that one of the allegations against North Carolina’s football program involves its associate head coach as you read about the Tar Heels’ likely defense against the NCAA allegations leveled against the program. Because that’s what makes the defense, if not novel, then at least gutsy.

North Carolina is likely to attempt a "rogue’’ defense when answering allegations of NCAA violations by its football program, according to two lawyers who have followed the case. …

“My position would be, knowing North Carolina’s reputation, that we did have comprehensive programs in place and we did monitor all the ways we could monitor,’’ [attorney Michael] Buckner said Wednesday. “The reason these violations occurred is we had individuals who intentionally avoided scrutiny and accomplished these violations in such a way there were no red flags.” …

[Radio host and attorney David] Glenn said UNC, while not claiming it is blameless, will build a case that it had a strong compliance system “and stuff just went wrong.”

Yes, stuff happens. Call it the keychain defense. In any case, as our UNC blog Carolina March recently pointed out, this could actually explain why Butch Davis hasn’t lost his job — yet.

Despite the immediate outcry, Butch Davis won’t be fired any time soon, in part because UNCs defense hangs on him being unaware of Blake’s activities and having not having reason to suspect otherwise. To fire Davis would imply he did know what was going on, and make things all the worse for Carolina.

Once the NCAA sledgehammer has dropped, though …