We’re headed for a showdown now. There’s no way around it. Whatever happens to North Carolina, whether the university is punished by the NCAA or wriggles off the hook, the battle lines have never been drawn more sharply. After five years, judgment is coming.
Greg Sankey, the SEC commissioner and chairman of the NCAA’s Committee on Infractions, has said he wants a hearing in August. North Carolina’s response to the NCAA’s third Notice of Allegations, released Thursday, makes it clear that the university intends to fight the NCAA’s jurisdiction on every front.
That’s the tone UNC took with its response to the second notice, back in August, and its resolve has only sharpened in this one, not only continuing to lodge objections over the NCAA’s ability to even bring the allegations, but going, at times, sentence by sentence to refute the evidence offered.