The fact that this broke on Carolina's Scout.com site should tell everyone what's going on here.
This is about delaying NCAA action to protect this year's basketball team. The Carolina press release all but admitted this. They made sure to specifically state:
"NCAA infractions procedures require that if this new information is deemed to be a Level I or Level II violation, the existing notice of allegations must be amended to include it even though they are unrelated to the prior allegations." [emphasis added]
Anytime a new violation is submitted, the NCAA is obligated to review it to see if it is a Level I or Level II violation. This stops the clock on when UNC has to submit their response to the NOA, until the NCAA can complete their review. So any small infraction delays things a couple of weeks, and if these are more serious, delays things even further. The goal is to push the NCAA response out past the tournament.
What's laughable is the lengths to which UNC holds themselves up as both having the highest standards and also a commitment to excellence in the same press release. It boggles my mind how Bubba Cunningham could say this with a straight face:
"We expect excellence in everything we do, including NCAA compliance, and we will accept nothing less. We will continue to work closely with the NCAA to investigate this matter and avoid unnecessary delays. While this development is very disappointing, it is important to recognize that our athletics compliance procedures detected the potential violations and our coaching staff came forward to report them."
For starters, the same press release said these issues occurred over the past two years and were just now detected as part of due diligence related to the NCAA response. For as many "investigations" as UNC has conducted the past few years, how is it possible that an organization committed to excellence missed these? Wainstein included several emails related to men's soccer issues, so it's not like there was no indication something might be fishy there too.
Secondly, if this was uncovered within the past couple of weeks as part of due diligence work, then how can he say that it was compliance procedures that detected the potential violations and that the coaching staff came forward to report them? If this was occurring over the past two years, that tells me the exact opposite occurred. The compliance procedures failed to detect these (or didn't seek to) and the coaches didn't come forward. Does finding a two year old issue during document preparation really qualify as catching it during normal procedures or the coaching staff coming forward to report it? It's amazing that they'd think we're that obtuse. Or maybe they just think that about UNC fans and that they won't see through this.
This is UNC trying to save this year's MBB team. Nothing more, nothing less. And the mindset of the UNC administration is both fascinating and disgusting.