Maryland president 'would think' NCAA would implement death penalty on North Carolina

Maryland president Wallace Loh has some strong feelings about the way the NCAA should punish North Carolina in the wake of the school’s academic fraud scandal.

Loh said, in a meeting on campus last week, that he “would think” North Carolina would be given the death penalty by the NCAA. Loh’s remarks during the school’s senate meeting were recorded and subsequently sent to the Raleigh News and Observer. From the N&O:

An individual who identified himself as a member of the University of Maryland faculty asked Loh how he could be certain that the university is “protected from the corrupting influence of athletics.” In response, Loh made an unprompted reference to UNC.

“As president I sit over a number of dormant volcanoes,” Loh said. “One of them is an athletic scandal. It blows up, it blows up the university, its reputation, it blows up the president.

“For the things that happened in North Carolina, it’s abysmal. I would think that this would lead to the implementation of the death penalty by the NCAA. But I’m not in charge of that.”

North Carolina is still volleying back and forth with the NCAA regarding Notices of Allegations in the case stemming from classes in the African and Afro-American Studies department that were designed in part to help athletes boost their GPAs. The NCAA gave the school a third Notice of Allegations in December after sending a second in April of 2016.

The school is in the midst of crafting its response to the third NOA. It questioned the scope of the NCAA’s oversight after receiving the second NOA.

The allegations in the third NOA cover 2002-11 and North Carolina could be forced to vacate its men’s basketball titles in 2005 and 2009 if there’s enough wrongdoing found by the NCAA to deem players on those teams ineligible.

North Carolina football served a postseason ban in 2012 and had to forfeit 15 scholarships. The last team to get a death penalty from the NCAA was SMU’s football program in 1987. And while it’s unclear if Loh was referring to a specific program within North Carolina’s athletic department, it seems highly unlikely the NCAA would force any of North Carolina’s sports to take a season or more off.

Maryland was an ACC counterpart of North Carolina’s in the timeframe of the Notice of Allegations. The Terrapins left the ACC and officially joined the Big Ten in 2014.

A spokesperson for UNC said the school was “surprised” Loh would “choose to offer such uninformed and highly speculative opinions.”

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Nick Bromberg is the editor of Dr. Saturday and From the Marbles on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at nickbromberg@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!

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