Maryland president Wallace Loh expects the book to be thrown at North Carolina over the ongoing NCAA investigation into an academic scandal.
At a University of Maryland senate meeting last Thursday, Loh spoke about North Carolina after being asked how the university is “protected from the corrupting influence of athletics.”
“As president I sit over a number of dormant volcanoes,” Loh said, according to Andrew Carter of The News & Observer. “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 has been under NCAA investigation since the summer of 2014, after the organization reopened an investigation from 2012.
The academic scandal revolves around fake African Studies courses, where students never had to attend, included little to no instruction, and required only a paper in exchange for what allegedly turned out to be high grades. These classes also had high student-athlete enrollment, leading to an impermissible benefit towards athletes over a number of years.
The most famous use of the "death penalty" was in 1986, when SMU was suspended from fielding a football team for the 1987 season over years of NCAA violations, including players being paid. The school also didn't play in 1988.
Since then, no school has received that degree of penalty.
Maryland released a statement saying Loh’s comments about North Carolina were “not a reflection of personal beliefs about the university or its leadership.”
“It is an example of the challenges that leaders in academia face as universities continue to grapple with balancing athletics with our overarching mission of research and scholarship,” Maryland spokesperson Brian Ullmann said. “It's clear that he is not advocating for any one outcome and trusts that all involved are working toward the same goal of rooting out wrongdoing wherever we see it on an academic campus.”
North Carolina also released a statement in response to Loh's comments.
“We were surprised that a sitting university president with no direct knowledge of our case would choose to offer such uninformed and highly speculative opinions,” vice chancellor of communications Joel Curran wrote in an email. “Clearly, Dr. Loh misunderstands the facts of the case, and how NCAA bylaws apply to those facts. We are now preparing our response to a third Notice of Allegations and suggest he read it fully once it has been submitted to the NCAA and made public.”