For all the clarity the estimated $3 million Wainstein Report brought to the 20-year AFAM scandal at UNC, the result is compounded confusion over what happens from here.

The University’s new administration pledged that an independent investigation would tell the whole story and allow Carolina to move ahead into the future. It indeed connected some dots that closed gaping holes, thanks mainly to the testimony of Debby Crowder and Julius Nyang’oro, but the 131-page, spiral-bound booklet raises many more questions that are still unanswered.

No wonder there was a strong belief in some corners of the university to do nothing more than let the previous half dozen or so internal and external studies ride, continue to fill the space with positive dialogue about the countless good that is done at UNC and wait for the bad news to fade away over time. In retrospect, that may have been a better idea and, certainly, a lot less expensive.

Wainstein’s team was able to piece together a literally “unbelievable” saga of how a glorified secretary got away with an academic scam for 17 years despite numerous suspicions and red flags along the way. Far worse than what Crowder did – not to enhance her professional or financial position but to help unprepared students having her own unfulfilling experience at UNC – was the astonishing lack of oversight from the highest academic office to the highest athletic office to the highest administrative office and everyone in between in the trenches.

The 126 comments at the back of the Wainstein report read mostly like the biggest chapter of CYA that has ever been written. So many people “heard some talk” but never did anything about it that the statements go from humorous to sickening. Ironically, the transparent anger of the characters that refused to be interviewed, such as Cynthia Reynolds and Everett Withers, speaks volumes about how much more of this story there is to tell.

Wainstein-confSo what Carolina hopes is the end – right through the carefully scripted and day-long rehearsed statements of UNC President Tom Ross and Chancellor Carol Folt (probably costing another million bucks to a Washington, D.C., PR firm) – isn’t even close to that outcome. The national media, which always jumps in late with the broadest brush and loudest voice, is now circling in the water suggesting outrageous outcomes from heavier NCAA sanctions to the Death Penalty for UNC Athletics.

What will happen is anyone’s guess. The NCAA generally does not get involved with a wide academic scandal that involves student-athletes AND students, but the thoroughness of the Wainstein report could very well have NCAA investigators looking at numerous athletes committing acts that rise to cheating in their minds and, thus, ineligibility for the Tar Heel teams they were on. To the furthest application, that could mean the forfeiture of more games and vacating some championships.

And with the snail’s pace of the NCAA, those decisions, whether something else or nothing more, could take another year.

Julius Nyang'oro after his first appearance in the Orange County Courthouse

Julius Nyang’oro after his first appearance in the Orange County Courthouse

From here, it seems like any penalty should be sweeping enough to encompass and punish the enormous lack of institutional control on the academic, athletic and administrative sides. Football has already taken its hit, with Butch Davis’ crooked program the most complicit, and there seems not enough evidence to indict Roy Williams or anyone on his staff. They were all involved, unwittingly or not, in a scam that started with a secretary who was allowed to commit crimes of the heart by an absentee department chair who cared more about his worldwide stature than what was going on in his own office.

And without being stopped, such schemes become systems that blend into the college landscape.

The Wainstein report is filled with testimony from people who knew enough to blow a whistle of sorts and others who were so uninformed or uncaring that, when asked, they said Crowder was a faculty professor. How can that possibly happen, Mr. Chancellor, Mr. Athletic Director, Mr. or Ms. Dean; Professor, Teaching Assistant, Academic Advisor, Tutor or anyone hanging around long enough to smell something fishy?

A dozen or so people did admit to or were identified as having direct knowledge, and their jobs (some at the schools they moved on to) will surely be lost. But there are many, many more who knew enough to say something to somebody.

If the shoe fits – and you know who you are – wear it for the rest of your life.

If the penalty turns out to be a seven- eight- or nine-figure fine against the once-renowned University of North Carolina, every one of you should contribute to paying that tariff.

And I will say it again. Whatever excuses you can conjure up for your ignorance or inaction, you know who you are.