According to a statement from the NCAA, the University of North Carolina football program was punished Monday for the following:

1. University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, is responsible for multiple violations, including academic fraud, impermissible agent benefits, ineligible participation and a failure to monitor its football program.

 
2. Over the course of three seasons, six football student-athletes competed while ineligible as a result of these violations, and multiple student-athletes received impermissible benefits totaling more than $31,000.

 
3. While employed by the university, a former assistant football coach [John Blake] was compensated by a sports agent [Gary Wichard] for the access he provided to student-athletes and failed to disclose the income to the university. The former assistant coach and a former tutor [Wiley] both committed unethical conduct and failed to cooperate with the investigation.

 
UNC has to forfeit 15 scholarships over the next three seasons, will not be bowl eligible in 2012, receives three years probation, a $50,000 fine, loses all wins from 2008 and 2009, multiple players cannot be associated with the program, including former UNC wideout Hakeem Nicks, and Blake is banned from all recruiting activities in college football for three years

 
Blah. Blah. Blah.

 
It’s March Madness, but college athletics are the only maddening thing.

 
So because of past indiscretions, the future athletes at the University of North Carolina will be punished?

 
It’s nearly as backward as the BCS system or the fact human beings decide the road teams have to take to win the national championship in basketball (Surprise, surprise. Duke gets yet another cakewalk to the Elite 8).

 
College sports are amazingly entertaining, but the people who think they are more pure than professional sports are out of their minds.

 
As for the madness, it’s going to be Duke, Michigan State, Kansas and Syracuse…and I do see the irony in tearing college sports apart and filling out a bracket.

 
It’s almost as ironic as calling players on college teams “student athletes.”