THF, the black cars aren’t a problem, you should be OK unless you have forgotten the secret handshake.

You are correct. The NCAA eligibility is the first line. If a player cannot even cross that then ACC and UNC requirements do not even come into play. That was the case here. Based on what I read and IC has a good article explaining all this on the premium side, UNC did not even refer Jones to the faculty athletic committee that reviews the borderline cases.

You are correct. UNC did not catch the mistake and only did because they were trying to get Zach Brown cleared to play. Brown was a 2007 commit who also went to Hargrave and was teammates with Jones. When they were working on his case they realized that Jones should have been eligible too and started the process of making that happen.

With any student-athlete, there are three layers of the eligibility onion to deal with (in increasing order of difficulty): NCAA eligibility, ACC eligibility, and UNC admissions standards.

By now, I think everyone knows that NCAA eligibility for Division I is based on a sliding scale that correlates GPA in a number of CORE classes (i.e. English, math, science, social studies, and foreign language) to a particular SAT or ACT score. The higher the test score, the lower the core GPA can be, and the higher the core GPA, the lower the test score can be. In addition, every recruit must be certified by the NCAA Initial Eligibility Clearinghouse. This is run entirely by the NCAA and not by the member schools.

The ACC has set a somewhat higher intial eligibility standard than the NCAA (although I do not know exactly what it is). Each school is allowed a certain number of exceptions to this rule each year and this is available to all 12 schools. Whether or not a school chooses to exercise them is up to each school.

Then there are institutional admissions standards. Dave Glenn has ranked the ACC into difficult, mid-level, and easy as it relates to these standards. Obviously Duke and GT are in the elite, while Glenn ranks UNC in the upper mid-level. Again, these are decisions made by each school on whether or not to take an athlete that is otherwise eligible by NCAA standards. I love the message board monkeys from Clemson who claimed that Jones couldn’t be admitted there, when Glenn ranks them near the bottom of admission standards.

Where the disconnect seems to be for the Jones issue is whether or not the NCAA Clearinghouse deemed him eligible. I am guessing they did not, by applying the incorrect rule (14 vs. 16 core classes). While each individual school collects and compiles the eligibility data, it is the Clearinghouse that ultimately rules (which is why there is often some freshman who cannot begin practice in August waiting on the Clearinghouse). UNC cannot deem a student-athlete eligible; the NCAA must do that. My feeling is that the error on the UNC side is that they did not discover the NCAA’s mistake and try to get it fixed sooner. I have no facts on which to base this, but I did coach high school sports for 14 years and dealt with the Clearinghouse probably two dozen times – there is only so much the school can do.

Therefore I am also guessing that since the error ultimately falls to the NCAA, since they certify eligibility, the NCAA “fixed” the boo-boo by allowing Jones to “transfer” without admitting that their blessed Clearinghouse had screwed it up. I am sure if the exact same thing had happened somewhere else in the ACC, the exact same remedy would have been applied. Yes, even at NC State.