Ken Medlin at WRAL reports Thursday morning that UNC athletic director Dick Baddour is refuting a report by Inside Carolina that a ruling by the NCAA regarding the ongoing investigation will be rendered this week.
Medlin writes:
"I can safely tell you that report is not correct," Baddour said. "We don't expect anything tomorrow (Friday)."
Baddour said he could not make any other comments regarding a time line for the investigation, except to say that he does not have one.
IC has usually been on the level with their reporting on this situation and there is no reason to assume their information on this was any different, but Baddour unequivocally denies the report, so we will certainly take him at his word. As for Baddour saying there was no timeline, the IC piece notes Baddour told them the same thing last week.
On the other hand, there has been some message board chatter that UNC already had the results of the investigation and were OK with the outcome and would not appeal. Then there is this report by a blog no one has ever heard of that purports to have the details of the NCAA penalties. I don't lend credence to either message boards or undocumented blogs, but after weeks of an information embargo, lots of things seem to be trickling out in the past three or four days and it is difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff.
In any case, all anyone can do at this point is sit back and wait for the final ruling, whenever that may be.
UPDATE(THF): It should be noted this is not the first time UNC had opted to deny a report from IC and other outlets. Remember when Butch Davis was hired? Multiple sources including Inside Carolina, David Glenn, the Winston-Salem Journal and AOL Sports all said Butch Davis was heading to UNC. UNC's reponse? Total and complete denial. In fact, if you follow that link to my post on it then you will see UNC actually went as far as to call the reports wrong. The reason UNC denied it was because the Heels were scheduled to play their homecoming game that weekend vs Georgia Tech and there was some feeling they should give The Coach Who Shall Not Be Named one last moment before he truly became irrelevant in the public eye. UNC held the denial until the following Monday when they announced Davis had been hired. Now, I am not saying this is the same thing but it would not shock me. UNC has a tendency to launch themselves into denial mode far too easily. Given hard line they have taken on saying anything pertaining to the investigation, that reflex is probably a little quicker than usual.
Carry on.