Agree concerning Aligned for 9. (Have no opinion concerning Manilishi).
In hindsight it's now clear that UNC and the NCAA have been in negotiations this whole time they've been 'waiting for the amended NOA'.
The leaks coming from the UNC side were so different than what was coming from elsewhere, that something definitely was off.
For example when Roy Williams stated publicly and was telling recruits that UNC basketball would not be charged, I concluded that either 1.) he was a flat out liar or 2.) that UNC and the NCAA were colluding and had already agreed to reduce the charges. It has to be one or the other. Both are very bad, but I wasn't sure which one was correct.
Then you have Mark Emmert making some extremely cryptic and strange claims during the Final 4 which seemed to indicate that the NCAA was not guiding their own ship.
Now we know that the fix was in, and frankly it probably has been in ever since the very beginning. Remember the very 1st thing the NCAA did when this 'investigation' started was to send Marcus Wilson, who was a NCAA staffer but also former UNC football player and booster, to Chapel Hill ahead of anybody else. What his purpose was and what he did, no one has ever explained, except to say that he wasn't a member of the investigative team.
So what's the next stage? At this point the NCAA (rightly) itself comes under fire, including potentially by lawsuits and congressional hearings into it's very purpose along with its claim to deserve not-for-profit tax classification. This move by the NCAA not to pursue strong sanctions for UNC's systematic crimes will not help them in defending themselves, and will pose a very real hurdle which could mean their very existence.
As I mentioned numerous times, this scandal will NOT go away. The NCAA might have washed their hands of it in terms of men's basketball and football, but information will continue to leak and continue to eat away at whatever integrity the University still thinks it has. There's just too much corruption oozing out of there, to go along with an administration that is clearly not interested in cleaning house, that scandals will continue for many years.