Last year I wrote that “The mockery of the academics and ‘Honor’ of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is now nearly complete.” That was in response to the case of Kendric Burney, a senior at UNC who went before the Honor Court seeking permission to add a new class … in mid-October, halfway through the semester, a month and a half past the deadline to add a class without instructor permission … to replace, apparently, the class for which he was being investigated for academic fraud in … and whose extreme request was granted.

Burney’s status as a “preseason All-ACC first-team pick” defensive back on the football team certainly seemed to play a huge factor in all of those extraordinary allowances (and even wording it in that fashion seems like understatement).

Now I think that the mockery is complete. The devastating notice of allegations that UNC received from the NCAA, detailing not one but nine major violations, from academic fraud to the associate head football coach being an agent runner to players receiving benefits, has been barely sniffed at by North Carolina’s supposed caretakers of education. When they do speak, as has former UNC President Bill Friday, who as former co-chair of the Knight Commission to clean up collegiate athletics was until last month a credible voice for academic integrity against athletics malfeasance, they say things like this:

“It’s been a difficult time but like good North Carolinians we’ve admitted we’ve made the mistake,” said Friday. “Now let’s move on.”

Show’s over, folks; nothin’ to see here.

But why do I think the self-mockery of UNC’s Honor Court is complete? Well, because of this from Sports Illustrated about the lawsuit by UNC defensive end Michael McAdoo against the NCAA for permanently banning him from college athletics.

McAdoo sued because the NCAA ignored the fact that UNC’s Undergraduate Honor Court found insufficient evidence to charge McAdoo with one count of academic fraud and found him not guilty of another. The honor court found McAdoo guilty in one instance, and that involved a tutor reformatting his citations and his works cited page for a paper in a Swahili class. The court suspended McAdoo from school for the spring 2011 semester.

Sounds like McAdoo has a fantastic case. The NCAA clearly ignored the facts when it sentenced him.

Here’s where it gets complicated. When McAdoo’s attorney filed the suit, he included as evidence the paper in question. This week, The Raleigh News and Observer posted the case’s attached exhibits on its Web site. That’s when a few bored NC State fans began Googling. In the process, they found that McAdoo had pasted large passages word-for-word from sources available on the Internet. Blog SportsByBrooks.com picked up the story, and it spread from there. Will the plagiarism sink McAdoo’s case?

In case it’s not clear, the Honor Court, in its rush to soften the blow against a football player (and suspend him essentially in the offseason so he’d be ready to go come the fall), missed broad passages of cut-and-paste plagiarism — a highly egregious offense in academe when not committed by a revenue-sport student-athlete — that were so blatant that random guys on the Internet found them just by looking at the same citations the Honor Court did.

Meanwhile, the player is using that plagiarized paper in his case against the NCAA for banning him in part for academic fraud.