Wiedmer: Could Brady be last among Monday's three big sports stories?

New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady talks to his teammates during the first half of the NFL football AFC Championship game against the Indianapolis Colts on Sunday, Jan. 18, 2015, in Foxborough, Mass.
New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady talks to his teammates during the first half of the NFL football AFC Championship game against the Indianapolis Colts on Sunday, Jan. 18, 2015, in Foxborough, Mass.

Three huge news stories hit the sports wire Monday afternoon before drive-time traffic slowed to its daily gridlock on the Interstate 24 ridge cut. And had you told any sports fan anywhere over Monday lunch that the first of those stories to break - an appeals court ruling reinstating New England quarterback Tom Brady's four-game NFL suspension for Deflategate - might wind up being the least impactful of the three, that fan would have labeled you an idiot.

But after later announcements that reigning NBA MVP Stephen Curry is out of Golden State's lineup for a minimum of two weeks with a sprained right knee and the University of North Carolina athletic department finally receiving its revised Notice of Allegations from the NCAA, Brady's suspension might actually finish third.

It's almost as if the sports gods decided to create a perfect backdrop for the Prince-penned Bangles hit "Manic Monday" as a final nod to purple's reign.

After all, without Curry it's certainly possible the defending world champion Warriors could fall to either the Los Angeles Clippers or Portland Trail Blazers in the conference semifinals, especially the Clippers.

Then there's the UNC academic scandal. The latest NOA apparently again fails to mention the men's basketball program, but with no fewer than 10 Tar Heels from the school's 2005 NCAA title team reportedly majoring in the seemingly fraudulent African-American Studies, it's almost impossible to understand how that 2005 championship won't be stripped, though nothing's impossible where the NCAA is concerned.

photo In this Sunday, Jan. 18, 2015 file photo, New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady has a ball tossed to him during warmups before the NFL football AFC Championship game against the Indianapolis Colts in Foxborough, Mass. A federal appeals court has ruled, Monday, April 25, 2016, that New England Patriots Tom Brady must serve a four-game "Deflategate" suspension imposed by the NFL, overturning a lower judge and siding with the league in a battle with the players union.

In fact, Brady's suspension, if NFL commissioner Roger Goodell refuses to soften it, could actually help New England come the postseason. Simply consider that the Patriots' first four regular-season games come at Arizona and at home against Miami, Houston and Buffalo.

Even without Shady Brady, who'll turn 39 before the Arizona game, New England should be favored in all three home games. And should they go 3-1, or even 2-2, without their future Hall of Fame QB, that's four games his aging body won't have to absorb hits, which could prove quite helpful by playoff time.

There's also a chance that now that Goodell has his court victory - assuming Brady decides to forgo a U.S. Supreme Court appeal - the commish might decide to play benevolent dictator and slash the suspension by half as a goodwill gesture. That move would probably hinge on feedback from owners who've long felt the long arm of NFL justice never stretched far enough concerning the Patriots, but it could certainly happen.

As for Curry and the Warriors, it's not just the physical absence of the ultimate Long Ranger that threatens Golden State's repeat. It's the threat of that marksmanship. Certainly Warriors coach Steve Kerr has lots of other weapons, but unless the coach is out there knocking down a few 25-footers himself with the ease he once did as a player, the champs are diminished. Just how much we probably won't know until the next round, since Houston - already down 3-1 - is the closest thing to a bye in the Western Conference bracket.

Yet neither of those two stories could prove as combustible as the notion that the Tar Heels may get a bye in football and men's basketball on what many have labeled as the worst academic scandal of the past 30 or 40 years.

In what is both a shocking and somewhat unfathomable twist, the NCAA apparently has amended last year's NOA to no longer cite a lack of institutional control from 1993 to 2011 - a span of 18 years and two NCAA men's basketball titles - but rather from the fall of 2005 through the summer of 2011.

That could be the single most significant statement in the entire NOA, since that would seemingly allow the Tar Heels to skate on their 2005 crown, despite those previously mentioned 10 African-American Studies majors.

That would still theoretically leave the 2009 title at risk, but since the number of Tar Heels still enrolled in that major had decreased greatly by then, it seems far less likely that banner would be taken down than the one for 2005.

It all sort of smells of the passive penalties leveled against the Syracuse basketball program, which somehow skipped over the Orange's 2003 title year, as if that was the only season that no wrongs were committed.

But this is far different. How did 18 years of lack of institutional control shrink to six? How can 10 players off a title team all declare a bogus major, yet that title isn't erased? Maybe there's a plausible explanation, but it needs to be a transparent one and it needs to be succinctly broken down by NCAA president Mark Emmert.

Especially since UNC coach Roy Williams' players accounted for 167 enrollments in AFAM classes, though, to be fair, the NCAA consistently has declared that enrollment in one of the suspect courses did not necessarily constitute a violation.

Regardless, shrinking 18 years worth of bogus class credits to six should leave every future NCAA violator with plenty of room to beat any rap out there, though "should" may be the most ignored word in the NCAA's book of justice

However, on the off chance that the Tar Heels decide to appeal whatever slap on the wrist they now seem likely to receive in the only sport their alums truly care about, they might want to avoid filing that appeal with the same U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit that reversed the Brady suspension.

Otherwise, those six years of a lack of institutional control might revert back to 18.

Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com.

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