Agreed--this is where they are going to get nailed, if the NCAA pursues this at all. Emmert pulled an intentional bait-and-switch when he proclaimed that the NCAA shouldn't be in the business of determining whether college courses are valid or not, and that therefore this case isn't in the NCAA's "wheelhouse."
Of course, that is right. The NCAA does not and should not have the authority to regulate standards for what constitutes acceptable college course content -- that would be a huge overstepping of their bounds [even though the NCAA clearinghouse does this very thing when evaluating high school course content], and the resource requirements to do this would be massive. So no argument there, Emmert.
The problem is, taking that narrow viewpoint overlooks the fact that an uncountable number of UNC athletes used these courses to artificially inflate their GPAs. Some of them might not have been eligible otherwise, and sans these courses some might not have meant minimum requirements for eligibility / progress toward degree. Which means that for nearly two decades, UNC had a system that some [not all] athletes used to circumvent NCAA rules on eligibility.
Back when the Minnesota academic scandal broke in the mid-90s, one of the arbiters presiding over the case famously commented that he'd never encountered academic cheating on such a grand scale, and that the intentional malfeasance warranted them getting the hammer dropped on them.
Compared to UNC, what happened at Minnesota barely rates.
And that's the problem that the NCAA has--proportion. Their arbitrary and capricious enforcement and penalties create a huge imbalance, where some programs get the book thrown at them, while other sometimes more egregious infractions are tolerated and often ignored. If the NCAA were to penalize UNC at a rate commensurate with what they've done in similar cases in the past, UNC WOULD get the death penalty.
