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Memphis became the latest men’s basketball program to finally receive its NCAA enforcement ruling on Tuesday, and it was good news for the Tigers and coach Penny Hardaway.

The Independent Accountability Resolution Process (IARP) took the NCAA allegations — including four Level I violations, the most egregious, and a direct implication of Hardaway — and dropped them down to less-serious Level II and III offenses. Memphis will pay a fine, vacate a few wins and be on probation for three years.

“It took nearly three years, and this is what they came up with? It’s a good day for Memphis basketball,’’ said one lawyer who works on NCAA cases, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

No doubt it is a feather dusting more than a hammer blow after the lengthy investigation into James Wiseman and Hardaway. The Tigers are free to play in the postseason, and Hardaway is free to coach his team.

But nothing the NCAA — or in this case, its extended reach via the IARP — does happens in a vacuum, especially when this group still sits on four very visible cases, involving four rather big programs: Kansas, Arizona, Louisville and LSU. With a little help from the lawyer and some fine-line reading of the ruling, The Athletic breaks down what it all means, and if they got it right.

How lucky is Memphis?

Very. The university rolled the dice by agreeing to take the case to the IARP. The Tigers were the first to agree to the new version of investigation and adjudication, jumping in despite no idea how the group might rule, but agreeing nonetheless to the most critical stipulation of all IARP cases: The decisions cannot be appealed.

Just six months ago, it looked like a really bad idea, when the NCAA delivered its amended notice of allegations, charging Memphis with four Level I violations and two Level IIs. Among the charges were the holy triumvirate of NCAA no-nos: lack of institutional control, failure to monitor and head coach responsibility. Typically all three carry serious punishment, including potential postseason bans and lengthy suspensions for the head coach. By comparison, Oklahoma State was tagged with one Level I violation, involving former assistant coach Lamont Evans, and the Committee on Infractions banned the Cowboys from the postseason.

But viewing things through a different prism, the IARP reduced all of the original allegations to Levels II and III, which do not carry as steep a penalty and practically absolved Hardaway and the coaching staff of any wrongdoing. “You could argue that the two-and-a-half years while they were under investigation is the real punishment,’’ the lawyer says. “For that time, I’m sure they were negatively recruited against and their reputations were maligned. But otherwise, the penalties are small.’’

So how did we get here?

Via Canada, it would appear. OK, that’s being flippant, but the fact that chief panel Hugh Fraser is a Jamaican-born Canadian does have something to do with it. For years, coaches and college administrators grew weary with the Committee on Infractions essentially rubber-stamping whatever charges the enforcement staff levied, aggravated that the NCAA served as investigator, judge and jury.

The whole idea of the IARP in the first place was to turn over cases where the enforcement staff and the university couldn’t agree on the facts — the complex cases, if you will — to a group of independent mediators and let them figure it out. Instead of a panel of peers as is typical on the Committee on Infractions — commissioners, athletic directors and the like — the IARP is made up of lawyers and professionals unrelated to NCAA membership.

They are meant to be emboldened by their independence, to see things differently and perhaps more critically. In this case, they did. “To the NCAA, Penny Hardaway is a rogue coach out there trying to buy players,’’ the lawyer says. “It’s all clouds of doom and gloom. The panel is saying, ‘No, he’s been giving money away to kids for years. This is no different.’”

The panel looked at Hardaway’s long-established assistance to the Memphis community, one that predates his days as a Memphis coach, a high school coach and a middle school coach and tracks all the way back to his playing days. No one denied that he paid for Wiseman’s moving expenses when Wiseman was a young prospect and Hardaway a grassroots coach, but the panel did not see that as pay for play. He was just another beneficiary of Hardaway’s philanthropy, one that was offered to non-students as well. The guilty party, they argued, was the school, which failed to educate Hardaway appropriately.

Still taking the steps to entirely erase four Level I violations from an NCAA recommendation is audacious, if not downright unprecedented. Fraser had no problem with it “We found a very significant record, and we came to the conclusion after a thorough examination of the evidence, that these did not reach Level I,’’ Fraser says. “We would have had no difficulty arriving at that conclusion if the evidence satisfied that they reached Level I, but we did not find that. The panel has a duty to really examine that from its own perspective.’’

What does this mean about the IARP?

Whether you agree with the broad findings or not, there is no denying that some of the IARP’s arguments read as naive, if not downright laughable.

For example: The panel argued that the institution failed to monitor a booster, as in Hardaway, but also said that Hardaway essentially didn’t do anything wrong.

The panel also excused Hardaway from culpability for allowing Wiseman to compete on Nov. 5, 2019, arguing that the school did not inform him until after the game that Wiseman was ineligible, and therefore Hardaway could not know. Except shortly after the game, the NCAA issued a rather unprecedented statement saying, “The University of Memphis was notified that James Wiseman is likely ineligible. The university chose to play him and ultimately is responsible for ensuring its student-athletes are eligible to play.’’

Hours later, Wiseman himself got a restraining order. Asked about that specifically, Fraser instead argued the semantics, that while there was noise about Wiseman’s eligibility, the evidence did not show that Hardaway knew Wiseman was actually deemed ineligible. Asked whether it might stretch the imagination to think that he at least didn’t have an inkling about what was to come, Fraser concluded, “coaches don’t get too deep on eligibility issues.’’

Which would probably come as a surprise to every other Division I coach.

The panel also argued that the university failed to cooperate, in part because it failed to properly investigate how an assistant coach’s computer memory was scrubbed a day after the Complex Case Unit requested it. But the IARP didn’t charge the assistant coach who owned the computer. “We felt that the focus was not on the departed assistant coach, but on the investigations of the circumstances of the wiping of the computer,’’ Fraser said.

In a lot of ways, the IARP idea was a good one. Getting people who aren’t tied to the NCAA bureaucratic machine, who don’t consider rule-breakers from a very myopic NCAA definition of rules makes sense. But the execution was horrific. The IARP managed to move as if it were receiving AARP funding already, the only group in the history of the world to make the NCAA look speedy. Wiseman is currently sitting at home, a third-year pro and NBA champion with the Golden State Warriors, and when (if) it finally rules on the final four cases on its docket (involving Arizona, Kansas, Louisville and LSU) the IARP will cease to exist, canceled by the NCAA transformation committee.

And its epitaph, as evidenced by the naivete in some of these arguments, ought to be well-intentioned, but ill-informed. The NCAA has a history of asking good people to do things they simply don’t understand, relying more on integrity than truth-telling. On the heels of the NCAA investigation into college basketball, which led to the IARP’s formation, Mark Emmert invited Condoleeza Rice and Grant Hill to examine what was going on. He should have asked college coaches, grassroots movers and shakers, and agents — people who actually know how the college sausage is made.

What does this mean for Arizona, Kansas, Louisville and LSU?

This is where it gets tricky. Fraser said repeatedly — and accurately — that the decision about Memphis is about Memphis; it’s not meant to be used as a precedent. And the lawyer The Athletic spoke to agrees. “This is a one-off in a lot of ways,’’ he says.”I suppose if you’re a booster and you’ve given to 100 kids in the area over the last 10 years, just so you could sneak in the money to the one who’s going to play for you, it could work. But otherwise? I’m not sure that this is going to be precedent-setting.’’

The remaining cases are wildly different, all beginning with the FBI sting investigation, with wiretaps and other evidence gathered by the federal government to consider. In its two rulings (NC State and now Memphis), the IARP has not handed down a postseason ban, and the lawyer agrees that there seems to be less of an appetite to do so (except, oddly, for Oklahoma State). “People don’t want to punish the kids who weren’t involved,’’ he says. “There seems to be a move to punish the head coach.’’ He’s referring to new rules that go in effect beginning in January, involving coach responsibility. Anyone tagged post-January will no longer have the luxury that Hardaway had — the ability to rebut the charge. The NCAA is instituting strict liability, which for coaches means, you can’t argue your way out of a charge; it’s just a matter of what the punishment will be.

Except that doesn’t apply to Sean Miller, Bill Self, Rick Pitino or Will Wade, since they were charged prior to the rule change. See? Complicated.

The lawyer, however, did see two glimmers of hope for those other schools. For one, the panel chose to disassemble a bunch of minor infractions involving Memphis and judge each on its own merits. Taking pictures of recruits, posting videos of a scrimmage with roster players and recruits, a free meal at a restaurant, and an offer of aid via text were judged individually, and deemed harmless Level III violations. That’s a real departure from the old NCAA way of doing things. “It used to be that you used a bunch of smaller violations and rolled them into a major violation,’’ he says. “Instead, they considered each individually and tried to decide if they could carry the load. And they could not.’’

They also did not drop the hammer for failing to cooperate with the investigation, usually the death knell for a school or coach. Twice the panel mentions ways that Memphis failed to cooperate, but ranked each as Level II violations. All four schools — and/or coaches — have at one point dug in their heels, none harder than Kansas. The other three schools canned their coaches; Self has yet to be punished. “It’s always been my opinion that that sort of thing is usually overblown,’’ the lawyer says. “And here they’re saying it’s not nearly as bad as it was alleged. That could be something.’’

(Top photo: Abbie Parr / Getty Images)