North Carolina’s search for its next general manager is shaping up as more than just a football decision.
The Tar Heels are still trying to settle on what they want that role to look like, and for now, there’s no clear answer on who will fill it. Reports have said UNC is looking for a new general manager, but the process remains murky.
Bill Belichick could once again lean on an NFL connection. He already had Michael Lombardi in the job when he arrived in December 2024, but Lombardi later resigned after an internal HR investigation. The fit was supposed to make sense on paper, but it never played out that way.
Now the question is whether UNC will go back to the NFL well or take a different path. The latest reporting from CBS suggests that university politics could end up playing a major role in that choice.
An industry source raised the possibility that Belichick would want someone with NFL experience. That makes sense in a market where NFL personnel executives have increasingly looked toward college jobs, especially because of the money involved. Lombardi, according to the report, was making a nation-leading $1.5 million annually in base pay.
Still, college football has not fully shed the old-school machinery that comes with it. Sales and hospitality remain tied to recruiting, and those pieces matter just as much as the football side.
“There is also the unavoidable nature of university-side politics, especially at a place like UNC that led to a fractured search to get Belichick in the first place, with trustees lobbying for Belichick and athletic department administrators working with conventional names,” Richard Johnson of CBS said of the GM role.
That tension may be part of why this search feels so unsettled. With so much money flowing into North Carolina athletics, donors are likely to want a say in how these decisions are made. Whether the university lets that happen is another matter.
Belichick has already been given a long leash, and the source material makes clear that he hasn’t necessarily earned it. That’s part of the larger issue UNC now has to sort through as it tries to get the general manager role right.
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There was one bit of good news for the Tar Heels, with defensive lineman Zavion Griffin-Haynes now considered available. Miami will also be short-handed, with six players out for the game, but the biggest update for UNC may still be coming later, when the final availability report is released two hours before kickoff. [Read more 🡒]