There is no question Mike Lombardi will lose his job as football general manager and leave Chapel Hill.
When both sides lawyer up with big time barristers, and as the investigations drag on, it looks likes six-figure pissing contest. UNC has attorneys across the state like those who represented the university in the AFAM scandal and the other high-profile cases. Lombardi has hired Tom Mars who has defended players and coaches in the NFL and other leagues.
Lombardi “welcomes the opportunity to clear his name,” Mars said as most lawyers do. But that train has left the station.
How we ended up with Bill Belichick and Lombardi is still an open question. We know that Lombardi first contacted Marco Rubio who passed him on to Thom Tillis and eventually John Preyer with the board of trustees. How and when Chancellor Lee Roberts and Bubba Cunningham got involved was unclear. Roberts has a university to run and Cunningham was busy trying to find a replacement for Mack Brown, whose many friends in the coaching profession didn’t like the way Mack was fired.
You can’t blame Preyer for favoring a marquee name but how he did it was clearly out of the purview of the trustees, who serve in an advisory capacity and does not negotiate or offer contracts to prospective coaches. All reports point to Cunningham not in favor of hiring a 72-year-old coach and wanting to start over with a new era and younger man.
By the time Roberts and Cunningham met in person with Belichick in New York there was already a back of the envelope offer on the table for $10 million per season. Belichick did meet on campus with a so-called search committee but reportedly no one with extensive football knowledge was in attendance who got down to asking the Hoodie what happened in his last four years in the NFL without Tom Brady after winning their six Super Bowls together.
However Belichick wrangled $1.5 million per season for Lombardi was a major oversight. Lombardi had not worked on a college campus since being a recruiting coordinator at UNLV in 1984. Another poor vetting example occurred with Belichick’s 24-year-old girlfriend Jordon Hudson, who showed up at his introductory press conference with little fanfare followed by some un-football-like behavior. Someone on that search committee either didn’t know about Hudson or didn’t bother to ask much about her.
There is $3 million at stake in the absurd three-year contract Belichick and Lombardi negotiated in late 2024. That is almost 30 percent higher than any other college football general manager with far better reputations and resumes. That Belichick got away with that highway robbery is a sign that Carolina had no idea what it was doing in hiring these NFL grifters and conmen.
With little evidence being revealed in what Lombardi did to run afoul of the human resources department, along with possible NCAA violations in recruiting, he holds the upper hand in trying to get away with as much money as possible as he blows town. Once negotiations begin, it’s merely a matter of who gets more.
Carolina is likely to cave into paying Lombardi more money than he deserves. Do they fight it or pay him off to end another bad chapter of Tar Heel football and begin rebuilding the program with new staff?
Unlike other schools that get involved in controversies that last three or four days, Carolina always is a national story from coast to coast in every media you can find. Nobody cares if Wake Forest or NC State or even Duke gets into trouble because those schools will settle their matters and move to the back pages.
The Carolina brand is both good news and bad news. And this has the potential of being another UNC embarrassing athletic moment with the involvement of such a national figure.
Belichick is on the hot seat and is unlikely to last beyond his second season. If Lombardi either broke protocol or the rules, Belichick is also on the line for what his assistants do. This is not exactly the NFL where teams can serve a penalty and or suspension for Deflategate or Spygate and coach on if they keep winning.
For the Tar Heels, it’s almost better that they have not won that much because their name becomes more important than their record. So they can whitewash their indiscretions like they can promote research and fundraising successes. For good and bad, they are known for that more than being a football factory that doesn’t give a hoot about academics.
All schools make mistakes and have to own up to them; Carolina has more pride and accomplishments than gridiron hardware. They will always be a national story. They want to celebrate that for as long as possible and fix the mistakes they made as fast as they can.
The administrators who got them into this mess need to be held accountable; that is not aways the case. It is more important to get them off that front page and then figure out who is truly to blame.
Featured image via Associated Press/Chris Seward
Art Chansky is a veteran journalist who has written ten books, including best-sellers “Game Changers,” “Blue Bloods,” and “The Dean’s List.” He has contributed to WCHL for decades, having made his first appearance as a student in 1971. His “Sports Notebook” commentary airs on 97.9 The Hill WCHL and his “Art’s Angle” opinion column runs weekly on Chapelboro during football and basketball seasons.Chapelboro.com does not charge subscription fees, and you can directly support our efforts in local journalism here. Want more of what you see on Chapelboro? Let us bring free local news and community information to you by signing up for our newsletter.
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