UNC is having another behind the scenes battle.
Over the years, various conflicts and controversies erupted over the Carolina football and basketball programs.
When Roy Wiliams turned down the job in 2000, Matt Doherty’s tenure turned from a top-ranked team to an 8-20 disaster. Thankfully, Ol’ Roy could not say no to Dean Smith a second time, and three national championships in 12 years followed his return.
The Butch Davis debacle led to an investigation, an eventual NCAA probation and an academic-athletic scandal that lasted seven years and is still a punchline for the ABC (Anyone But Carolina) crowd.
Mack Brown was a two-time savior but twice angrily left the football program when UNC could have kept him with a little more money in 1997 and a cushy fund-raising job in 2024, when he again fled Chapel Hill for Austin.
And then came Bill Belichick, whose six Super Bowl championships in the NFL didn’t match bowl bids in each of Brown’s last six seasons; since the Hoodie arrived some now believe they would rather have Brown back instead of 4-8 and a 24-year-old girlfriend.
And just as it appears Belichick will take his second $10 million season, a skirmish has begun over the Dean Smith Center moving off campus to the old Chapel Hill Airport site on MLK Boulevard.
Though no official announcement has been made, it sure looks like Chancellor (and Duke graduate) Lee Roberts is leaning in that direction, although he says he is still open to another option whether his bosses in Raleigh will let him do something that may cost less money but with no foreseeable profit in the long run.
While the student vote opposes taking the Dean Dome off campus, the students have been losing such battles since they lost their courtside seating when the $36 million arena opened in 1986.
But now a special group of alumni has weighed in, those who wore shorts and won hundreds of games under Smith and Roy Williams. They have named themselves the “Committee for a South Campus Arena,” which doesn’t necessarily mean “Save the Smith Center.”
It could mean renovating it or building it somewhere that maintains the tradition of a walk and traffic jam to games. Roberts thinks an off-campus site with hotels, commercial and retail will make money for the town and university despite a small consumer base.
The committee of nearly 100 includes Coach Roy and names like Kupchak, Lynch, Hansbrough, Larry Brown and others, many of whom held a Zoom call with Roberts recently, expressing their anxious opposition, along with some trustees, and well-healed alumni who want to keep their rights to buy season tickets without having to pay millions more than they have cost over for 40 years.
Smith is long gone, but most of his precious players who loved to change offenses and defenses are still at it.
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Featured image via UNC-Chapel Hill/Jon Gardiner
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 daily on the 97.9 The Hill WCHL and his “Art’s Angle” opinion column runs weekly on Chapelboro.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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