We’re focusing on the wrong people here, everyone. At the wrong time, and in the wrong moment with the never-ending mess at North Carolina.
Bill Belichick was an out-of-work football coach no one wanted.
Michael Lombardi was an out-of-work former NFL personnel executive no one wanted.
And Lee Roberts and John Preyer — arguably the two most powerful men in the state of North Carolina — decided to go all-in with all involved in December 2024. To save a North Carolina football program that didn’t necessarily need saving, it needed tweaking.
So they threw $30 million guaranteed at a football
coach, and tens of millions more in NIL cash so he and his hand-picked general manager could execute the worst roster rebuild in the NIL era. Without a hint of oversight.
Nearly 20 months later, all UNC has to show for it is four wins and abject humiliation. The latest embarrassment: Lombardi’s suspension from the program Monday for an alleged human resources complaint filed by a former UNC front office employee, ESPN reported.
This is what happens when you get academia blowhards involved in the hiring and firing of coaches. They deal in fandom, not an athletic director’s real world, nut-cutting reality of this hire could get me fired.
Forget about due diligence or background checks or social media scrubs, how about simply calling one of 32 NFL owners and asking why Belichick and Lombardi were persona non grata.
Why a man with six Super Bowl rings as head coach of the New England Patriots couldn’t get a job in the league he owned for two decades. Why a personnel executive hadn’t worked in the NFL since leaving the Patriots in 2016, and had a general manger role once — and was fired 13 months later.
Why Jordan Hudson, a then 24-year-old former beauty pageant contestant, was tagging along with the coach and his six rings because the coach believed she was his “muse.”
I mean, my god. That alone — excluding the reality that no one in the NFL wanted Belichick and Lombardi — should’ve been a massive red flag whipping in the wind, begging North Carolina to walk away from the train wreck waiting to happen.
Want to blame someone for the off Broadway disaster of Beli, Lombardi and The Muse? Blame Roberts, the chancellor at UNC, and Preyer, then the chairman of the powerful UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees.
These two stalwarts of academia pushed aside North Carolina athletic director Bubba Cunningham — who wanted to hire then-Iowa State coach Matt Campbell — and declared they were running the show. Or search committee.
This is what they got for their fandom.
Preyer left the board in January, leaving Roberts to hold this humiliating bag of steaming puke. The only way Roberts and Belichick survive is if Belichick has somehow figures it out after stumbling through his now second roster rebuild.
That’s right, a year after Belichick and Lombardi signed 70 new players (high school recruiting and transfer portal) in 2025, they signed 60 more for 2026. I’m no math major, but that’s a rather large percentage of misses from the first class that made up the “33rd Team” — Lombardi and Belichick’s declaration that UNC would be the 33rd NFL team.
Utterly laughable.
Belichick and Lombardi fielded a team in 2025 that won two ACC games: one against lowly Stanford and interim coach Frank Reich, and the other against a Syracuse team that was using a lacrosse player at quarterback because there was no other healthy option on the roster. And still led 10-6 at halftime.
Belichick and Lombardi fielded a team that lost to in-state rivals Duke, NC State and Wake Forest in the same season for the first time since 1989. A team whose only other wins were against FCS Richmond and Group of Five Charlotte.
But Roberts and Preyer got their men. Got the coach with the Super Bowl rings, and his general manager — neither of whom had any modern day college roster building experience.
They got Belichick and his embarrassing muse, and got Lombardi and an embarrassing human resources complaint. They got a 25-year-old competitive cheerleader sending Freedom of Information Act requests all over the university, desperately trying to find who leaked information that she was not allowed in the football building because of all the drama she created.
I ask you, what could go wrong with circumventing the athletic director and hiring people no one wanted at a critical point in the evolution of the North Carolina football program?
Ask Preyer and Roberts. This mess is on them.
Matt Hayes is the senior national college football writer for USA TODAY Sports Network. Follow him on X at @MattHayesCFB. Listen to him daily, from 12-2 p.m., on 1010XL-Jacksonville.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: No one wanted Bill Belichick before UNC called. Disaster was inevitable | Opinion
