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UNC’s Board of Trustees has gone from one spendthrift to another.
The university has never revealed exactly how Bill Belichick was hired and who negotiated his exorbitant contract that right now looks like it might be a waste of money.
Former Board of Trustees chair John Preyer was among the first at UNC to be contacted in a string of phone calls that was initiated by yet-to-be hired Mike Lombardi: from Secretary of State Marco Rubio to U.S. Senator Thom Tillis and eventually to chancellor Lee Roberts.
That was the not-so-underground in which Belichick and Lombardi and perhaps Preyer negotiated a guaranteed three-year deal worth $30 million that could be five years if both parties were happy; plus millions more for a coaching and administrative staff that all supposedly became public before Roberts and athletic director Bubba Cunningham ever signed off on it.
The above chain may not be exactly right, but it has become clear that everyone mentioned was involved from first contact to final contract, which so far is way too much money for too little results.
Preyer was publicly spanked by UNC system president Peter Hans, who said the Trustees acted beyond their capacity as an advisory board. So UNC ended up hiring a six-time Super Bowl champion head coach whose last few NFL years were duds to replace Mack Brown, UNC’s all-time coaching winner, for twice the jack.
Now that Preyer’s term as chair has ended, the Board has made Malcolm Turner his successor despite one year as the AD at Vanderbilt, where he “overspent, overspent and overspent.”
Publications from the New York Times to The Vanderbilt Hustler (the school’s student paper), say that Turner’s resignation and Hi Ho Silver out of Nashville came after running through a rainy-day fund of $17 million gifted by a wealthy alum named David Williams.
Turner, who was a Morehead-Cain Scholar at UNC, is now an executive with DraftKings, the biggest sports betting site in the country, which caused him to say he would recuse himself from any athletics issues at Carolina. Does that matter, except for looking bad?
And the Tar Heels new coach four games into his first season has already given us some bad looks on the field and onto the sideline.
According to Chris Lee of Vandysports.com, rumors of tension between Turner and Vanderbilt had “swirled for weeks” mostly due to “deficits on top of deficits on top of deficits.”
Turner was succeeded by Candace Storey Lee, a former women’s athlete at Vandy who during her five-year tenure has righted the ship financially and on the baseball and football fields, where the Commodores are nationally ranked.
Before going to Vandy, Turner ran the NBA D League (later the G-League) from where he plucked successful coach Jerry Stackhouse to lead the ‘Dores basketball program. The former Tar Heel All-American lasted five seasons before resigning in 2024 with a record of 70-92.
Featured image via Associated Press/Charles Neibergall
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.
