UNC athletics has a legacy of championship-caliber teams across the university, and officials hope a new facility will bring more of those contests to fans across the country.

“Let’s be honest, we are the university of national champions,” Interim chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz said Friday at a ceremony celebrating the opening of the new Media and Communications center on campus, constructed in conjunction with the launch of the ACC Network.

But most of those championships have been won in sports that don’t receive the same attention as football or men’s basketball.

“Carolina athletics is special,” athletics director Bubba Cunningham said. “We have 28 intercollegiate teams; we have over 800 student-athletes. And this building gives us the opportunity to really highlight all the successes of our teams, our students and our coaches.

“This ACC Network will allow us to televise those Olympic sports that heretofore haven’t seen enough national recognition. Our Olympic sport programs have won more than half of our 50 national championships as a university.”

More of those games will be brought to fans across the country now through the ACC Network – a new television channel launched by the conference in partnership with cable-sports giant ESPN. To make those broadcasts a reality, each school in the ACC constructed a new media center. UNC showed off its facility on Friday.

“The ACC Network and this center will showcase that work on the athletic fields but also promote the success of our student-athletes in our classrooms, in our laboratories and out in the world beyond Chapel Hill,” Guskiewicz said.

The interim chancellor added the new media and communications center will showcase the work of UNC student-athletes while also giving other Carolina students the opportunity to gain real-world sports broadcasting experience.

“Beyond athletics, this new center will be an academic tool or a teaching laboratory as I like to call it offering real-world content creation and production experiences to our student-journalists,” Guskiewicz said. “Academic units and departments will also use the advanced technology in this space and provide experiential education opportunities.”

The facility, which cost an estimated $15 million, is located next to the Smith Center and has been the subject of an extensive renovation project.

Whether fans will actually be able to watch the games and shows produced from this new facility has been its own point of consternation in recent months. Negotiations up to the launch of the network brought major attention as to how many customers would have access to the channel. The majority of carriers have now signed up to carry the channel, although negotiations are still ongoing between ESPN and some providers. North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper even recently weighed in, encouraging providers and ESPN to come to agreements.

When UNC opens its men’s basketball schedule in early November with a conference game against Notre Dame, that broadcast will be carried on the ACC Network.