Michael Malone’s first season as a college basketball head coach is only one week old and he may be wondering what he got himself into.
Malone, 54, coached college basketball as an assistant almost 30 years ago, but the game has changed dramatically since then and turned unrecognizable. The biggest change, of course, has been pay-for-play with the advent of name, image and likeness sponsorships, and more recently revenue sharing that allows basketball and football programs to directly set salaries for their best players.
This is unlike where Malone coached for most of his career and won a championship, where contracts are pretty much determined by draft status and free agency is judged by performance on the court. And often, there are multi-year deals with those agreements — something that’s not (yet) borne out in college ball.
College has moved on from players getting the value of a full scholarship plus minor stipends arranged by prominent alumni and donors. In those days, the most highly coveted athletes were helped by gifts and payments (out of sight from the NCAA), but those are next to nothing compared to what is going on in today’s college climate.
In less than one year of revenue sharing, college athletics has become a world of professional agents who enter into bidding wars for the best and highest rated athletes. In order for coaches to field full rosters, almost every player gets dough to ensure stability before taking court and field. And the more money they can raise, the better. There are even contracts between some agents and some schools, but most of them are not worth the paper they are printed on other due to other lurking bidders who could swoop in with expensive offers for a player.
Malone has inherited general manager Jim Tanner and contracted talent evaluator Buzz Peterson from Hubert Davis’ staff. He is filling out the rest of his staff with assignments yet to be designated. For now, Tanner and Peterson are charged with not making serious mistakes on evaluations. As the best players continue to be gobbled up by other teams, UNC needs to land contributors while avoiding any overspending on players not worth the financial commitment.
Malone has already lost (or released) five-star Dylan Mingo, who committed to Davis in February. The 6-foot-5 Mingo was injured for much of his senior season in high school. Freshman Derek Dixon, UNC’s best backcourt signee of 2025-26, entered the portal and quickly found a landing spot in Arizona. Without those two young guard prospects, Malone cannot afford to make any mistakes with who to bring in as a ball-handler.
As the portal remains in flux with transferring big men, Carolina is trying to ensure that Henri Veesaar returns for his senior year instead of entering the NBA draft or taking a higher offer from another school. So far, senior Jarin Stevenson is the only big man coming back. The only portal commitment so far (the 6-foot-9 Neoklis Avdalas) is tall, but is expected to play on the wing rather than in the post.
There are just no guarantees when it comes to building a roster in today’s college basketball — and coaches like Malone, who are trying to build a program, find themselves battling to maintain tradition against more money from more sources than ever before.
Editor’s Note: As Art continues to recover from an accident, this edition of Sports Notebook is only a written piece and not for radio.
Featured photo by Todd Melet/Chapel Hill Media Group.
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.
