Michael Lombardi spoke last week for the first time since being named general manager of North Carolina football, and immediately threw into question the power structure at the university famous for its men’s basketball program.
“Everything here is predicated on building a pro team,” Lombardi said. “We consider ourselves the 33rd team.”
There are 32 teams in the NFL, and that statement was Lombardi – by way of new Tar Heels coach and NFL legend Bill Belichick – spreading out and clearing space for an inevitable fight.
Not on the field, but with North Carolina’s legendary basketball program for revenue sharing and NIL funds. There’s only so much to go around.
The question is, who gets it?
The basketball program of Dean Smith and Michael Jordan and those six national championship banners hanging in the rafters of the Smith Center? The program that believes it’s synonymous with the best of the best, the elite of the elite?
When you think college basketball, you think Carolina blue.
Or the football program, the perpetual little brother in the athletic department that has been pushed to the tip of the spear by the sheer will of a sport that has overtaken everything college athletics? No national title banners flying at Kenan Stadium, just five ACC championship flags of decades gone by.
Just the hope of a coach who won six Super Bowls with the New England Patriots standing in the breach, and proudly declaring we’re the 33rd team. And we’re going to need cash to make it happen. A lot of cash.
Much more cash than – here’s the key – your wildly successful and beloved men’s basketball program.
See the fight now?
When pay for play officially begins on July 1 (the beginning of the 2025-26 school calendar), FBS schools will be allowed to spend as much as $20 million in ‘pay-for-play’ payments to athletes. In all sports — not just football.
The payment structure of that expected $20 million pool is built by each school, and not every player in every sport will receive the same amount of money. That’s not even considering external NIL deals, which will still be widely available — and more important, another area of contention between football and basketball.
At some point, the fight will come to this: what’s the biggest bang for the buck?
The football team that Belichick and Lombardi believe can be built into a national power despite its inherent obstacles in recruiting against the elite of college football? Georgia, Alabama, Ohio State, Michigan, LSU and Texas, among the many, aren’t going anywhere — and have more resources.
Or the basketball team, which is the DNA of college basketball, a program so prominent, recruits (and transfer portal recruits) will flock to with the right coach.
This, of course, brings us to the next inevitable subject: The possibility of moving on from struggling coach Hubert Davis. If North Carolina decides replace Davis, who is under contract through the 2027-28 season, where does it go for his replacement?
Does it spend top dollar and try to hire the top of the coaching field (college or NBA), or does it go cheap and hire a rising assistant? Or worse, if the program bottoms out this season, does it stick with Davis and hope for the best?
In no previous world where NIL and pay for play didn’t dictate decisions, would North Carolina “hope” about anything with the basketball program. It would take action, immediately.
It would hire the biggest, baddest coach it could find, and celebrate the transition to a new beginning. It would declare that things were returning to the Carolina Way, and that nothing would be left to guess in the quest to return to the elite of college basketball.
Sort of like what the football team just did with Belichick.
See the fight now?
Make no mistake, this power struggle is a numbers game. How much money is available to spend on player procurement, and how much is spent on football and basketball.
Roster limits are another part of the House settlement that is awaiting final approval in April. Football will be limited to 105 players. The men’s basketball limit is 15.
That’s 120 players that could be paid within the structure of one of the nation’s top athletic programs. And North Carolina isn’t going to simply ignore successful non-revenue sports that have won 46 national championships for the sake of the 33rd team.
Or will it?
We already saw the power play by the North Carolina Board of Trustees, forcing athletic director Bubba Cunningham to hire Belichick and throwing ridiculous amounts of money at a sport that prior to this offseason was treated as a functional distraction – by those same board members – until basketball tipped.
A guaranteed $30 million deal (over three years) for Belichick in addition to – as stated in his term sheet – $10 million annually for an assistant coach salary pool and $5.3 million annually for support staff.
That’s a $25.3 million annual investment in football — before player procurement, revenue sharing and NIL agreements. The total investment could surpass $40 million.
Forty million.
I don’t think I’m speaking out of turn here, but there’s no chance that the investment in the shining beacon of a basketball program along bucolic Skipper Bowles Drive – even per capita – reaches those ridiculous levels.
See the fight now? The 33rd team did, and planted its flag early.
There’s only so much cash to go around.
Matt Hayes is the senior national college football wtiter for USA TODAY Sports Network. Follow him on X at @MattHayesCFB.