By Brian Murphy, WRAL

North Carolina’s hire of NFL coaching legend Bill Belichick to guide the football program is a sign of how important the sport is to the university and an indication of its athletic priorities, UNC’s chancellor said.

While addressing the UNC Faculty Council on Friday, Chancellor Lee Roberts outlined how he thinks about football, hoping to answer questions that have surfaced after the December hire of Belichick, who signed a five-year, $50 million contract with $30 million guaranteed.

“We’re going to continue to invest in our football program,” Roberts said. “We started playing football in 1888. Our football program’s older than most of our academic departments, and we’re going to continue to make that a priority in the context of our overall athletics budget.”

Roberts said the public universities that he considers peers “across almost any dimension” are Cal, UCLA, Michigan, Texas and Virginia. Michigan, which won the national championship in 2023, and Texas, which reached the playoffs each of the last two seasons, are traditional football powers.

“Three of those schools spend significantly more on football than we do,” Roberts said, including Big Ten member UCLA. “The other two are in our conference. They spend about what we spend on football, and they’re trying to figure out how to spend more.”

UNC spent $44.7 million on football salaries and operating expenses in 2024, more than double its spending in 2017. That was before the school hired Belichick and opened its wallet for him and his staff.

The school committed more than $16 million for assistant coaches, strength and conditioning staff and support staff, including the general manager. That’s in addition to $13 million in direct revenue sharing payments to football players, expected to be allowed by the NCAA in the fall.

“College athletics are changing dramatically, and the importance of football is only increasing and will continue to increase,” Roberts said.

Still those figures lag far behind the sport’s best and best-funded teams. And the Tar Heels, unlike some, lack the astronomical revenue from football that allows them to more easily increase the budget. UNC’s total athletics budget was $139 million in 2023.

Texas spent $61 million on football in 2023, but the school generated more than $183 million on the sport, according to USA Today. Michigan spent nearly $68 million football in 2023, but its program generated more than $142 million.

UCLA ($44.1 million) is about even with UNC, according to Sportico’s college finances database for 2022-23. But the Bruins, who have serious athletic debt, recently joined the Big Ten and should see a dramatic increase in revenue.

California ($37.9 million) and Virginia ($31.1 million), both in the ACC, lag behind, according to Sportico.

Roberts said elite private schools that UNC often considers academic peers, like Duke, Stanford, Wake Forest, Northwestern, Vanderbilt and Southern Cal, “are all trying figure out how they spend more money on football and aggressively increasing their investments.”

“We are by no means an outlier in this regard,” he said. “We’re trying to be a leader.”

At the time of Belichick’s hiring, athletics director Bubba Cunningham acknowledged the financial risk involved, noting the department would need to see tickets, television revenue, sponsorships and donations increase.

Already, the program is attracting more attention. Belichick’s first game at UNC will be televised by ESPN on Labor Day night.

“We’re taking a risk that we’re investing more in football with the hope and ambition that the return is going to significantly outweigh the investment,” he said.

Conghe Song, a professor and chair of the university’s geography and environment department, questioned Roberts about the spending on athletics. He said the school’s mission is to educate students, do research and provide a service to the state, nation and world.

“No matter how great a sports team is, it cannot be the main story,” said Song, who questioned the spending priorities.

Roberts said he is not confused about the “relative importance of athletics” compared to the university’s academic mission, calling athletics a front porch. He said academics is the core, not athletics.

But, he said, “if you go all over the world, and I’m sure most of you have seen this first-hand, you’ll see people wearing our colors and our logo and they’re doing that mostly because of our sports teams, not because of our political science department.”

The comment drew jeers in the room.

“It’s a fact of the world we live in,” Roberts said.

He added: “It’s the most visible, by far, part of the school. It can sometimes take an outsized importance, in my view, to some of our alumni and donors. But it’s not at the core of what we’re doing.”

Roberts told the group that the money used for coaching and staff salaries isn’t available for other university priorities. It comes, he said, from the ACC’s television contract with ESPN and through donations from Rams Club.

“The money that we spend on football, in particular on coaching and staff salaries,” Roberts said, “isn’t available for other university priorities.”

Source: wralsportsfan.com