North Carolina's coaching search is a hot mess
When we're talking about 2017 Tennessee, things are really bad
Edit: North Carolina has since hired Bill Belichick as their head coach. They’re still a mess.
Coaching searches are complicated, messy things. They span across the country and, with the transfer portal opening just days after conference championship week, work with a sense of urgency that doesn’t often allow for good decisions.
That all compounds when you’re talking about a major school in a Power Four conference, likely heading to a Power Two conference when the next conference bubble bursts. When there are millions of dollars of NIL and booster money on the line. Of course, we’re talking about North Carolina.
They’re the best available job in the nation on the surface. At least, that’s what I wrote last week. But that may not be the case. A tweet from
of really caught my attention to prove otherwise:
Wait, we’re talking 2017 Tennessee levels of bad? This has got to be a mess.
Then
To start, let’s head back to Knoxville, Tennessee in November of 2017. The Volunteers were just annihilated and embarrassed by Missouri, and athletic director John Currie showed head coach Butch Davis the door.
Currie immediately went to the press, holding a press conference the same night of the coaching change. He pledged “an exhaustive search” to find a coach to right the wrongs of Jones and get Rocky Top back on top.
And, to be fair to Currie, he did cast a wide net. But it took time. Dan Mullen was the first target after Jones’s firing. That all fell through when Florida jumped the gun and hired Mullen the day before his meeting with Currie and Tennessee. So, onto option two.
Option two wasn’t as publicized. Currie received bids from Georgia Tech’s Paul Johnson and former LSU head coach Les Miles, but interest wasn’t returned from the university. Instead, Currie pivoted to his backup plan.
But that was all kept under wraps. People weren’t supposed to know the inner workings of the coaching search. But the fans and media were latched onto one name: Jon Gruden. The Grumors were hitting full throttle as Volunteer fans were dead set on poaching the Super Bowl winning head coach from the set of Monday Night Football. There was even a (fraudulent) sighting of Gruden having dinner with Peyton Manning across from Neyland Stadium at the height of the Grumors.
Only one problem: Gruden wasn’t interested. He never was. While the Grumors were hitting a fever pitch, other false rumors swirled around an offer to Chip Kelly. The shadow search was focused on one man, pushed by boosters and Currie. On Sunday, November 26, Tennessee announced that they landed on Ohio State Buckeyes defensive coordinator Greg Schiano.
It…uh…didn’t go well.
The Tennessee community was outraged. Currie was getting heat from every imaginable angle. You see, the Tennessee program dug into Schiano’s past and found that he was on staff at Penn State during the Jerry Sandusky era. That, for Volunteer fans and the Tennessee community, was a hard no go. But boosters, namely then-Pilot Flying J CEO and Cleveland Browns owner Jimmy Haslam, pushed for both Currie and Schaino. The program was at odds.
Knoxville was under siege from everyone. Currie was hidden away in the ramparts with Schiano, attempting to weather the storm. Except, only one of them would make it out alive from this battle. Later that day, Currie and Tennessee reneged on the deal and Schiano was cast back to Columbus.
Now, the coaching search was open. Other names were thrown around. Mike Gundy. Jeff Brohm. David Cutcliffe. All three met with the program and turned them down.
Currie settled on a candidate that would talk and was seemingly excited about the role in NC State’s Dave Doeren. A meeting was set for Thursday, November 30. At this point, Doeren’s name had leaked in connection to the job and Volunteer faithful were still unhappy, but it was a better option than Schiano. Doeren was on the hot seat at the time at NC State, so there were justifiable concerns about his ability to lead Tennessee. According to The Athletic’s Nicole Aurebach and David Ubben, some in the Tennessee building were concerned for another fan revolt if Doeren was hired.
Those concerns never came to fruition. Currie boarded a flight from Raleigh to Los Angeles. There was one major problem: the flight had no WiFi. With no way to communicate with the outside world, Doeren was left out to dry. He ended up signing a five-year extension with NC State.
Currie was in desperation mode. He boarded the flight as one leg of a trip to Pullman to attempt to court Pirate Mike Leach from Washington State. Except, Currie never got there.
On December 1, the Tennessee Board of Trustees pulled the rug on Currie and kicked him to the curb. Tennessee Chancellor Beverly Davenport appointed former Volunteer coach Phillip Fulmer athletic director and he took over the coaching search immediately, starting from scratch.
Some think Currie got a raw deal. There’s plenty of speculation that Tennessee boosters were sabotaging Currie’s search to get him out. Many people thought it was just pure incompetency.
Fulmer’s search focused on a more, let’s say, realistic crop of coaches. Many were Power Five coordinators. The job came down to Brent Venables and Jeremy Pruitt. Eventually, Fulmer settled on Pruitt and announced the hire December 7, 26-days into the wildest coaching search of recent major college football history.
Now
Jumping ahead seven years gets us to now, in modern Chapel Hill, North Carolina. But why is this similar to the 2017 Tennessee search?
The biggest thing in common is the disdain between the North Carolina booster base and athletic director Bubba Cunningham. Remember how Tennessee boosters treated our friend John Currie? Buckle up, Bubba. This is going to get rocky.
It all started back in May 2024, when the North Carolina Board of Trustees approved an audit of their flagship school’s athletic department due to rapidly growing financial concerns. Chancellor Lee Roberts threw his support around Cunningham’s management of the athletic department, but cracks were showing in the armor at that point.
The cracks grew as a local lawyer filed a court complaint alleging North Carolina’s trustees of violating open-meeting laws. Eventually, a judge granted a temporary restraining order that, according to AP News’s Aaron Beard, prevented “trustees from going into closed session to discuss athletics revenues or conference affiliations.”
Things got worse as the season progressed. Boosters seemed to rally behind coach Mack Brown, but Cunningham had enough. Following a 35-30 loss to rival NC State, Mack Brown took the podium as head coach of the Tar Heels for the last time. He had been fired by Cunningham.
Almost immediately, North Carolina Board of Trustees Chair John Preyer condemned Brown’s firing. “I have no doubt Coach Brown would have done whatever the university would have wanted him to do at the end of the season,” Preyer said, according to The News & Observer. “And for some reason, that I do not understand, the athletic director would not allow that to happen and instead fired him from halfway around the world. And I think that is shameful.”
You see, there was a deal in place where Brown would gracefully be able to retire, likely after the 2025 season. Instead, Cunningham booted him from the program. That hasn’t sat well with boosters.
Pair that with the near constant conflict between Cunningham and Brown over the resources available and needed by the program and you get an incredibly unhealthy outlook.
Amidst all this, Cunningham has been running a coaching search. He reached out to some major candidates like Tulane’s Jon Sumrall and Iowa State’s Matt Campbell. Sumrall affirmed he was staying in New Orleans and signed an extension with Tulane. Campbell didn’t give the Tar Heels time of day.
College coaches are clearly not entertaining Cunningham or North Carolina’s pitches. So he’s pivoted outside of the college ranks. Pittsburgh Steelers offensive coordinator Arthur Smith turned them down. But Cunningham kept looking. And that’s landed him squarely in one of the most interesting propositions I’ve ever seen.
Enter: Bill Belichick.
The six-time Super Bowl champion head coach and architect of the New England Patriots dynasty is reportedly in conversations with Cunningham and Roberts to become the Tar Heels next head coach. There aren’t many other names being thrown around, so it seems like the university may have their eyes set on Belichick and his NFL-lite ideas outlined in a 400-page “Bible.”
Or have they? Brian Murphy of local WRAL Sports Radio wrote that “a senior administrator said the process has been prolonged by…antics of board members becoming involved in the process and causing confusion.”
Sound familiar? Maybe check and see the McMurphy Tweet from the Currie firing earlier if you need a refresher. ESPN’ s Pete Thamel and Chris Low have also reported that the search is “scattered” and that there is “uncertainty in the industry about who is running it.” Apparently Preyer is the driving force for Belichick, but can he win the power struggle? The Athletic’s Brendan Marks and Ralph D. Russo are reporting that there is “a disconnect between the coach’s and the school’s expectations for the terms of the job.”
Belichick, by his own rights, isn’t making it easy. Just look at the alleged contents of the so-called “Bible.” The Guardian’s Ollie Connolly is reporting that it’s more of a list of demands for Belichick to sign, which includes significant investment by the North Carolina boosters and athletic department. Before he accepts the job, according to Connolly, Belichick would require a sign-on by Cunningham, Roberts, the Board of Trustees and major boosters.
In the wake of an audit into how Cunningham is managing the athletic department’s finances - plus a clear investment favorite into men’s basketball - the trustees and faculty are pushing back on it. Belichick has been reportedly unwilling to negotiate.
So here we sit in a standoff between Belichick, Cunningham, the Board of Trustees and North Carolina fans. With Army’s Jeff Monken and Steve Wilks being the only other names connected to the job, Belichick is waiting them out. The portal clock is ticking.
North Carolina is in serious trouble.
What I’m Reading:
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Woof. Thanks for the rundown. This is nasty. Has that QB flipped yet? I think he was looking at Penn State and another B1G team maybe.