UNC to SEC realignment isn’t happening anytime soon. With or without Belichick, the Tar Heels have hurdles to clear

A lot of folks have been talking about the North Carolina Tar Heels lately, and not just because of the media circus that Bill Belichick drew when he arrived at a Hilton hotel in Charlotte last week for the ACC’s football media days.

There were a handful of stories published last week about the Tar Heels and the one that got the most attention was a report from Inside Carolina, the incredibly plugged-in and well-sourced 247sports site that covers the Tar Heels, which said that, according to sources, “the SEC is where the Tar Heels are aiming.”

And this report was aggregated from sea-to-shining-sea and served as fodder for a flurry of podcasts and sports radio shows. On one of those shows, there was even speculation about a “handshake” deal between UNC and the SEC, and Virginia and the Big Ten. And that just continued to fuel the aggregation machine as talking season continues in college football.

But, with all due respect to the folks at Inside Carolina, this is not really news.

Of course North Carolina is positioning itself to be picked up by the SEC, one of the two richest conferences currently competing in college athletics. People with real power at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have said as much on the record. One of them is Dave Boliek, a former member of the UNC Board of Trustees who was elected as State Auditor last year. Before he took office and when he was still serving on the BoT, Boliek was saying things like this:

“We can’t sit back and cross our fingers and pray for pennies from heaven and thinking everything is going to ‘work out.’ We have to actively pursue what’s in the best interests of Carolina athletics… I am advocating for (UNC to join a higher revenue league). That’s what we need to do. We need to do everything we can to get there. Or the alternative is the ACC is going to have to reconstruct itself. I think all options are on the table.”

In case you’re wondering why UNC would want to turn its back on the ACC — a conference it helped found in a smoky room in Greensboro in 1953 — it’s because of those pennies that Boliek referenced. The answer to all of your questions is money. For the 2023-24 season, the SEC distributed $52.5 million in revenue — which largely comes from media rights deals driven by football — per school. The ACC, meanwhile, distributed $45 million per school in the same year. That gap is about to grow wider as the SEC’s 10-year deal with Disney for $3 billion began at the beginning of the 2024-25 academic year.

Putting itself in position for the SEC — or the other rich conference, the Big Ten — was a reason why North Carolina ponied up big-time money for Belichick too. Media rights deals are driven by football and the Tar Heels haven’t been anything better than mediocre, or Triangle Good, for 45 years. Will paying a 73-year-old former Super Bowl-winning football coach $10 million a year solve that problem and make the Tar Heels more attractive to one of the big-two leagues? That’s exactly what the folks in power in Chapel Hill are hoping for.

“Coach Belichick will help us take that next leap,” Board of Trustees member Jennifer Lloyd told a group of reporters at his introductory press conference in December, long before the world became enamored with his 24-year-old girlfriend. “Why is the University of North Carolina in a JV tier? We should not be JV in anything we do, ever… The fact that we were accepting a relegated place in football was absolutely awful for most of us, and that’s really (why) this core group (has) been just working so hard to try to inspire people to get us to the next level… I’d much rather be in the top tier, competing every day, than be relegated to the kid’s table.”

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We also know that while Clemson and Florida State were suing the ACC to wriggle out of what we once thought was an ironclad grant of rights, North Carolina was quietly exploring an exit plan. According to a report from the Athletic in February, the Tar Heels spent more than $600,000 in legal fees on “Carolina Blue Matter” — a code name for UNC’s behind-closed-doors exploration of conference realignment. Work on that project began not long after Texas and Oklahoma announced they were moving to the SEC.

“We have a landing spot if things blow up,” former trustee Chuck Duckett wrote to chairman John Preyer in an email obtained by the Athletic. “Let FSU and Clemson pay the attorneys and see what happens. We all learn via their expense.”

A good chunk of the money spent on Carolina Blue Matter went to Wasserman, according to a recent report from the News & Observer. Which means, somewhat strangely, Wasserman was assisting North Carolina with a potential exit plan at the same time it was helping the ACC improve its image.

Those lawsuits between Clemson and Florida State and the ACC were settled earlier this year. A few key factors emerged from the settlement agreement, but none more important than the sliding scale for exit fees, should one of the ACC’s 17 full members (and 18th in Notre Dame in every sport but football) decide to bolt. This year, that exit fee is a doozy at about $165 million. But in 2030, it drops all the way to $75 million and remains at that figure through 2036. While that’s still costly, it’s a much more manageable amount.

And UNC is already exploring creative ways to generate more revenue according to a recent story in The Assembly, such as naming rights for the Dean Smith Center and advertisement patches on jerseys. Additionally, the ACC is now in an eat-what-you-kill era, where the conference is awarding more revenue to schools who have postseason success in football and men’s and women’s basketball, and to schools who draw the most TV viewership in football and men’s basketball.

So, Clemson, Florida State and North Carolina aren’t leaving the ACC anytime relatively soon. But in 2030? Sure, we should be on conference realignment watch.

But that’s five years away. And consider how much the landscape of college sports has changed in the last five years. In 2020, the transfer portal was relatively new, we weren’t really talking about NIL or the House Settlement, and conference realignment hadn’t fully taken off. The Pac-12 was still alive and seemingly thriving, the Red River rivalry was still in the Big 12, and the College Football Playoff was only four teams. Women’s college basketball was on the cusp of really taking off but the NCAA still wasn’t sharing the March Madness branding and ESPN still wasn’t airing every game of the women’s tournament on its linear channels. Five years ago, we didn’t have games streaming on Peacock or Paramount+ or HBO Max. Since 2020, watching habits have changed. Is the TV money going to be the same in 2030?

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As we’ve learned, a lot can shift in half-a-decade in college sports. We shouldn’t be guaranteeing the SEC as UNC’s destination when there’s so much unknown. In addition to talks about a European soccer-esque Super League coming to college football, one commissioner — albeit one with not a lot of power in the American’s Tim Pernetti — is talking about the consolidation of college football media rights. As unlikely as it might sound, if that came to fruition, then what would be the benefit of changing conferences?

Aside from all that uncertainty, the SEC’s deal with Disney runs through 2034. Can Greg Sankey get ESPN to come back to the table and renegotiate four years early? Is North Carolina enticing enough to spark a renegotiation? Maybe.

Many sportswriters and talking heads have said in recent years that whenever the next round of conference realignment comes, North Carolina is the most attractive potential addition for the SEC or Big Ten outside of Notre Dame. Despite not having any real success in football, those two leagues would rather have the Tar Heels over Clemson or Florida State. There’s a couple reasons why: its recognizable national brand (thanks, Michael Jordan), its academic prestige, its success in athletics that aren’t football, and because it is the flagship university of a growing state that ranks in the top 10 of population — and one that the Big Ten and SEC do not currently have a footprint in.

Perhaps the most interesting tidbit from the Inside Carolina report was that UNC Chancellor Lee Roberts quietly “performed a key role in helping finalize the ACC’s settlement agreement with Clemson and Florida State.” That lines up with the motivations that UNC has long been telegraphing and essentially echoes what Duckett said to Preyer: Let’s work in the shadows and learn while Clemson and Florida State make a very public mess.

Again, North Carolina has been making its intentions and plans clear for a while, it’s just done it quietly. The Tar Heels want more money and more prestige. And if things don’t change within the next five years, that’ll mean they’ll want to move to a different conference.

The hurdles in 2030 that the Tar Heels approach will be of philosophical and moral nature. Is North Carolina willing to drive a nail into the coffin of the ACC, a league it helped create and turn into one of the Power 4 conferences? Are the Tar Heels willing to turn their back on decades-long historic rivalries and traditions with Tobacco Road neighbors Duke and N.C. State?

It’s worth noting that the Tar Heels may not even get to confront the second question on their own. Back in February of 2024, the UNC System Board of Governors (this is the governing body of public universities in North Carolina, and its members are appointed by the state legislature, which currently has a Republican majority) passed a policy that requires each member school to get approval from both the board and UNC System President Peter Hans before switching athletic conferences. So, will the Board of Governors allow UNC to leave little brother N.C. State behind in a potential realignment move? Potentially. Hans is a UNC-Chapel Hill graduate, however Preyer and the Board of Trustees drew his ire over the search for a new football coach that ended with UNC hiring Belichick.

Is North Carolina going to end up in the SEC in the 2030s? Maybe. But it’s nowhere near a done deal. A lot can change between now and then. And nothing in sports in North Carolina’s Triangle happens in a vacuum.