There are a lot of things that people get wrong in poker because of the way it’s portrayed on screen. For instance, if you ever play with someone don’t say, “I’ll see you and raise you.” It goes back to the idea that you’re effectively lying about your intentions in order to gain information from your opponent. Ultimately, when you play, you want to use as few words as possible for your actions. “Raise,” or “Call.” One other phrase you can’t back out of? “All-in.”
A year ago the Carolina Board of Trustees acted like the drunk millionaire who had a pair of twos, going up against a seasoned pro with a full house. They said “All-in” and just handed all their money to said pro, and then thought they were playing the game well. Bubba Cunningham was like their accountant who had to somehow put a good face on it to the shareholders and explain they were just “networking” and their “work will pay off in the long run.”
In case you needed a reminder—Carolina handed out $30 million in a contract for three years of Bill Belichick, $1.5 million a year in a contract for his hand-picked mouthpiece in Mike Lombardi, plus the money for a complete roster turnover and coaching staff so fully of family members the Belichicks can just hold a reunion in the Kenan Football Center. We were told to expect a disciplined team coached by one of the football greats, and instead we got a 4-8 mess with coaches happily stunting on him.
If that didn’t make you upset—and it should have—the final humiliation came this past weekend with the double whammy of the ACC Championship and the CFP Playoff field reveal.
First, the title game was a matchup of two teams that barely beat Carolina. Duke, the eventual champion at 8-5 overall, beat Carolina on a special teams play that is supposedly Belichick’s first love. Virginia only made it as far as they did thanks to a stop on a two-point conversation in Chapel Hill. In other words, this Carolina team as bad as they were was just a few plays away from being better than the two teams who competed for the ACC title. Fans still sore at the horrid offside call in 2015 and the embarrassment of the 2022 title game with Drake Maye had to be seething at seeing these two teams compete for a title that either of those squads would have easily won.
The next day, that 8-5 Duke team couldn’t make it to the CFP, but you know who did? Jon Sumrall. Sumrall was the coach who was Cunningham’s top target in the hiring cycle last year, mostly because of the way college football was trending UNC was easily the best job available. Would he have come to UNC had John Preyer not fallen hook, line, and sinker for the great lie that was Belichick? We’ll never know, but what is clear is that confusion was a factor in Sumrall not taking the job. There were whispers of “not wanting to trust another Group of Five coach” and that “Carolina is bigger than that.” You don’t take a chance on that coach! You hire one of the best coaches of all time!
Yeah about that.
Now Sumrall followed up a good season at Tulane last year with a better one this year, earning a slot in the CFP and a new job at the University of Florida. Is it a possible a good year and CFP appearance at UNC would have earned Sumrall a hefty paycheck at UNC or the same SEC gig? Maybe, but you would have liked to have seen what your program would have looked like if it did.
Either way it’s clear that with the schedule Carolina had that was arguably even easier than was expected going into the season, a halfway competent coach could have had the Tar Heels competing for the ACC title if not for a spot in the CFP. James Madison made it into this field for God’s sake, and that’s only because the ACC couldn’t figure out a way to get a conference champion that could actually compete on the national stage. This season in this ACC, Carolina couldn’t succeed because they literally wasted a year paying a man who thought he could just waltz into a college football building and instantly rule the sport.
Now the Tar Heels are stuck paying for this mistake. They are stuck paying for another year of this mess in the faint hope that a roster full of college freshman can play better that was assembled this year. They have to put up with all the off-field nonsense because the man draws a circus wherever he goes, and they are stuck with a mouthpiece trying to tell them it’s sunny while they are being swept up by a flood. All of it the fault of one guy who thought he knew better gambled away the good will of a fanbase thirsting to be relevant in America’s biggest college sport.
The lesson, as always—money doesn’t make you smart. It just means you were lucky sometimes.
