Steve Newmark

Yeah.

Then there's AD Steve Newmark, who was part of the search committee that got Bill Belichick but was not AD at the time.

Bubba Cunningham was.

Bubba, quite notably, did not want to hire Bill Belichick.

Belichick was running football and Bubba was running everything else.

I think that's not the case now.

I think Steve Newmark has been empowered to say, particularly in the aftermath of the Steve Belichick and Lombardi stuff, like, no, I'm your boss here.

You got to answer to me.

Turnkey has the search.

Former Michigan general manager Sean McGee is consulting with Bill Belichick, Steve Newmark, the athletic director.

at north carolina and they're in the thick of a general manager search and i think what is interesting is that north carolina and they're kind of putting heads together about what this general manager job can and should be i think there's a school of thought that maybe it could report directly into athletic director steve newmark uh and sort of like with a dotted line over to bill belichick that's sort of the model ad in different ways oklahoma cal stanford florida some of the new empowered GM models that are in vogue in college football.

Now that's a little bit different for Bill Belichick, who was not the named general manager for two decades in New England, but the de facto general manager for two decades in New England.

And Belichick actually, when he was gunning for the Falcons job a few years ago, did sort of make it known that he was willing to work with a more conventional GM setup at that point in time.

The thing that I think North Carolina has done a really good job of, I meant to add on this earlier, is they understand from a funding standpoint, from what we have to be at the University of North Carolina in basketball.

And I think from Steve Newmark to Mike Malone, we are doing that.

We're looking around at the country.

I do not think North Carolina has fallen behind in that.

You need a CEO now to be the person who runs your athletic department.

Steve Newmark over at Carolina.

Do you still need someone who understands the DNA of your school and your athletic department? Absolutely.

There's any number of people that you could hire to be on your staff as the CEO of NC State Athletics.

Like all, all of these type of things are important now in a, in a 21st century baseball program, and I think all of these factors kind of collided at one point, you know, last summer.

And I give a ton of credit to our administration and, and Steve Newmark, Chancellor Roberts for really, um, kind- Kind of drawing a line in the sand and saying, "We care about baseball, and not only do we care about baseball, we're gonna show you that we care about baseball." Um, going back to what I was just talking about, about practicing what you preach.

And so, um, it was important.

Like, it- it's not just the financial commitment, but it's also just the overall commitment to the program that, that, you know, that you want to see the program succeed.

Right? Yep.

Like, Steve Newmark knew how to get to those guys.

Oh, yeah.

Right? Jeff Dickerson, obviously, knows how to get to those guys.

Which gets to, back to that clear-eyed view of what Carolina basketball is, right? They're y- they're...

Steve Newmark was very, very quick to, and others have been very, very quick to be like, Michael Malone coaching at Carolina is not Bill Belichick going from the NFL to college.

That's not what this is, right? And do Carolina, do the, the higher level booster class that I know you talk to, do they understand they're not gonna see Carolina basketball? Are they okay with it not being Carolina basketball, what they've known for a long time?

During the search, this was the biggest...

And I agree 98% of the time in where he's going with athletics, right?

Yeah.

But I almost feel like it took too long for Newmark to truly establish, "This is my program now, not Bubba's." And that came down to when we talked to Steve Newmark at ACC kickoff in July.

Joe, you caught it.

The announcement comes five weeks after Michael Lombardi resigned during an internal investigation at the university.

In the meantime, former Michigan football GM and Navy veteran Sean McGee will serve as an interim consultant supporting Belichick and the athletic director at UNC, Steve Newmark, as that search moves forward.

ZRG Turnkey is no stranger to executive job placement in the world of sports.

The firm's recent college football clients include Wake Forest, Miami, Penn State, Florida, and Michigan.