CHAPEL HILL, NC. (AP) – North Carolina football general manager Michael Lombardi has been placed on paid administrative leave.<\/p>\n
The school announced the move with a statement Monday morning, coming days before the Tar Heels open preseason camp. The school didn\u2019t provide details as to the reason, noting that employees and athletes aren\u2019t permitted to address the topic \u201cas is standard procedure with personnel matters.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lombardi joined Bill Belichick in making the NFL-to-college move when the school hired the former New England Patriots coach in December 2024. Lombardi\u2019s career as an NFL executive had included being the GM of the Cleveland Browns in 2013, and he was an immediate hire by the six-time Super Bowl-winning coach in Chapel Hill.<\/p>\n
The school had hired Belichick to jolt a football program that had largely been an Atlantic Coast Conference also-ran while making periodic but unsustained climbs into national relevance.<\/p>\n
A few months into Belichick\u2019s tenure, Lombardi said the goal was running a college program in a way similar to the NFL, saying the Tar Heels \u201cconsider ourselves the 33rd (NFL) team\u201d due to the staff connections to the pros.<\/p>\n
The Tar Heels went just 4-8 in Belichick\u2019s first season. They open his second against TCU in Dublin, Ireland, on Aug. 29.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
CHAPEL HILL, NC. (AP) – North Carolina football general manager Michael Lombardi has been placed on paid administrative leave. The school announced the move with a statement Monday morning, coming days before the Tar Heels open preseason camp. The school didn\u2019t provide details as to the reason, noting that employees and athletes aren\u2019t permitted to … Continue reading North Carolina places football GM Michael Lombardi on paid administrative leave<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1452],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1528141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports-news"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":true,"date":"2026-07-29 12:35:58","action":"change-status","newStatus":"trash","terms":[0],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1528141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/65"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1528141"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1528141\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1528142,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1528141\/revisions\/1528142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1528141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1528141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1528141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}