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North Carolina plays at Cal on Friday in front of a national TV audience on ESPN (albeit at 10:30 p.m. ET), but the focus on the football program in the lead-up to the game has once again strayed to off-field endeavors.
As questions and concerns continue to mount during Bill Belichick’s debut season in Chapel Hill, the latest development in the soap-opera-like saga is the revelation that UNC GM Michael Lombardi traveled to Saudi Arabia earlier this year—and confusion about whether the trip was on official school business and what correspondence there was with the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia.
“I can confirm that Michael Lombardi did travel to Saudi Arabia at the request of a Saudi national who is a college football fan, interested in supporting Coach Belichick,” UNC vice chancellor for communications and marketing Dean Stoyer told Front Office Sports on Friday. “Separately, I’d be remiss not to share that earlier reports of meeting with the PIF or investing in UNC are inaccurate.”
Stoyer told The Athletic that “the Saudis” paid to host the trip, and that neither UNC athletics nor university funds were used to pay for the trip.
With a salary of $1.5 million a year, Lombardi—a longtime Belichick confidant who worked for the Patriots from 2014 to 2016—is the highest-paid GM in college sports.
A request for comment from the PIF, which is the financial backer of LIV Golf, was not immediately returned.
Game of Telephone
News of Lombardi’s trip was broken by journalist Pablo Torre, who posted on X/Twitter on Thursday afternoon, “Multiple sources tell me that UNC general manager Mike Lombardi left the team in August, two weeks before the season-opener, to fundraise in Saudi Arabia.”
Torre promised to reveal more information on Friday’s episode of his show, Pablo Torre Finds Out, which is part of The Athletic Podcast Network. In that episode, Torre said, “Just to give you a sense of what Carolina’s general manager has been quietly up to: This was, I’m told, two weeks before the season opener against TCU—what multiple sources tell me is that Mike Lombardi, with his assistant general manager, Lance Thompson, was in Saudi Arabia to try and fundraise over there.”
But before that episode was released Friday morning, The Athletic reported Thursday that Lombardi went to Saudi Arabia to seek an investment from the PIF. The Athletic later issued a correction to the story, saying Lombardi met with a Saudi national only about general fundraising for the team.
To date, the PIF is not known to have invested in any collegiate athletic operations, so it’s unclear what would be allowed if any deal were to progress, and what sort of university and NCAA approvals would be necessary to facilitate such an arrangement.
Saudi Sojourns
Regardless of Lombardi’s intentions, he is not the first college football official to travel to Saudi Arabia on a potential fundraising mission.
In 2024, former Colorado special teams coordinator Trevor Reilly took a trip to the Middle East in an attempt to secure funding from the PIF. Reilly and Colorado said he acted on his own, and not on official school business. Reilly resigned from his position on Aug. 1, 2024, a few weeks before his Middle East trip was made public.
Carolina Blues
Lombardi’s Saudi trip is also the latest in a string of unconventional, and often unfortunate, happenings for UNC.
Earlier this month, the football program suspended cornerbacks coach Armond Hawkins for offering extra benefits to a player, including sideline passes for the player’s family.
Last month, a lawsuit filed against the university and its board of trustees alleged that UNC broke state laws by hiding discussions about the hiring of Belichick, as well as conversations about potential conference realignment.
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