UNC GM Michael Lombardi sounds off on ‘fake rumors and fake stories’ about program

For years, Michael Lombardi has been a fixture in the media circuit as a football commentator.

The lifelong NFL executive has contributed to The Ringer, NFL Network, SiriusXM, and VSiN, becoming well-known to football fans beyond his work in front offices. Most recently, Lombardi was a recurring guest on The Pat McAfee Show.

All those media appearances came to a halt last year when Lombardi joined the North Carolina football program as general manager, working alongside his mentor Bill Belichick. While early indications were that Lombardi and potentially even Belichick would continue to do regular segments on the show, both went mostly radio silent.

It’s not hard to see why. Belichick’s first season at UNC was one of the biggest letdowns in modern sports history, considering Belichick’s stature and the high bar that he and the seemingly underqualified Lombardi set going into the season.

Lombardi resurfaced Friday in an interview with McAfee, where he sounded off on the many “fake rumors and fake stories” he believes were put out about the Tar Heels program.

“If you’re not worth a darn, they’re not going to attack you. Some programs are not worth attacking,” Lombardi said. “They’re going to attack us; we expect it. It’s all good. We’ve been in the arena before. We don’t listen to the noise. We focus on what we have to focus on, and we move forward.”

As Belichick transitioned away from pursuing an NFL head coaching job and a year in the media to coaching the Tar Heels, the negative headlines were constant. The most juicy among them focused on Belichick’s relationship with his much younger girlfriend, Jordon Hudson. Beyond the gossip fodder, there was drama around the communications staff at UNC, leaks about a failed docuseries, and skepticism around Belichick’s pay and contract stipulations.

The Tar Heels finished 4-8, but were competitive down the stretch against ACC competitors like Virginia and Duke.

Lombardi acknowledged the season wasn’t as successful as he hoped, but said everyone at North Carolina got a big lift when the team’s new recruiting class came to campus in December.

The faith the new players placed in UNC leadership led Lombardi to believe that the outside noise would not define the staff’s tenure in Chapel Hill.

“All during those stormy times, all during when the boat was getting capsized, when people were attacking us with fake rumors and fake stories all over — nobody’s corrected them yet, but that’s OK, we understand — our players hung together,” he explained. “We did not lose one single recruit to another team … and that’s what I think gives all of everybody in this program the lift that we need.”

The Tar Heels’ recruiting class is ranked in the top 15 to 20 by the top national outlets.

The program is not in the news nearly as much now as it was a year ago (outside of Belichick’s Hall of Fame snub, which may have been fueled in part by his very public failures at UNC), which is likely why Lombardi agreed to return to McAfee’s show. But he expects the criticism to return before long:

“It was (loud), but I think, look, we probably have to understand that we were going to get attacked. I didn’t think it was going to be on an everyday basis, but it is what it is.”