Even with the hire of NFL coaching legend Bill Belichick to guide its football program, North Carolina athletics is still best known for its tradition-rich men’s basketball program.
The athletic department’s distribution of the $20.5 million in revenue sharing demonstrates the importance of the program of Michael Jordan, Dean Smith and Roy Williams.
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UNC previously announced it would allocate the $20.5 million to football, men’s basketball, baseball and women’s basketball, but Cunningham offered a more detailed description.
Men’s basketball received $7 million – or roughly 35% – of the revenue sharing limit, athletics director Bubba Cunningham said on the Carolina Insider podcast. The payments to former college athletes from the nearly $3 billion House settlement is being distributed with 75% to football, 15% to men’s basketball, 5% to women’s basketball and 5% to all other sports.
“That’s one way to do it, and a lot of schools are doing it that way,” Cunningham said. “When I looked at how we generate commercial activity, that’s not the way ours is broken down. Ours is broken down 65% to football, 35% to men’s basketball and … then baseball is next. Women’s basketball is fourth. And so I thought the fairest thing to do was give the revenue sharing to those sports that had generated it.”
The Tar Heels have won six national titles in men’s basketball, including three since 2005 under Williams. Smith, for whom the program’s home arena is named, won two titles in 1993 and 1982 when Jordan, then a freshman, hit the game-winning shot.
Hubert Davis, who played under Smith and coached under Williams, is entering his fifth season as the Tar Heels’ coach. UNC reached the Final Four in 2022 and were a No. 1 seed in the 2024 NCAA Tournament, but missed the event altogether in 2023 and received the final spot in the 2025 tournament.
The program hired its first general manager earlier this year. The Tar Heels revamped their roster in the offseason.
Football received $13 million, a number laid out in Belichick’s term sheet from his December hiring. The decision to hire Belichick, who won six Super Bowl titles as head coach of the New England Patriots, signaled came with a significant financial commitment to football by the university.
The program has sold out of season tickets and individual-game tickets, earlier than ever before.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Cunningham, who has been the school’s athletics director since November 2011. “The excitement and anticipation of this football season is better than anything I’ve seen. We’re doing a lot of things that we’ve done before, but everything seems to be on a bigger scale.”
Baseball and women’s basketball each received $250,000 in revenue sharing.
Cunningham said the payroll for this year’s coach Courtney Banghart’s women’s basketball roster is over $1 million, Cunningham said.
“Courtney had done such an incredible job of fundraising, so her payroll, if you will, is over a million dollars this year for the women’s basketball team,” Cunningham said. “So that’s very competitive with some of the top programs in the country.”
Departments began sharing directly with athletes on July 1. The $20.5-million cap is expected to go up. That figure equates to 22% of the average of all revenue generated by athletics across teams in schools in the five top conferences.
“We tried to match who generated the money. Their team got it. And we tried to match what is our competition and where are they? So we’re going to readjust after this year and see where we need to go into the future. But that’s how we made the allocation this year.”
The cap is expected to rise each year as overall revenue increases.
UNC added nearly 200 scholarships across its 28 sports for this academic year, increasing its total from 338 to 532. Under terms of the House settlement, programs have new roster limits but each player can be on scholarships. Previously, sports couldn’t place every athlete on scholarship.
Cunningham and UNC Chancellor Lee Roberts have said they want to continue to sponsor all 28 sports. The Tar Heels field strong programs across the board and are recent national title winners in several, including women’s soccer, field hockey, women’s tennis and women’s lacrosse.
“Commercial activity goes to those that generate it, the educational benefits are going to go to the sports that have been previously subsidized,” Cunningham said. “I think that was the fair way for Carolina to do it and remain competitive nationally.”
Cunningham will move out of his role as athletics director in 2026. He will be replaced by former NASCAR executive Steve Newmark, who started with the department Friday as the department’s executive associate athletics director. Newmark’s focus this year is on revenue related to football and men’s and women’s basketball.
NC State athletics director Boo Corrigan said last week that he gave each of his coaches a spending figure from the $20.5 million and allowed them to decide how to allocate the money, be it revenue sharing, additional scholarships or other payments to athletes.