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UNC Tar Heels football GM Michael Lombardi has been named the “worst” GM in college sports by a longtime college football reporter.
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Lombardi, who worked with Bill Belichick in New England and Cleveland, took over as the GM of the UNC Tar Heels football program when the six-time Super Bowl-winning head coach accepted the job in Chapel Hill in December of 2024. Lombardi was Belichick’s first hire.
But UNC had a bad year in 2025, missing a bowl game, and now, Lombardi has been placed on paid administrative leave, pending an investigation.
“As is standard procedure with personnel matters, leadership, staff, and student-athletes are prohibited from addressing this topic further, and has no reflection on the merits,” the school said in a statement.
According to ESPN’s Pete Thamel, the school’s decision “stems from a human resources complaint filed by a former UNC front office employee.” There is an investigation pending.
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Bruce Feldman, meanwhile, unloaded on Lombardi during a recent podcast appearance.
He called him the worst GM in college sports.
Lombardi ripped for his performance at UNC
Feldman, one of the longest standing reporters in college football, didn’t hold back.
“He is without question the worst general manager in college sports,” Feldman said on The Audible with colleague Ralph Russo, per Awful Announcing. “He should be getting his paycheck with a ski mask on. I’m sorry. This is such a staggering amount of ineptitude in the job he’s had for Bill Belichick. I go back to the big story we did last year, and he was a focal point of it. It’s the arrogance, it’s the abrasiveness. I mean there’s a lot of qualities that have rubbed people the wrong way for a long time. But Bill Belichick has been one of the people who has been in his corner and always, and the fact that Bill Belichick trusted him to have the most important job of anybody he could hire and it has blown up in his face and North Carolina’s face spectacularly.”
Lombardi, meanwhile, has previously clapped back at the criticism.
“If you’re not worth a darn, they’re not going to attack you,” Lombardi said. “Some programs are not worth attacking. 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.”
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This story was originally published July 29, 2026 at 8:00 PM.