UNC shifts to NASCAR’s Newmark from Bubba Cunningham as revenue share era begins
It’s surely just a coincidence — mere chance — that North Carolina’s new athletic director in waiting was once outside counsel for the SEC, or that Bubba Cunningham’s post-AD job expires in 2029, a year before the ACC could potentially splinter.
But it is unquestionably a reminder that the world of college athletics is changing more rapidly than most can track, and Cunningham announced he will step aside next summer and turn things over to lawyer and NASCAR executive Steve Newmark on the first day that colleges are allowed to share revenue with their athletes, with Newmark starting out on Cunningham’s staff before eventually taking over.
“It has moved,” Cunningham said. “But the reason why I want to stay at North Carolina is I think we have a great balance. We want to be competitive in everything we do. We want to provide a great educational experience. I think we have that great balance to compete nationally without losing our minds over it. I’ve had other opportunities to go other places over the last few months or last few years, but this place, while it may not be unique, it’s certainly special. And I want to be here.”
The timing of Cunningham’s departure puts two short-term issues and two long-term issues on his agenda before he eventually departs for good in 2029. Before he steps aside to let Newmark take over, he’ll have time to evaluate both the beginning of Bill Belichick’s tenure as football coach and whether Hubert Davis is really the right coach for the men’s basketball team after an uneven season that saw the Tar Heels nearly miss the NCAA tournament for the second time in three years.
Then, after he becomes a special advisor to chancellor Lee Roberts in 2026, Cunningham will be uniquely positioned to figure out what North Carolina does about the Smith Center, and that has lingered too long already, as well as navigate the game of musical chairs that will certainly ensue as the bonds that tie schools to the ACC start to weaken in 2030 and find a landing spot in the Big Ten or SEC.
Cunningham has been trying to navigate the arena situation since he arrived on campus in 2011, whether that’s renovating in place, building in the parking lots next to the Smith Center or building a new arena off campus as part of the development of the Carolina North property.
“We’re going to have to do something with basketball in the next few years,” Cunningham said. “I think I can be helpful in that area. If that’s where (Roberts) wants me to focus my time, I’m happy to do it, whether that’s on campus or somewhere else.”
It is somewhat amusing that not agreeing to allow Steve Belichick to be a coach in waiting was a hard line for Cunningham in negotiations with the elder Belichick, and he now has an athletic director in waiting to succeed him, but the fact that the ultimate industry insider is being succeeded by a pro-sports executive with no experience inside the college space says a lot about the current state of college athletics.
North Carolina has done well to position itself for this new era, adding scholarships and going the full boat on revenue sharing in football, basketball and baseball. But money is the engine that’s driving everything, and Newmark — a Chapel Hill native with degrees from elsewhere hired without any search process, unusually, after serving on the search committees for both Belichick and the yet-to-be-hired Rams Club executive director — is here to grow revenue, first as Cunningham’s deputy and then as his replacement.
Compliance and all that other stuff that used to occupy athletic departments? It’s all on the back burner now. It sure makes the ACC’s hire of Jim Phillips as commissioner — a career athletic administrator with no experience outside college sports — look quaint only four years later.
After being jerked around by UNC trustees for the better part of a year, first threatening an audit and then overstepping their mandate in the Belichick hiring, Cunningham, 63, could have gone to Michigan State or Southern Methodist and finished out his career at either one of those soft landing spots.
Instead, after ushering North Carolina through an era of epochal change, he’ll have another four years to help settle some of the biggest issues still facing the Tar Heels. By the time he’s done, the corporate folks will be running the show and career NCAA admins like Cunningham will be an endangered species. If they aren’t already.
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