CHAPEL HILL – The North Carolina Football hope meter is getting pinged again.

Out with the old and in with the new will soon be complete, and whoever Director of Athletics Bubba Cunningham hires, he will walk into a situation full of anticipation of what’s to come laced with considerable hope.

Of course, UNC Football hasn’t exactly delivered this century on the latter. Yet, the five head coaches brought in to revitalize the Tar Heels’ fortunes each started out proclaiming they were the ones to get things back on track. They had a plan, and the plan was going to work. Or in the case of one coach, he was going to keep the train humming.

Only aside from some upticks here and there, it never happened. So, the new coach will announce during his introductory press conference, likely some time next week, he will achieve this mission. He’s the right man to wake up this sleeping giant breaking the snooze button once and for all.

He will have a plan. Cunningham will laud the background, the energy, and the vision. And the remaining Tar Heels will sell themselves to their new leader.

“He’s going to see a bunch of guys (that) we know what Carolina football is all about,” starting quarterback Jacolby Criswell said, when asked Saturday what kind of team will the new coach inherit.

“And if you want to be here, be here. If you don’t, we’re going to ride with the guys that want to stay and we’re going to show this new coach that hey, this is what Carolina football is. You can bring in your guys but we’re here to stay and we’re going to give you our all.”

UNC has made five football coaching hires since Brown left for Texas following the 1997 regular season, which was the second straight in which Carolina ended up in the top 10 of the final Associated Press rankings. Four of those coaches were considered good-to-very-good hires at the time.

Carl Torbush was the architect of arguably the top defenses in college football in 1996 and 1997, so him replacing Brown was regarded as a wise move. Butch Davis built perhaps the greatest college football team ever assembled at Miami but left for the NFL before he could reap those rewards. He was considered a slam-dunk hire by Carolina in 2006.

Larry Fedora was one of the top up-and-comers in the business and took the UNC job after leading Southern Mississippi to a 12-1 season in 2011. And Brown coming back after the 2018 campaign for a second stint was panned by some observers but also praised as a shrewd and worthy attempt at restoring a needed foundation in the program and give it some big-boy mojo.

John Bunting was hired to replace Torbush after the 2000 campaign and was considered a risky hire because he had only several years of small college experience, and otherwise had spent his coaching career in the NFL. But still, a former Tar Heel who played more than a decade in the NFL, started in a Super Bowl as a player and won one as a defensive coordinator piqued the interest of enough brass in Chapel Hill to make it happen.

Four quality hires and five that gave Tar Heel fans hope. Yet, what they delivered in those 27 seasons was a 166-168 overall record, including 100-118 in ACC play, 5-11 in bowl games, and only two final Top 25 finishes: No. 15 in 2015 and No. 18 in 2020.

That’s it.

So, for all intents and purposes, North Carolina Football is headed back to square one with whomever takes over.

Yet, looking for some differences from the last five hires to what the new guy will inherit, there just may be a chance the UNC program is finally situated to hire the right man who makes it work. Brown believes the next coach is walking into a positive situation.

“I told the kids I’m sure they’ll get a great coach,” Brown said during his postgame statement following UNC’s loss at home to NC State on Saturday to end the regular season.

“He’ll have a better situation than we did with NIL because of revenue sharing. We had about $4 million, he’s going to have at least $12 million. That'll be three-to-four times as much money for the kids so that should really help them.”

Correct. But there’s more.

Brown has expressed the last couple of years a need for a larger weight room and new locker room even though he had one built after arriving six years ago. The Kenan Football Center has received extensive renovation and is a model facility. Brown’s office underwent a $225,000 renovation several years ago, according to UNC Football financial papers obtained by THI.

Brown spent his first couple of years back on the job raising money for those things, and then once NIL launched a few years ago, he steered his fund-raising attention in that direction.

He has been clear that asking donors for money to essentially give to athletes was much more challenging than asking for something they can slap their name on or an inanimate object to help current and future players.

However, the next coach won’t have to raise money for a new locker room, at least not yet. He won’t need to pimp for a major renovation of the football center. All of that has been taken care of, so his focus will be building a greater revenue stream for personnel, first with players and then with his staff. And because Brown successfully got so much improved around the program during his six years, UNC is becoming well-positioned in the cash-flow game of the current college football climate.

Consider: According to the football financial documents obtained by THI, UNC spent $10,130,493 on football personnel in the last full academic year (2017-18) Fedora was head coach. In 2022-23, UNC spent $23,764,394 on Brown’s staff. That’s a 57.4% increase in just five years. And that's with much of the fundraising being gobbled up by renovations not currently needed.

With that, UNC spent $139,859,514 on football facility enhancements in the last seven years.

Furthermore, from the same five-year period of 2017-18 to 2022-23, athletic department personnel expenses rose by 20% but football personnel expenses nearly doubled.

This shows the UNC administration and athletic department made much greater investments into football than it had previously. Sources inside the football program told THI earlier this fall the investment in football “simply isn’t enough” and that made "competing very difficult."

Both positions can be true. Brown got significantly more than Fedora but his program still lagged behind in some areas. And that’s why his work with facilities and role in helping to guide Name Image and Likeness (NIL) fund raising with the collective situates the next coach quite well.

According to a source with extensive knowledge of Carolina’s athletic finances moving forward, the Rams Club is positioned to fully fund all athletic scholarships, even with those numbers increasing for the 2025-26 academic/athletic year. Football will move from 85 to 105 scholarships and men’s basketball from 13 to 15. Baseball will make the biggest jump going from 11.7 to 31. Sustaining the numbers will not be a problem for North Carolina.

Also, with revenue sharing coming to college athletics next summer, the school can already account for the $20.5 million it will distribute to athletes as part of revenue sharing. As Brown noted in his final address to the media last Saturday, his program’s NIL pot was a bit more than $4 million, but the new coach will get in the range of $12 million.

In addition to that, the program will still provide NIL/collective opportunities plus whatever comes from outside advertisers.

“We are well-positioned with the changes that are coming,” the source with extensive knowledge of UNC’s athletic finances told THI.

And Carolina could continue enhancing its revenue pot to help facilitate more cash opportunities for personnel from staffing to players. Cunningham recently sent out a letter outlining where the athletic department stands with respect to all changes occurring on the landscape, its challenges, and how UNC fans can help the school navigate these times.

UNC has 28 sanctioned varsity teams, one more than Virginia, which has 27. Most ACC schools have in the 18-21 range (Stanford has 36), and few nationally field more than UNC. But Carolina is committed to maintaining its Olympic sports teams, most of which are highly successful.

Possibilities for additional revenue streams include naming rights to Kenan Stadium and other venues, and possibly teams will wear sponsor patches on their uniforms. This would be much like how 23 of 30 Major League Baseball teams wore “jersey patch sponsors” this past season.

The Baltimore Orioles, as an example, signed a deal with T. Rowe Price worth $75 million over five years to have small patches on the upper arm of each jersey. It’s uncertain how much UNC could make with such an arrangement, but given its number of athletic teams, their success, and the platform UNC basketball presents, it could be worth a significant amount of money to the school.

So, much still must be worked out, but the financial nose for UNC athletics is clearly pointed in the right direction, and the primary beneficiary will be football. As important and grand as Carolina basketball is, football steers the ship everywhere, and it will get the main dibs on all new revenue streams.

The next coach will have so much more at his disposal than any previous North Carolina coach. That is the situation he will inherit.