UNC football’s $572M valuation proves Bill Belichick isn’t the main attraction

As college football continues shifting toward a more professional model — with NIL compensation, conference realignment, and revenue-sharing discussions accelerating — North Carolina has become one of the sport's most intriguing brands. That intrigue has only grown with the arrival of new head coach Bill Belichick, who enters his first season with the Tar Heels.

In a new hypothetical exercise from The Athletic's Matt Baker, he projected the potential market value of each Power Four football program if they were treated like pro franchises. Despite a modest football history, North Carolina ranked 26th overall with a valuation of $572 million, based on an average football revenue of $63.6 million over the last three reported years.

“We approached the hypothetical question with a methodology that was part art, part science,” Baker explained. “We used real-life pro transactions to gauge purchase prices relative to a team’s revenue over the past three available years of data. NFL and NBA sales guided our ratios in the SEC and Big Ten, while the MLB and NHL were our rough benchmarks in the ACC and Big 12. For each school in a Power 4 conference (plus Notre Dame), we factored in everything from prestige and championships to facility renovations, population trends and realignment scenarios.”

What makes North Carolina’s football valuation notable is that it surpasses several programs with more successful track records on the field. That’s because the Tar Heels’ brand strength comes largely from its storied basketball tradition, which includes six national championships and a lineage of legendary players. The football program, by contrast, has never won a national title, and its last ACC championship came back in 1980.

Still, Baker believes the long-term potential of UNC football is significant — particularly when factoring in the program’s market.

“If UNC seems high, it’s because it has more financial upside (beyond whatever happens during Bill Belichick’s tenure) than other teams in this ballpark,” Baker wrote. “North Carolina is already the ninth-largest state and growing more than all but Texas and Florida. That’s a good sign for the potential growth of a fan base."

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Belichick is already proving his impact, though. Last week, a Hulu series featuring the UNC football program was reported by Front Office Sports. While the project remains unconfirmed, its purpose seems clear: to elevate the Tar Heels’ national profile in a media-savvy era where brand visibility can drive both recruiting and relevance.

“The mere existence of a docuseries is good for any program. If the subject of it has control over the content, it truly does become an infomercial,” Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio wrote. “Which is why we prefer to call it not a documentary or docuseries but an infomercial/blatant advertisement for the program.”

Institutional standing could also be a major factor in UNC's future.

"Assuming academics matter in future college football iterations — probable but not a given — the leaders of Big Ten and SEC schools will both want to be associated with one of the nation’s top public schools," Baker wrote.

That academic prestige is reinforced by North Carolina’s membership in the Association of American Universities (AAU) — a group of elite research institutions that the Big Ten in particular strongly favors in its expansion decisions. While AAU membership isn’t required for inclusion, it remains a powerful signal of academic and research strength. As of now, Nebraska is the only Big Ten school without AAU status.