There is no "reality" in which Preyer made the hire. He simply did not have the power to do that, even under your "he made it politically untenable for Roberts to say no" theory.
Preyer did two things. He helped set up the Zoom meeting with Bill and he communicated directly with Lombardi. Neither of those things came close to hiring Bill. In fact, his sideshow antics almost derailed the hiring (ironically that would have been the best possible thing for UNC).
It was the five hour Zoom call that swayed things. Here is how Adam Smith described it:
"Across the eventful course of the last week, as IC first reported, sources said the UNC search committee's initial interview with Belichick on the Zoom videoconferencing platform turned what some presumed to be merely a courtesy conversation into the full-on birth of his candidacy. His depth of preparation and detailed plans for winning big with the Tar Heels made a profound impact. Sources said Belichick initiated interest in the job, and proceeded to win over the committee with his first interview."
Here is how Steve Newmark described it:
But in early December, Newmark heard straight from the future Pro Football Hall of Famer, when Belichick made his pitch for the job to a four-person committee tasked with steering the Tar Heels’ football future.
Belichick’s football strategy — how he wanted to recruit, which positions he’d prioritize — was as thorough as expected. But everything else? About donor engagement, third-party revenue opportunities and post-graduation support for players?
“Quite frankly,” says Newmark, a former NASCAR executive and Chapel Hill native set to succeed Cunningham as North Carolina’s AD next summer, “it changed the dynamic of the entire search process.”
Here is how Preyer described it in his one-on-one sit down with Greg:
“The search firm that had been selected was a bit of a head scratcher to me as the principal there had been the former athletic director at N.C. State. It seemed like they had a list of conventional candidates and weren’t really thinking big. So adding Coach Belichick to the existing list of candidates caused a few raised eyebrows but they eventually agreed to the request.
“When it came time for the Zoom interviews, I’d asked that a few of the Rams Club members be included in the one with Coach Belichick because I thought it would help them to see firsthand he wasn’t using us as a stalking horse for another job and that he really wanted to be the coach at Carolina. What I didn’t expect was for the Zoom link, which was shaky at the start, to completely drop after the first five minutes, which it did. And then a funny thing happened, after somehow miraculously fixing his Wi-Fi connection, Coach Belichick re-appeared on Zoom composed and in full command as you’d expect from the coach who had eight Super Bowl rings.
“He was direct and matter of fact about why he wanted to be at Carolina, and why he thought his style of teaching of football would be a good fit for us. It was obviously quite compelling. After that interview the unique nature of the opportunity in front of us got more clear. Several of those who had been skeptical were now seeing the upside and were open to the prospect of it being real."
* * *
So Preyer certainly pushed for the zoom interview, but Newmark, Cunningham and Roberts all sat in that interview for five hours. The reporting uniformly suggests that everyone connected with UNC became pro-Bill after that interview. The prior hesitancy with Bill was not what we know now -- that he would be an absolutely terrible college football coach -- but that he was just using UNC as a stalking horse to get back into the NFL. Once that fear subsided after the Zoom meeting, UNC leadership was on the Bill train.
Roberts then personally travelled to meet with Bill two times in three days. Once on 12/5 in New York and once on 12/8 in Massachusetts. Roberts would not have taken such a personal role in the negotiations if he thought this were a bad idea. And his self-congratulatory interviews in December, the Spring, and right up to the pre-TCU interviews, all uniformly read as someone who thought he was taking a bold and visionary step for the future of UNC. Not someone who was forced into it.
To the extent that Preyer had a role in the hiring, it was akin to Harold Hill or Svengali -- a person who can bring others around to his point of view through the art of persuasion. But make no mistake. Roberts was the one who bought this steaming pile of dog poo and he is the one who needs to own it.
