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UNC System Limits UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees’ Authority Over Athletics
In a memo sent after UNC-CH hired Bill Belichick, the system's leader said trustees' actions around athletics "create substantial legal risk."

“Instances continue to occur where members of the board appear to act independently of their campus’s administration in matters squarely within the responsibility of the chancellor,” UNC System President Peter Hans wrote in a memo to UNC-CH Board of Trustees Chair John Preyer and Chancellor Lee Roberts.
Such actions “create substantial legal risk to the University—jeopardizing the North Carolina taxpayers’ money by blurring the lines of actual and apparent authority when these athletic departments negotiate business transactions with third parties,” Hans said in the January 16 memo that The Assembly obtained through a records request.
Hans said he was temporarily suspending parts of “the delegations of authority” that system policy gives to the Board of Trustees. Going forward, Hans wrote, he or his designee must approve any hiring or salary adjustment related to athletic department employees other than administrative assistants. For the UNC-CH athletic director and head coaches whose contracts must be approved by trustees, Hans said his sign-off will be needed first, and trustees shouldn’t “play any role in negotiation of such actions.”