The Latest UNC Sports Controversy: Football Players And Cars

RALEIGH, NORTH CAROLINA - NOVEMBER 29: Head coach Bill Belichick of the North Carolina Tar Heels walks off the field following their loss to the NC State Wolfpack at Carter-Finley Stadium on November 29, 2025 in Raleigh, North Carolina. (Photo by Lance King/Getty Images) | Getty Images

The local media is far more willing to take a close look at UNC than it used to be, and you can roughly date this from Bill Belichick’s arrival in 2025.

Take the latest story.

Well-paid UNC football players are garnering criticism for their driving and parking habits, and UNC professor Mark Peifer has had enough.

Peifer told WRAL this: “What started to bother all of us, in addition to the fact that they didn’t seem to have to follow the simple parking rules like parking head in, was that now almost always the handicapped spots closest to Kenan in the deck had these cars parked in them. That’s just not right. You shouldn’t park in a handicap spot. Nobody should park in a handicap spot.”

At one point, Peifer confronted a miscreant driver, the football player behind the wheel allegedly cursed at him.

Peifer has also complained repeatedly to A.D. Bubba Cunningham. In an email to Cunningham and UNC Chancellor Lee Roberts, Peifer wrote: “The football team’s behavior is undercutting decades of efforts by Carolina coaches and athletes to build a national reputation for integrity, the Carolina Way.”

Well, with all due respect to the professor, that’s been out the window for a long time now. This is no longer the school that President William C. Friday built, where he was willing to part ways with legendary basketball coach, Frank McGuire, to restore some credibility to the school, even if it meant losing under unheralded coach Dean Smith. And as Duke star Art Heyman said at the time, whoever heard of Dean Smith? Smith grew to be a legend, but in 1961, he was a nobody.

After another email, Cunningham responded plaintively: “I don’t know how many more times I can apologize. Disappointing to say the least.”

And that ties in with the general sense of frustration.

It’s clear from that email that Cunningham has done everything he can think of, and nothing is working. He has no meaningful control over UNC’s football program.

And that kind of gets back to a hunch we’ve had about this for some time: the local media didn’t just decide to lay into Belichick. We don’t think Triangle journalists, many of whom graduated from UNC’s School of Journalism, have suddenly turned on Carolina. Carolina born, Carolina bred, and all that tosh.

We think they were deeply unhappy when Belichick was hired, and that there are reasons for that that they can’t publicly disclose.

Yet.

What else could explain this level of hostility from what has historically been a genteel group of colleagues? What else would explain WRAL, of all outlets, going after UNC football as hard as it has?

Whatever it is, if it ever comes out, Duke and NC State fans will pop the popcorn.

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