The North Carolina football season isn't going well, to say the least, but it is interesting.
Amid a 2-4 season, which very well may end with two wins, Tar Heels head coach Bill Belichick has reportedly taken a peek at the exit, an assistant coach was suspended, and the team's general manager has been the subject of scrutiny recently.
Mike Lombardi, a longtime ally of Belichick, followed the eight-time Super Bowl champion to Chapel Hill, where he became the North Carolina football GM. Although he and Belichick spoke a big game about overhauling the Heels' roster and transforming UNC into the '33rd' NFL franchise, North Carolina has yet to beat a power-conference team, having been outscored in those four losses 141-51.
Unfortunately, the on-field performance is only a part of the negative headlines surrounding Lombardi; last week, journalist Pablo Torre reported that Lombardi left the team shortly before the season began to fundraise in Saudi Arabia, renewing discussions about the regime's human rights record and attempts at ‘sportswashing'.
The latest Torre-reported news about Lombardi is far less serious in nature, but it is particularly odd: Lombardi, according to sources, has consistently lied about how many Super Bowl rings he has earned.
“Mike Lombardi was not issued an official Super Bowl 51 ring as a Patriots employee during the 2016-17 season, as much as he enjoys referring to all of the bling he's won as a three-time Super Bowl champion…” Torre said on his podcast, ‘Pablo Torre Finds Out'.
Torre said that when PTFO asked Lombardi via UNC football's public relations if the Patriots had awarded him an official SB ring in 2017, the answer was “We respectfully pass here.” Torre reported that Belichick instead gave Lombardi a ‘friends and family' ring, which is not official.
Additionally, Chris Walsh, the son of three-time Super Bowl-winning coach Bill Walsh, said that Lombardi, despite his claims, “doesn’t have a ring whatsoever” from when the San Francisco 49ers, for whom he worked as a scout at the time, won Super Bowl XIX in 1985. Chris Walsh said Lombardi “was just there in a very, very limited role” and characterized him as a possible “gopher chauffeur.”
Lombardi, 66, first began working with Belichick when the latter became the head coach of the Cleveland Browns in 1991. Lombardi, who started as a scout with Cleveland in 1987, was promoted to pro personnel director in 1989 and remained in that position until 1993, when he became the director of player personnel for Belichick. The pair reunited in 2014, when Lombardi was hired by Belichick as an assistant to the coaching staff.
