A Fan’s Guide to Media Frenzy » Greenville Sports Media A Fan's Guide to Media Frenzy

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How to Read Between the Lines of Media Reporting

Every fan has been in that position before. Some story just came out that the head coach of your favorite college football team painting them in a negative light. But why? Why would the local media that profess how much they love this team go out of their way to put out stories that could hurt the reputation of the coach, team, and university? How do I know what is true and what is biased? WHAT IS GOING ON!?! Well, there are several ways one can go about answering those questions, as well as deciphering what the reported information mayor may not mean. With this article, I hope to give you some knowledge and tools that will give you a better understanding of what is going on when those situations arise.

The trick to reading between the lines in sports reporting is a very simple one: ask questions! Let’s start with an example of one of these media frenzy situations. The University of North Carolina football program had an incredibly tumultuous week, with numerous local and national media outlets reporting sheer chaos in and around the program. Over a span of about 48 hours, a flurry of reports came out of Chapel Hill indicating things from mistreatment of players, to unsafe practice conditions, and even some NCAA violations and the suspension of one of the coaches for impermissible benefits. The first question any NC fan should have asked themselves is “Why now?” There is a very simple answer. UNC was heading into its 2nd bye week of the season, and coming off an incredibly disappointing and rather lifeless showing against Clemson, in a game that went sideways almost immediately for the Tar Heels. The reason for these stories leaking during a bye week is the same as why NFL coaches get fired on a bye week: it gives the interim staff time to at least get some semblance of order established within the program. Not only that, but it means that there isn’t a game happening that weekend, meaning its not possible for the targeted coach to pick up a win and turn public perception back in their favor a la Ed Orgeron at LSU. The third reason why this is done is because there almost certainly wont be any other competing stories or headlines coming out of the program, simply because of the bye.

The next question is much more difficult to answer for the average fan, as the average fan just doesn’t have the same kind of connections a reporter or booster might have. Where are the reports coming from? Let’s say its only one outlet is reporting one of these stories. Who are their contacts within the program? Who do they represent? Are they with the boosters, the staff, the administration, or elsewhere? The outlet and cited source sharing a report is almost as important as the reporting itself. Personally, I do my best to be up front and honest about my sources without giving away their identities, and I am very open about where my contacts are. For example, at UNC, there are a handful of factions within the football program at play in this whole debacle. There are the Mack Brown loyalists, Bill’s staff, the boosters, the university admin, the AD, the Chancellor/President, and the Board of Trustees. While all parties involved are all working towards building a winning culture at Carolina, that DOES NOT mean they are on the same page, or that they even agree to begin with. It was well documented that the coaching search this offseason in Chapel Hill was allegedly hijacked by a member of the UNC Board of Trustees, which took the coaching search out of the hands of beloved UNC AD Bubba Cunningham.

Next, one of the most important factors to consider when trying to decipher a media firestorm is the timing. The timing of these things MUST be considered. At UNC, as I mentioned earlier, all of these stories seemed to come one after another for about 48 hours straight. Is that weird? No, not necessarily. It could just mean that someone in the media has gotten to a singular high-level source and is reporting that information from that source. In the words of Coach Corso, not so fast my friend! Look at the surrounding circumstances. UNC was entering a bye week, coming off a bad loss to Clemson, and public sentiment and fun support was waning. If I were someone that wanted to get rid of Bill Belichick by leaking a bunch of negative stories to the press, then that is precisely when I would start leaking those stories, because that specific timing is when those leaks will have maximum impact of public perception. Why does public perception matter? Simple. If you win over public perception, you are going to start seeing fans openly and publicly calling for the coach in question to be fired. Once that happens, it can be very difficult to turn back.

The next question to ask is why? Why are all these negative reports coming out about the coach all at once? Why would someone within the program go out of their way to take actions that could damage the reputation of the program? The answer to those questions will never change: someone within the program wants that coach fired. Plain and simple. It has happened time and time again throughout college football history. A team will get off to a rocky start, and all of a sudden, stories start trickling out about, say, players getting special treatment. Or maybe there will be a story about a player that feels like they were mistreated or dehumanized by the coaching staff. Or maybe there will be a report about an impending NCAA violations investigation, or a coach being suspended. Things that on their own might be insignificant, but can be pretty damaging to public perception when its all put together. And that is precisely what happened this week for the Tar Heels. Reports of player mistreatment, questionable program management practices, NCAA violations, coach suspension, and even locker room fights all released within a 48 hour window. Any time something like that happens, it should IMMEDIATELY raise alarm bells in your brain. There is zero doubt in my mind, these stories all came out in the manner that they did for the sole purpose of giving UNC cause to fire Bill Belichick. This was nothing short of a coup attempt against Belichick and Lombardi in an attempt to get the staff fired.

I want to take a look at some of those individual reports and provide some perspective about what may or may not be going on as it pertains to the warring factions within the UNC football program. That starts with yet another question: can you think of any two coaches that are more polar opposite in their approach than Mack Brown and Bill Belichick? Mack Brown has always been a players coach, even to a point where he has been accused by a large portion of the UNC fanbase of being too soft on the players, leading to a lack of edge on the field. Bill Belichick is, to a fault, a consummate professional. He and his staff are truly operating this program like an NFL organization. To many people that might sound like coach speak or buzzwords, when in reality it is simply just a way of operating the program. The Belichick regime has been almost purely transactional, just like you would expect from an NFL organization, which are run like businesses. Mack Brown is the type of guy that will take time out of his day, regardless of how important, to talk to his players. Coaching off the field was just as important, if not more so, than coaching on the field for Mack Brown. But Belichick? All ball, all the time, every time. Why is any of this information important? Because if you’re a player that was recruited by Mack Brown, the approach of a transactional-first coach and GM like Belichick and Lombardi is almost certainly going to run you the wrong way. It is the near polar opposite of the approach and premise you were sold on when you first joined the program. All of a sudden, some guy that thinks he knows everything comes in and starts talking to you like your employer instead of your coach or even father figure like you were used to, its not hard to see why so many players and parents have been upset at how things have been handled.

The final thing to take into account when analyzing this kind of reporting, is the outlet itself giving the report. In UNC’s case, if that report is coming from, say, Pro Football Talk, there is an incredibly strong chance it will be heavily biased against Belichick due to the longstanding feud between Belichick, Lombardi, and Mike Florio. If that report is coming from a local beat writer, there is a good chance that any reporting will have been verified multiple times thru as many sources as possibly before being released, and therefore will give you a good read on what might be happening. Local beat writers are going to be dramatically less likely to run with negative stories because there are always very real concerns that if you say the wrong thing or paint the program you are covering in a negative light, that outlet runs the risk of having their press credentials pulled, crippling their ability to cover the team. If the reports have been picked up by a larger national outlet like ESPN or The Athletic, that means that the reporting has likely been verified through local beat writers for that outlet, as well as other local beat outlets. Those reports can usually be safely trusted, because massive networks like ESPN are not going to risk opening themselves up to legal liability by running a false story that could severely damage the reputation of a university/program. Let’s say you first saw these reports from someone you didn’t recognize on a social media website. This is where you need to be a bit more careful. Those kinds of reports come about because someone just so happens to have a connection somewhere, or they are just making things up for personal gain and clout.

I want to make this abundantly clear. In no way, shape, or form am I trying to delegitimize the reports of player mistreatment. I firmly believe those reports. What I am trying to do, is offer a different perspective, and explain how some of these reports are likely just the result of incompatibility, for one reason or another. That does not make them any less real, or make the events in question any less hurtful to the players, it just might explain how things got so far out of hand. Take all of it with a grain of salt, but remember that at the end of the day, the players are still kids, with real emotions, and they deserve to be treated like people, not just the athlete you see on TV every Saturday and therefore think you know them personally. You don’t.

When you finally put it all together, it is not hard to see what happened this week in Chapel Hill. Someone with a decent amount of power within the program wanted to get rid of Belichick. It did not work. The state of the UNC football program moving forward somehow might be on more solid ground now than it has been since the opening kickoff against TCU. The UNC football staff took advantage of the opportunity to deal with any leaks coming from inside the building, so the stories and reports are likely done and dusted. Following all the chaos, several recruits from UNC’s 2026 recruiting class took to twitter to loudly and emphatically voice their support and commitment to not only UNC, but to Coach Belichick. Suddenly, late on Wednesday evening, the UNC Football twitter page released a joint statement from AD Bubba Cunningham and Coach Belichick, declaring Belichick is not only “fully committed to UNC Football,” but also has “the full support of the Department of Athletics and the University.” This almost immediately shut down intensifying rumors that both parties were working towards a mutual exit. While this may have been enough to quell the media firestorm that had taken place, that doesn’t mean we can’t learn something in the aftermath. Not one single outlet has retracted or corrected any of the stories involving the possible mistreatment of players. None of the local UNC beat outlets have recanted statements about mutual exit discussions taking place, aside from national outlets and WRAL. This should tell you that yes, there are some potential underlying issues within the UNC football program under Bill Belichick. It should also tell you that Bill and Lombardi will, at a minimum, get one more season to show that they can build a championship program at UNC, and that most if not all factions mentioned above have come to some kind of agreement on the issue at hand. Could that change? Absolutely. At this point, just about anything is possible. But I cannot say with confidence that the current staff will be fully retained for next season. In fact, I expect changes.

The one thing that won’t change, is Belichick’s drive and commitment to winning. Bill continues to be a film junkie, and loves that he now has the ability to coach every single position 1 on 1. More importantly, it doesn’t seem like the 2026 recruiting class is going anywhere. Carson Sneed, Calvin Thomas, Nick Fiumara, Zion Smith, Travis Burgess, and class headliner Trashawn Ruffin will all be guests on a special episode of the Tar Pit Podcast tonight at 8:30pm EST on twitter and YouTube, presumably discussing how they all feel about the events of this week. If their recent social media activity is anything to go off of, you probably won’t want to miss this show if you’re a Tar Heel fan. A link to the Tar Pit YouTube page will be included below. Personally, I feel more than comfortable saying that while I may not agree with some of the methods of the current regime, I understand why they are being received the way they are. I still think Coach Belichick will see a big turnaround in 2026, and the staff has my full support. I will leave you all with this: never stop asking questions. The day you stop asking questions is the day you become a mark instead of a reader.