UNC Spending as Much as Reported Comes With Answer Some Aren't Considering

There's no way to tell how much some college basketball teams spend on their rosters unless you're in the building making these decisions. 

That's part of the reason why when anybody brings up NIL figures, it's almost tough to have a conversation about it. 

However, CBS Sports and Matt Norlander, who is well plugged into the college basketball space, recently shared insight into some of the top-paid college basketball programs in America. 

He recently listed North Carolina as a team that has a $20-plus million budget, and while there were questions about how much the Tar Heels have been spending in recent months, I'm not as surprised as others to hear that this is actually the case. 

The reality is that while North Carolina's roster might not be as talented as some hoped, other factors are at play, and they all stem from Michael Malone getting the job later in the cycle.

“Entering this season and the first for coach Michael Malone at the helm, North Carolina is unranked in the preseason AP Top 25 poll. The Tar Heels received the fifth-most votes of teams that were unranked, which essentially rates Malone's squad as the 30th-best team in the sport entering the season. In the ACC poll, North Carolina was projected to finish behind Duke, Virginia, Miami and Louisville. In short, the amount North Carolina is spending on this 2026-27 roster doesn't match the preseason projections. Carolina is not a Tier 1 national title contender…

“Malone is a first-year college head coach and was hired the day the transfer portal opened. He had to play catch-up on roster-building and retention, while hiring a staff and getting acclimated to running a college basketball program,” Cameron Salerno wrote.

My next point is that I also don't really think North Carolina's roster is as bad as some are making it seem. I know I've said that hundreds of times now, but I'd be shocked if North Carolina doesn't at least finish as a top-25 team. 

Does that mean that the roster is good enough for a $20-plus million team? Probably not, especially when you look at other rosters in this category, with Texas, Kentucky, Louisville, Duke, Michigan, Florida, and others headlining it. 

I'd go so far as to say North Carolina might have the worst roster in Tier 1, and perhaps even worse than some Tier 2 teams, but as Salerno touched on, North Carolina having to spend more money because of the head-coach situation shouldn't surprise many.