UNC-Chapel Hill paid nearly $650,000 to a prominent law firm over the past three years to prepare for a rapidly shifting landscape in college sports as prominent universities jumped from one power conference to another.
The legal help was needed, campus officials said, to help with issues related to “the business of college athletics” that grew more urgent when two schools sued the Atlantic Coast Conference over severe financial penalties it would impose if they left. The legal bills defined the work as the “Carolina Blue matter.”
But more detailed bills UNC released after a local lawyer sued reveals that another company, the Wasserman Media Group, received more than a quarter of the $650,000.
Why? Campus officials won’t provide any details beyond saying that the company provided “professional industry research and consulting services.” Newly released emails the lawyer obtained show a Wasserman executive discussing declining ACC football game ratings with top UNC officials.
“This thing could not be more opaque,” said attorney David McKenzie, the Raleigh-based lawyer who sued UNC to get the more detailed records. “You’ve got a public university spending public money on secret consultants to make secret decisions in secret meetings, and then they are refusing to explain any of it.”
Wasserman is a Los Angeles-based, worldwide giant in the sports and musician promotion business with hundreds of clients across professional and collegiate sports. It’s also the company the ACC hired in 2023 to keep its brand strong enough to persuade member schools from jumping to the two most powerful and lucrative athletic conferences in the country — the SEC and the Big Ten.
That means that at the same time Wasserman was helping boost the ACC it was advising one of the conference’s most high-profile members as it considered whether to stay. That could be a conflict of interest on Wasserman’s part, said a former UNC system vice president and management professor at N.C. State.
“If their role is to help Carolina leave the ACC for greener pastures while at the same time trying to help the ACC improve its brand, I mean that’s kind of obvious isn’t it?” said Art Padilla, who helped shape the UNC Systems’ conflict of interest policies.
Misidentified legal expenses
UNC’s law firm paid the Wasserman Media Group more than $187,000, or nearly 30% of the money the firm received, for Carolina Blue.Wasserman’s involvement might have remained secret if McKenzie hadn’t questioned the lack of detail in the first set of bills he received from UNC.
But other documents he’d requested tipped McKenzie that the New York based law firm UNC hired — Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom — had set up a portal where UNC staff could view additional information about its work that was not included in its one-page bills.
After McKenzie sued the university in February, UNC agreed to produce a second set of more detailed bills that exposed Wasserman’s involvement.
A majority of Wasserman’s fees — $112,500 — are labeled as for “court reporting.” Those charges were “miscoded,” said UNC spokesman Kevin Best. The work was actually “professional industry research and consulting services,” Best said, but he did not specify what they were.The News & Observer had to press UNC to release the second set of documents. The N&O’s initial request for the documents McKenzie received only produced the set of one-page bills. UNC’s public records staff did not respond to a reporter’s request for an explanation as to why the second set was not also provided. That set also has many redactions.
The university told McKenzie it withheld another Wasserman record, he said, claiming it contains “trade secret” information. The state public records law allows agencies to withhold information that might expose a business’s strategy and practices that keep it competitive in the marketplace.
McKenzie pushed back, and on Tuesday, UNC released two emails from October showing Cunningham discussing the ACC’s sinking football game television ratings with Dean Jordan, a Wasserman executive based in Raleigh. “Really concerning facts,” Cunningham wrote. “We need a different scheduling model.”
Cunningham and Jordan included UNC Chancellor Lee Roberts, then General Counsel Charles Marshall and Chief Financial Officer Nate Knuffman in the emails.
UNC officials provided little detail to McKenzie and The N&O about Skadden and Wasserman’s work on behalf of the public university system’s flagship campus, whose athletic program reported spending more than $185 million in 2024. When asked, they also did not explain why Wasserman was left off of legal bills initially made public.
“Skadden and Wasserman assessed the various contracts that affected our television and conference rights,” spokeswoman Robbi Pickeral Evans said in an emailed statement. “It is prudent to understand issues, opportunities and responsibilities.”UNC athletic director Bubba Cunningham could not be made available for an interview because he has a “packed schedule,” she wrote in an email.
Karen Lent, one of Skadden’s attorneys who worked on Carolina Blue, said the firm could not discuss it because of “active litigation” but did not specify what it was. Wasserman officials did not return an email and phone request for comment.
ACC commissioner Jim Phillips, approached at an ACC football media event in Charlotte on Tuesday, said he was unaware of Wasserman’s work for UNC, but it didn’t trouble him.
“I really don’t have any concerns,” Phillips said when asked about a potential conflict of interest. “I don’t believe it’s the same people. Wasserman is so large. And our thing has just been about our branding, ‘Accomplish Greatness,’ so I’ve not talked to them about anything other than that.”
The Athletic in February broke the news of UNC paying Skadden to explore its options amid conference realignments. The Sports Business Journal reported ACC’s partnership with Wasserman in July 2023.
How the ACC survived amid legal peril
Florida State sued the ACC in December 2023 and Clemson sued the conference in March 2024. Both are strong in football, the most lucrative college sport. The SEC and Big Ten are loaded with top football schools, and have struck media rights and other deals that make their member schools more money than do deals with the ACC.
Both conferences have picked off top football schools from two of the other three power conferences — the Big 12 and the Pac-12. The latter lost so many members that it is scrambling to add six smaller schools to start sponsoring football again in 2026.
The ACC snagged two of those Pac-12 schools — Stanford and California — but neither have huge football followings, causing those who pay attention college sport economics to speculate that the additions may not add much to the conference’s bottom line in the long run.
Against that backdrop, the ACC settled with Clemson and FSU in March, providing a concession likely to boost their bottom lines. The ACC now gives bigger cuts of its revenues to member schools that capture the most television viewers. That formula should benefit UNC because it has a national brand.
UNC is drawing massive public interest for signing legendary former NFL coach Bill Belichick to a five-year contract paying $10 million annually. The expense, and the media’s interest in Belichick’s relationship with Jordon Hudson, has further boosted the program’s national profile as football season approaches.
A pattern of secrecy
UNC has a history of attempting to shield internal operations from the public.
The campus took nearly a year to release key records connected to an academic and athletic scandal, first exposed in 2011, involving classes that never met. In 2021, UNC so heavily redacted internal audits about a campus police chief’s actions that the public could not determine what problems the auditors found.
UNC’s secrecy in past years has frustrated many, including Padilla. The lack of candor in the legal bills could reflect that posture, rather than trying to shield Wasserman from scrutiny, Padilla said.
It’s prudent, he said, for UNC to seek advice from Wasserman, given its expertise in the sports world, and the turbulent environment in big-money college sports.
“It makes sense for any institution to do that, but especially for Carolina, which is really trying to make a major move now with the hiring of Belichick and the hiring of new people in basketball,” he said. “They are clearly trying to make themselves more attractive.”
