The University of North Carolina is facing a lawsuit over the process that went into hiring Bill Belichick as head football coach.
Former North Carolina provost Chris Clemens filed a lawsuit against the university in Orange County, N.C. state court, according to Amanda Christovich of Front Office Sports. The suit alleges that Clemens was unjustly punished for leaking closed-session information from Board of Trustees meetings. Among the issues he cites are Belichick’s hiring. He accused the school of hiding its decisions in closed meetings when they should have been public.
Clemens alleges that the North Carolina board called an emergency meeting that was illegally conducted in private in order to approve Belichick’s hire. The ensuing public vote on the same thing was supposedly already a foregone conclusion.
Clemens alleges that he leaked information from a different meeting, and was forced to resign in May over it. North Carolina board of trustees chair Malcolm Turner denied the allegations, calling them “disappointing and inaccurate.”
At the time of Belichick’s hiring, there were claims that the decision was largely made by the board, and even the school’s athletic director was not necessarily fully in favor of it. That decision is not the primary focus of this lawsuit, but it certainly seems to be playing a role.
The Tar Heels have yet to get the return on investment they hoped for with Belichick. They are just 2-2, and suffered a surprising loss to UCF last Saturday.
