Bill Belichick pressed on reports of Michael Lombardi taking fundraising trip to Saudi Arabia

North Carolina head coach Bill Belichick was pressed on the reports of GM Michael Lombardi taking fundraising trips to Saudi Arabia. Lombardi reportedly took a trip out to the Middle East two weeks prior to the season opener, according to a report from Pablo Torre.

Lombardi isn’t the first collegiate coach or staffer to look to Saudi Arabia for money. In August 2024, Sports Illustrated reported former Colorado special teams coach Trevor Reilly traveled to Saudi Arabia to lobby the country’s Public Investment Fund for NIL money.

After another UNC loss Friday night, Belichick was in no mood to discuss reports of Lombardi’s travel. He wanted to focus only on the 21-18 loss to Cal which put the Tar Heels at 2-4 on the season.

“Yeah I’ll just talk about the game here,” Belichick said. “Just focused on the game. I’m not going to deal with any of those, you know, whatever else. I think the university released a statement on that, so that should take care of it.”

Not much more is known regarding Lombardi’s alleged trip overseas. From the looks of it, it was to seek fundraising, but either to no avail or we wait on a reported number of dollars brought back to North Carolina.

Belichick continued to have worries on the field Friday night though. With less than four minutes left in the game, wide receiver Nathan Leacock fumbled as he was about to cross the goal line for a go ahead touchdown.

Frustration in UNC’s fanbase grew recently when WRAL News reported the program is a “mess” under Belichick and has “no culture, no organization.” Lombardi previously addressed and refuted this report.

“I don’t know about a WRAL report,” Lombardi said to 97.9 The Hill’s Aaron Keck. “I’m not sure there’s been a lot of accuracy coming from that area, but our players are committed to getting better. I think everybody understands it’s a work in progress. Look, we just played one ACC game; we have seven games ahead of us. I don’t think anybody on our team has written off the season or written off anything that we can accomplish.

“We understand we have to get better and we understand we have to play more competitively in the ACC games, and I think our team wants to do that. I’m not sure there’s the disconnect that has been reported. No one’s been around our program with any accuracy to really understand that other than the coaches on our staff.”