New details reportedly emerge on Michael Lombardi's UNC fundraising trip to Saudi Arabia

The University of North Carolina football program released a statement to Front Office Sports on Friday clarifying the reason for Tar Heels general manager Michael Lombardi‘s surprise fundraising visit to Saudi Arabia in August, two weeks before the start of the season.

“I can confirm that Michael Lombardi did travel to Saudi Arabia at the request of a Saudi national who is a college football fan, interested in supporting Coach Belichick,” UNC vice chancellor for communications and marketing Dean Stoyer told Front Office Sports on Friday. “Separately, I’d be remiss not to share that earlier reports of meeting with the PIF (Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia) or investing in UNC are inaccurate.” 

Stoyer previously told The Athletic that Lombardi’s “exploratory fundraising trip” was paid for entirely by a Saudi national who had expressed interest in providing financial support for the UNC football program.

News of Lombardi’s preseason trip was broken Thursday by former ESPN reporter Pablo Torre, who dropped another exposé involving first-year North Carolina coach Bill Belichick and his 24-year-old girlfriend Jordon Hudson on Friday’s Pablo Torre Finds Out podcast. Torre also revealed Lombardi traveled to Saudi Arabia alongside UNC assistant general manager Lance Thompson, a longtime SEC assistant coach who has previously worked under Nick Saban at Alabama and LSU and Gus Malzahn at Auburn.

Lombardi isn’t the first collegiate coach 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. Reilly resigned before the 2024 season began. In his resignation letter, he discussed his ventures in Saudi Arabia.

“You paid me $90,000 a year and let me handle special teams. I did all this work in your name and was told to pursue it,” Reilly wrote. “I burned through all my contacts in my Mormon community, which is worth about $3 trillion. Now, I can’t get these people to answer my calls because I just found out today that none of my endeavors will happen. I even went to Saudi Arabia and got a meeting with the Saudis, who were interested in pursuing business. I have email receipts to prove it, and you guys let it fall flat on its face.”

Lombardi, a longtime friend and confidant of Belichick that worked for him with the New England Patriots between 2014-16, is currently the highest-paid general manager in college football with an annual salary of $1.5 million.

— On3’s Grant Grubbs contributed to this report.