By R.L. Bynum
Steve Newmark grew up in Chapel Hill, rode his father’s shoulders during the 1982 NCAA championship celebration on Franklin Street, and once got permission to skip a college exam to watch the 1993 Final Four with his family.
He calls his passion for Carolina sports “an unhealthy obsession,” one that has shaped his life from childhood into adulthood.
Now, that lifelong fan is stepping into one of the most scrutinized jobs in college athletics: as the executive associate athletic director this school year at UNC, then becoming the athletics director next summer.
“I do feel the weight of the responsibility,” Newmark said in an interview on the school’s “Carolina Insider” podcast released on Tuesday, saying that the athletics department goes well beyond what you see in pro sports. “It’s something that ties generations of families, it ties alumni, it ties this community. And it is the most visible part of the flagship institution in North Carolina.”
But honoring that tradition, he admits, will require bold changes that some Carolina fans — maybe even his younger self — might resist as he tries to unite them.
“To do that, we are going to have to probably do some things that make us a little bit uncomfortable, because that’s the way we’ve got to generate revenue,” said Newmark, who was a senior at William & Mary when he was originally going to take that exam the day after the 1993 NCAA final.
Newmark comes to UNC after spending the previous 15 years in the professional sports world in NASCAR as president of Roush Fenway Keselowski (RFK) Racing. There, he saw firsthand how major brands operate and how revenue streams power success.
College sports, he says, are now facing similar realities.
“There’s a lot more money flowing into collegiate athletics than there was 20, 30 years ago,” he said in the podcast interview. “Our budget is bigger. UNC athletics is a marketing arm for the overall university.”
Newmark said goal is to make UNC the premier public institution from an educational perspective and to figure out how athletics can serve that mission.
“To do that well, we need to generate revenue in order to sustain ourselves,” Newmark said.
For UNC, that means exploring branding and sponsorship opportunities in ways the program never has before. And yes, Newmark knows what fans are worried about — uniforms plastered with corporate logos like a race car.
“I’ve seen the memes out there of a football uniform that looks like a NASCAR uniform with logos all over it,” Newmarks said. “That’s not the direction we’re going. But we do need to think about how we can evolve.”
Newmark rejects the idea that college athletics has “gone pro,” even as NIL deals and player compensation dominate headlines.
“The demise of college athletics hasn’t happened,” he said. “We have almost 800 athletes. Very few are actually getting paid. They’re still enjoying the traditional collegiate experience.”
Still, he recognizes that times have changed. The question is how to adapt without losing what makes Carolina special. For Newmark, the blueprint comes from an old mentor he never worked for but always admired: Dean Smith.
“[Smith] was an innovator; he was an entrepreneur,” Newmark said, acknowledging that the coaching legend may not have liked all the rules. “What he did, he looked at it and said, ‘All right, I may not have liked all the rules, but these are what the rules are, and we’re going to figure out how to make UNC the best it can be.’ I really think that’s what we need to do.”
That new world order may mean making some fans uncomfortable, with new partnerships, new branding and new ways to think about revenue. However, for Newmark, the goal is to keep Carolina elite across all 28 sports while preserving the DNA of UNC athletics.
You can listen to the entire interview here.
Photo via @NewmarkUNC
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