Dusty May and Michigan are headed to the national championship game in one of the most dominant NCAA Tournament runs in recent history. The Wolverines stomped Arizona to reach the national title game for the first time since 2018 May’s quick turnaround of the Wolverines basketball program also shows the changing of the guard, and proves that the traditional college basketball blue bloods aren’t the same as they once were. 

The same can be said about what Nate Oats has built at Alabama. Duke, Kansas and Michigan State are still powerhouses, but UNC has fallen off. Michigan and Alabama have entered the conversation and the Tar Heels have to figure out where to go from here. Carolina thought Hubert Davis was the answer, and he ended up getting fired. 

The next coach the Tar Heels turn to doesn’t just have the pressure of returning UNC back to the top of the ACC and NCAA Tournament contender. They’ll also have the pressure of getting this program its confidence back, because right now, it sure seems like the landscape is shifting under their feet.

Why you can’t blame Dusty May and Nate Oats for turning down UNC

For the same reason you can’t blame a lot of the coaches that took themselves out of consideration for the Alabama job when Nick Saban retired, you can’t blame May or Oats for passing up on UNC now. Everything May and Oats can do at UNC, they can also do at Bama and Michigan. The blue blood status is similar to the SEC brand in football: It used to be enough to move the needle and monopolize recruiting, but not anymore.

UNC is a good job, but it’s not as attractive as it once was. The transfer portal and NIL leveled the playing field, allowing other schools to flip their rosters and make runs at talent if they were willing to pay, which is why new teams have worked their way into the blue-blood fold. What makes a blue blood team now? Are the traditional ones still as good in the transfer portal era as they were before it? 

Coaching at UNC is hard now because you don’t have the advantage you used to. Looking at the teams that have made the Final Four in the last five years and the ones that have won national championships, none of those teams were competitive against the Heels for years if not decades. Now there’s balance, and UNC is behind. Being a blue blood now doesn’t mean the same thing it used to.

What is UNC’s blue-blood status good for in the transfer portal era?

The one thing UNC’s basketball tradition can do in the era of the transfer portal is help them get depth and find the top players. I think Carolina, depending on who they hire, can still be a player for the top talent in the country, but it doesn’t give them the advantage they once had. It’s nice for high school players, sure, but for transfer portal vets, the calculation changes.

The Tar Heels can still find those elite players in the portal, but the money they can offer isn’t much different than other programs, and the goal is to win a national championship — not just get to the NCAA Tournament or out of the first weekend. 

Carolina is learning a similar lesson that Penn State is learning in football: It’s hard to keep up with the transfer portal era. It can be a massive benefit, but it also means no power-conference team necessarily stands out over another. More than UNC’s blue blood status, whomever they hire as their next coach might be more important. It could be the only difference in whether UNC can return to the top or not.

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