… but what they need to remember is that you’re never going to professionalize this country’s institutions of higher education until you hire, pay well, and retain people like John Blake.
UNC felt forced by the NCAA to fire Blake as its defensive coach simply because he tried to bring the ethos of the NFL to the school (if you want to be competitive, your coaches need to be getting money incentives from agents in exchange for putting them in touch with your players). Because of that decision, University of North Carolina football now looks like a rank amateur in the big-boy high-stakes world of university sports.
(Much more broadly and notoriously, of course, UNC couldn’t even run the bogus players’ curriculum all other seriously sporty universities have figured out to how run.)
The NFL, perceiving Blake’s talent, has now brought him in as defensive line coach for the Buffalo Bills. Blake tried to introduce professional standards to UNC, but UNC wimped out. Their loss. His gain.