Imagine at Thanksgiving 2011, a future-you stepped out of a time machine and handed you this warning:

“Hey, just a heads-up. The NCAA will spend the next six years trying to invent rules to hammer UNC for academic issues that their bylaws explicitly say are beyond their scope of review. The second that’s done, the NCAA will end transfer restrictions, a rule change that fundamentally alters roster construction and development. After that change, Roy will have two of his worst seasons as head coach and then retire. About a month after UNC hires his preferred replacement, courts rule that college athletes can be paid. Within five years, P4 programs with ambition in both men’s basketball and football will be shelling out more than $50 million for those two rosters. And oh, UNC athletics will still be stuck in the ACC, meaning it will gross about $30 million a year less than South Carolina, about $160 million less than Ohio State, and about $180 million less than Texas.”

That note would have likely ruined your Thanksgiving dinner. Imagine how it would have ruined Bubba’s, new athletic director at the University of North Carolina.

That’s been Cunningham’s job description for 15 years. In addition to fighting those battles with external forces, Cunningham had to handle tensions within the UNC athletics community, who often saw different paths forward through those challenges. While every school has that dynamic to some degree, UNC’s proven especially fractious on that front over the years. Example:

Dysfunction: “When a Board of Trustees steps into the hiring of a football coach, with the net result of a lawsuit by a former provost, the Board of Governors spanking the Board of Trustees, and the resignation of the most prominently visible trustee, who says this on the way out the door: ‘If I’m wrong, screw you all. I mean, I tried.’ “

Add to that a simmering civil war over the future of renovating or relocating the basketball arena. It’s a tough gig.

On the field during Cunningham’s tenure, UNC has been stellar, winning 15 NCAA titles across seven sports. UNC consistently finished in the top 10 in the Learfield Director’s Cup standings, as high as 4th in 2022 and 2026. The recent struggles of the two most prominent sports, football and men’s basketball, however, are the most recent thing on Tar Heel fans’ minds.

The advent of NIL seemed to catch Carolina flat-footed. Cunningham was at his best navigating the NCAA’s minefield of bylaws and in-house politics, outmaneuvering Greg Sankey at several turns over the academic scandal. NIL has been an altogether different challenge, a “no rules” moment that seemed to leave Cunningham and UNC consistently two steps behind. With Cunningham determined to not break the rules, UNC hesitantly moved forward into the unknown where others rushed. Add the revenue gaps resulting from ACC membership and camps of boosters pulling in different directions. It all helps add up to some embarrassing seasons on the basketball court and football field recently.

While it would be easy to fixate on near-term struggles in the revenue sports and lower that grade, that requires dismissing how fraught the moment was in the years after the Wainstein Report was issued. Another executive may have seen Greg Sankey sharpening the NCAA’s knives and simply found employment elsewhere, something Cunningham could easily have done. A lesser AD may have suffered a crucial misstep in that wrestling match, with onerous sanctions sending UNC athletics down a very different path over the last decade. Cunningham handled that existential crisis with determination and vision, and that’s no small feat all Tar Heels should appreciate.

What’s your grade and why? Let us know in the comments below.