Steve Newmark has made the shift from auto racing executive to North Carolina’s AD-in-waiting

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. (AP) – Steve Newmark has spent years working in a sport defined by speed.

Maybe that will have the former NASCAR racing team president prepared for the rapidly shifting landscape of college sports as North Carolina’s designated next athletic director.

The school announced its succession plan in July, hiring Newmark away from RFK Racing for a transitionary position before becoming Bubba Cunningham’s successor in 2026. Newmark started working alongside Cunningham this month as an executive associate AD, giving him the better part of a year to study the intricacies and quirks of overseeing a power- onference athletics program while evaluating what could be ahead with schools now permitted to pay college athletes directly.

“We were joking,” Newmark said of Cunningham, “some of it is just me following Bubba around and learning the ropes here.”

And yet, Newmark’s status as an outsider is exactly why he’s here at this particular moment.

UNC has touted the Chapel Hill native’s experience in sponsorships, marketing and contract negotiations after his 15-year run as president of Roush Fenway Keselowski Racing. That announcement came, fittingly, on the fourth anniversary of athletes being able to profit from use of their name, image and likeness (NIL).

It also came the same day as the official start of revenue sharingfollowing the $2.8 billion House antitrust settlement, clearing the way for schools to share up to about $20.5 million with their athletes in Year 1.

Paying for all that – along with facing issues for the 28-sport program such as the uncertain future for the Smith Center home to the school’s storied men’s basketball program – will be Newmark’s responsibility by next summer.

Cunningham, UNC’s AD since late 2011, said the two had conversations going back to last summer about differing approaches to generating revenue between auto racing and college sports, particularly with things changing so quickly in the latter since the COVID-19 pandemic.

Cunningham described it as “an ongoing conversation,” leading to Newmark working on an advisory committee in the hiring of Bill Belichick as football coach in December before ultimately being named Cunningham’s successor.

Cunningham, 63, is set to transition into an advisory role tied to special projects, such as the “Carolina North” campus expansion that could potentially host a new basketball area if the school opts not to renovate the 39-year-old Smith Center.

“He and I shared the passion for what we were doing and where it was headed,” Cunningham said. “And then thinking about, all right, I’ve got two years left on a contract, I’m ready to do something else, how do we make this transition work for Carolina?

“He’s a perfect fit for us right now. There wasn’t anything too magical to it. It was just kind of taking time over a developing relationship between the two of us, and the thought of: ‘How do we continue to get better?'”

Added Newmark: “I don’t think when we started the discussions that that was the objective. I wasn’t looking to leave RFK Racing. I really enjoyed it there.”

Rather, Newmark said, he looked at moving to UNC as an opportunity to use his own professional sports experience in a college world looking more pro-like by the day – or hour, for that matter.

Newmark said he’ll spend the coming months looking at options for generating additional revenues in the long term. And it doesn’t take long to connect his history in auto racing – where sponsors turn cars into high-profile advertising for their brand – to the possibilities.

That’s of particular interest in Chapel Hill, where the school long refused to allow advertising in major athletics venues until roughly two decades ago. Yet now, UNC joins schools across the country in mulling options such as selling naming rights to venues, field sponsorships or even jersey patches if permitted by the NCAA – which only last year permitted advertisements on football fields for regular-season games.

“If you put Modelo (beer) on the (coaches’) headsets, probably not a good idea,” Cunningham said. “Modelo sponsoring the beer garden makes sense. So it just becomes part and parcel to what you’re doing. But I think that’s where the sponsorship experience that he brings to us is going to be really valuable to Carolina.”

Newmark said he thinks sports fans nationally are more acclimated now to seeing more marketing, promotions and advertisements “integrated” into sporting events.

“I think it may have been something that would’ve been a shock to the system 20 years ago, but I think everybody has seen the evolution of sports,” Newmark said. “And collegiate athletics is clearly not on the leading edge of doing that. If you look at professional sports, they’ve been much more aggressive in integrating brands and properties.”

Still, Newmark stopped short of planning to replicate those ad-heavy racing looks in that trademark shade of light blue.

“Well, I have committed to several donors that I promise we won’t look like a NASCAR driver’s fire suit and show up at any time,” he quipped.