Former South Alabama quarterback Gio Lopez, one of the top passers in the spring transfer portal, has committed to North Carolina, he announced on social media Thursday.

The No. 6 available transfer in ESPN’s spring portal rankings, Lopez lands as an immediate front-runner to claim the Tar Heels’ starting quarterback job under first-year coach Bill Belichick. Per sources, Lopez will join North Carolina on a two-year, $4 million contract with three seasons of remaining eligibility after a breakout redshirt freshman season in 2024.

Lopez entered the transfer portal earlier this week two days after completing spring camp with South Alabama. His commitment formally closes the Tar Heels’ lengthy search for a quarterback since Belichick took over the program in December.

Sources said that Lopez initially considered an exit from South Alabama during the winter transfer portal window before opting to remain with the program. He stayed with the Jaguars through spring practices and took part in the program’s spring showcase Saturday, but transfer portal interest from major Power 4 programs persisted in the lead-up to the spring window.

Sources told ESPN that Georgia and LSU held discussions with Lopez this spring, each with an eye on giving him a chance to compete for a starting spot in 2026. According to sources, North Carolina initiated contact with Lopez’s camp in March and continued talks through Thursday, when Lopez finalized his deal with general manager Michael Lombardi and the Tar Heels.

North Carolina entered Belichick’s first spring camp with three quarterbacks on the roster — Max Johnson, Ryan Browne and incoming freshman Bryce Baker.

Browne, a former Purdue transfer, entered the portal earlier this week. Baker, ESPN’s No. 200 recruit in the 2025 cycle, remains with the Tar Heels after affirming his commitment following coach Mack Brown’s departure. Johnson, a 23-game starter, returns in 2025 after suffering a season-ending leg injury in Week 1 last fall.

A 6-foot-2, 220-pound dual-threat, Lopez emerged as one of the most productive Group of 5 quarterbacks in the nation last fall when he led South Alabama to a 7-6 finish in coach Major Applewhite’s first season. Lopez completed 66% of his passes for 2,559 yards and 18 touchdowns in 11 starts, adding another 465 rushing yards and seven touchdowns on the ground.

Per TruMedia, Lopez’s 8.20 yards per passing attempt in 2024 ranked 26th among quarterbacks nationally. He also completed 38 passes of 20-plus yards last fall, more than 27 returning passers across the country in 2025.

DAVE LeBLANC REMEMBERS when he saw Jack Bech practice for the first time at a middle school football camp. A strength and offensive line coach at St. Thomas More in Lafayette, Louisiana, since 1995, he has seen his share of talented players come through south Louisiana. But Bech stood out.

“I have witnesses,” LeBlanc said. “When he was running, doing some agility blocks and I was watching him perform, I said, ‘This is going to be the next kid that plays on Sundays.’ I made that call in seventh grade before he had hair under his arms.”

The coaches already had a frame of reference, albeit a smaller one. They had coached Tiger Bech, Jack’s older brother, an aggressive, fiery, but diminutive all-purpose talent who went on to star at Princeton.

“Before Jack, Tiger was the best receiver we’ve ever had,” said Lance Strother, STM’s wide receivers coach. “Then Jack came along with the same skill set, but he also brought the metrics with him, the size and the strength.”

Both fearless. Neither lacked a drop of confidence. They were just five years apart in age and completely different in build.

“Tiger was 5-9 on a tall day,” their dad Martin said, “while Jack was always a man amongst boys. He always was huge.”

All these years later, Jack Bech is standing taller than ever. Now 6-foot-2, 215 pounds, he’s considered a solid Day 2 pick in next week’s NFL draft, all while carrying the hopes of his brother and his family after Tiger, his best friend, was killed on Jan. 1 in the terrorist attack on Bourbon Street in New Orleans.

“Whatever team gets me, it’s going to be a two-for-one special. Not only do you get Jack Bech, you get Tiger Bech too,” Jack said. “I have a superpower now. I have another presence about me that just can’t lose.”

JACK IDOLIZED TIGER, following him everywhere from the time he could walk. He watched his brother become a football star, and wanted to be just like him. But Tiger would always tell Jack he got the genetic gifts that he was lacking, calling his little brother “the prototype.”

Two of their uncles, Brett and Blain Bech, played football at LSU, and their aunt, Brenna Bech, was on the Tigers’ first soccer team. Naturally, they were competitive, but Tiger, who became an All-Ivy League return specialist in college, saw bigger things for Jack.

Baton Rouge was just 45 minutes away, and they grew up going to LSU games at Death Valley, watching Tyrann Mathieu, Odell Beckham, Jarvis Landry and Leonard Fournette.

And Jack would be next.

“I had two dreams: One was to play in Tiger Stadium, and one was to play in the NFL,” Jack said.

In late October 2020, shortly before signing day, Jack, who had committed to Vanderbilt, finally got an offer from LSU. The family was ecstatic. One of his dreams was coming true.

And he was a star out of the gate. Jack Bech started seven games as a freshman, catching 43 passes for 489 yards and three touchdowns, and becoming a fan favorite. Playing as a hybrid tight end/slot receiver, he was named to two different freshman All-America teams in 2021 alongside players such as Xavier Worthy and Brock Bowers. But once Ed Orgeron was fired and Brian Kelly arrived with a new coaching staff, he had to start over.

He struggled with some nagging injuries but was cleared to play, although he ultimately got stuck in a logjam in a loaded receivers room with Malik Nabers, Kayshon Boutte, Kyren Lacy and Brian Thomas Jr. He played in 12 games, and caught just 16 passes for 200 yards and a touchdown.

“When the coaching change happened at LSU, those weren’t the guys that recruited him and everybody around him didn’t think he was getting a fair shake,” LeBlanc said. “He went from being a freshman All-American, then getting on the field maybe 25% of the snaps. I think the transfer portal is bad for football in the long run. But if anybody should have transferred, it was Jack.”

He picked TCU as his destination, but Sonny Dykes, who had coached at Louisiana Tech and knows the psychic power LSU has over the state’s residents, knew it was a gut-wrenching decision.

“There’s nobody that loves the state of Louisiana more than his family,” Dykes said. “There was a lineage and I’m sure it was very difficult for him to leave. But there’s a quiet confidence about that whole family and it took a lot of confidence to bet on yourself. That’s what makes him different and unique.”

In Fort Worth, Jack suffered a high ankle sprain and had surgery as the Horned Frogs, coming off a 13-2 season in 2022, slipped to 5-7. But amid the struggles, Dykes sold him on a long-range plan, telling him they wanted him to get him fully healthy and back to who he was as a freshman, even if it was frustrating for Jack.

“Well, let’s give a lot of credit to Sonny Dykes for that,” Strother said. “Imagine having a world-class race car tuned up and ready to go and you’re pretty sure there’s not another car that can beat it anywhere, but you keep it in the garage. It was a matter of Jack getting healthy and then being unleashed with opportunity.”

Dykes said by midway through his junior year, Jack had so many small little bumps and bruises that he “had one of everything.” He could see how badly Jack wanted to play, which he said might have been part of the problem. He couldn’t ease off the gas.

“He’s a guy that’s trained his body really, really hard, has never taken a break and tried to squeeze every single ounce of ability out of his body,” Dykes said. “And it was pretty banged up because of it.”

He caught just five passes from October on, as they kept him on a tight leash. He finished his junior year in 2023 with appearances in eight games, catching 12 passes for 146 yards. But Dykes would tell anyone who would listen that he was going to be a star the next season. And by the spring, it was evident.

“We were going to play him inside, but we had a logjam of players inside, and he just kept performing at such a high level that we wanted to play him every down. So we moved him outside, and the thing about him is he knew all the positions. It’s easier to move from outside to inside because you’ve got to deal with press corners and releases. There’s usually a transition. With Jack, there was no transition.”

He responded with one of the greatest seasons by a Horned Frogs receiver, catching 62 passes for 1,034 yards and nine touchdowns in 2024, the fourth-highest single-season total in TCU history, trailing only Josh Doctson, Quentin Johnston and Jalen Reagor, who were all first-round picks.

And best of all, Tiger was there to watch every game, flying down from New York, where he had begun a career as a stockbroker.

“One of the greatest things about this season was it gave us, our whole family a focus,” Martin Bech said. “My daughter lives in Philadelphia, another one lives in Nashville. It gave us all a gathering point. Tiger just loved being there, being in Fort Worth and being with Jack. There’s a famous text in the family now about how Tiger was just so enamored by Jack’s success.”

“It’s happening,” Tiger wrote.

AT 3:15 A.M. on Jan. 1, Tiger and his roommate Ryan Quigley, whom he worked with in New York, were on Bourbon Street when Shamsud-Din Jabbar of Houston accelerated his pickup truck into the crowd, then got into a shootout with police before he was fatally wounded. He killed 14 people, including Tiger, and injured at least 57 others, including Quigley.

Tiger was taken to the hospital and kept on life support until his family could arrive. A TCU booster flew Jack to New Orleans on his plane immediately, but he didn’t make it in time. The moment he got the news Tiger was gone, he told himself he was going to get Tiger a Hall of Fame jacket.

Jack was out front immediately, doing television interviews and hoping to talk about his brother whenever he was needed. He and the family were unimaginably unshakeable.

“Our pain and our suffering is no different from the 13 other families that lost their loved ones in that horror,” Martin said. “All these kids that were in the ICU for weeks on end and Tiger’s roommate who had his leg shattered and his face gashed for six inches, everyone is struggling the same. We’re just blessed that we are given the platform to share Tiger’s story.”

Jack said his foundation is his faith, that he believes there was a reason this year played out the way it did. Tiger and the family were gathered for every game. He had the best season of his life. They were all together in New Orleans for Christmas.

Martin said he started hearing stories after Tiger had died about all the people he had visited back home in Louisiana over the holidays who he hadn’t seen in years. He thinks that was all by design too. He said Tiger knew Jack was going to be near Fort Worth rigorously training for the draft, so he wanted to maximize their time together.

“When we’re home together, we’re going to spend every minute together,” Tiger told Jack. “If we have to go Christmas shopping, we’re going to go together. If we have to go meet a friend, we’re going to meet the friend together. If we’re going to go to our aunt’s house for dinner, we’re going together.”

They were inseparable the entire holiday season, even down to the pets, Martin said.

“We have pictures of him sleeping on the sofa with Jack’s dog,” he said of Tiger. “Is it any more special than a lot of brothers’ relationships? Maybe not, but it was pretty damn special.”

Jack says this is all destiny. And it has allowed him to find a new gear.

Every coach who knows Jack has seen a different Jack since that day. And they all have a similar vantage point on what they see.

“He was already on a great trajectory,” Dykes said. “This was kind of the rocket fuel.”

“Some people could have spun off the rails after you lose your best friend, but it did the total opposite with Jack,” LeBlanc said. “Jack was going to be in the league with or without Tiger’s passing, but Tiger’s passing kind of propelled him.”

“Tiger, who was an absolutely phenomenal football player himself, knew and understood long before the rest of the football world understood and believed Jack was bound for greatness at the highest level,” Strother said. “Now he’s bound, determined and on fire to bring to the fullest potential his talent and ability in honor of Tiger and in honor of his faith.”

Everything culminated in a magical Senior Bowl performance.

Jim Nagy, the game’s executive director, got Jack the No. 7 jersey, Tiger’s number. Every player on the field wore a tiger-striped decal with 7 on it. Jack had an impressive performance, earning MVP honors with six catches for 68 yards.

Dykes said he was watching with his 8-year-old son Daniel, who said, “Dad, Jack’s going to score a touchdown on the last play of the game.”

With 7 seconds left, Memphis QB Seth Henigan rolled right, and found Jack for the game-winner. Jack calls these moments “Tiger Winks.”

“I knew I was about to catch that ball and score that touchdown,” he said. “My brother’s name was written in the clouds above us. Just so many signs. I mean, if you don’t believe God is real, I don’t know how much more you need.”

He has lived a lifetime this offseason. Now he waits to see where he goes. But wherever it is, Tiger will be with him. He’s got “7 to Heaven” tattooed on his chest, along with a set of Roman numerals representing Tiger’s birth and death dates.

“They’re only on the left side of my body, because he was my other half,” Jack said.

Strother said it will be tough knowing Tiger won’t be there for Jack’s draft party.

“There will be a profound Tiger spirit all throughout that draft party room because it was a day and a moment that Jack and Tiger together really looked forward to,” he said.

And whoever turns that card in with Jack’s number on it will get both of them.

NASHVILLE — It’s a memory that flashed through Vanderbilt coach Clark Lea’s mind more than once when the program was in the throes of a 26-game SEC losing streak in 2022, his second season as coach.

The memory presented itself again a year ago as Lea guided Vanderbilt to its first winning season since 2013, its first-ever win over a No. 1 team and a bowl victory over Georgia Tech, all culminating with Lea being named SEC Coach of the Year by his peers.

“I remember watching [assistant coach] Robbie Caldwell and my other coaches line the practice field and mow the grass when I played here,” said Lea, a fullback on head coach Bobby Johnson’s first teams at Vanderbilt from 2002-04. “They did everything.”

Contrast that to the scene last October after the Commodores’ signature win of the season, a 40-35 victory over top-ranked Alabama. Following Vanderbilt’s first win over the Crimson Tide in 40 years, fans ripped down the goalposts, paraded them through Nashville and dumped them into the Cumberland River.

The surreality of it all was matched by the resolve of Lea and his players, and their insistence that, in the words of quarterback Diego Pavia, “the rest of the world might have been shocked, but we weren’t.”

“We’re in a business of messaging, and a lot of what I remember as a player is the disconnect from the university and the athletic department and the team, and especially the lack of resources,” Lea said.

It’s a situation Lea inherited when he returned to his alma mater as coach in December 2020 in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, as did his boss, Candice Storey Lee, when she was hired a year earlier as the SEC’s first Black female athletic director.

Together, they’re trying to change the narrative and not operate, as Lee jokes, like the little engine that could.

“It was the idea that we were going to unhook from the past and take steps that build toward the future that we all believe we’re capable of here,” said Lee, who has three degrees from Vanderbilt and was on campus the same time as Lea as a captain on the 2002 women’s basketball team that won the SEC tournament.

“Sometimes perception does not match reality, but the reality is that there was a narrative that Vanderbilt was not going to do the things that were necessary to experience consistent success. So from the very beginning, we had to set out to show that we were serious about wanting to compete and compete at the highest level, and we are still doing that. That process isn’t complete.”

Lea’s breakthrough 2024 season in his fourth year back on West End sent perhaps the clearest signal yet that the process is yielding results — and not just in football.

For the first time, Vanderbilt’s football team, men’s and women’s basketball teams and baseball team have all been nationally ranked during the same academic year.

But no climb has been steeper than the one faced by the football program, which was plummeting toward rock bottom when Lea arrived and only got worse during his second season, when the Commodores’ SEC losing streak reached 26 games. Lea wasn’t around for all those losses, but the walls were nonetheless closing in even when the Commodores salvaged a 5-7 record.

Then came 2023, when Vanderbilt dipped to 2-10 (0-8 in the SEC), and the heat ratcheted up on Lea. The Commodores lost all eight of their SEC games by two touchdowns or more.

“Hey, there were days where I was face down on the floor here, and it’s just, ‘Get yourself up, dust yourself off and trust in your resilience to do the next right thing the right way,'” Lea said. “For me, once I kind of realized that I may get my ass kicked a few times, nothing was going to knock me off from leading this program day in, day out, and making the changes that unlock the potential for success.”

Lea wasn’t the only one catching heat from the fans, media and some boosters. So was his former classmate Lee, who hired him. Making matters worse for Lee was that the men’s basketball team was struggling under Jerry Stackhouse and went 4-14 in SEC play during the 2023-24 season. Lee fired Stackhouse after the season and replaced him with Mark Byington, who took a team picked to finish last in the SEC to the NCAA tournament.

“One of the things that I know from going through knee replacement surgery recently is that healing and building is not a linear process,” Lee said. “Some days, it’s really good, and then something happens and I wake up and my knee is swollen. I don’t really understand what happened, but you still have to push forward and know there is something beautiful on the other side.

“You just wish it was easy, but it’s not.”

VANDERBILT’S CAMPUS, A short walk to the heart of downtown Nashville, one of America’s fastest growing cities, is dotted with signs that read “Dare to Grow.” Construction sites, cranes and hard hats are everywhere. Right outside Lea’s office window in the McGugin Center, the transformation of FirstBank Stadium continues with the South End Zone project, featuring premium seating and other amenities. It’s part of the Vandy United $300 million campaign, announced in 2021, to rebuild the school’s athletics facilities.

“We reached that $300 million goal pretty quickly, and we didn’t stop,” Lee said. “We have aspirations beyond that number, so we’re going to keep dreaming. We’re going to keep raising the money, we’re going to keep investing.”

The reality is that Vanderbilt can’t stop if it’s going to have any chance to compete with the football juggernauts in the SEC, especially in the current NIL world. But Lee is insistent that Vanderbilt is “beautifully positioned to maximize whatever model is in front of us” when the House settlement is approved and revenue sharing is in place. The current proposal allows for athletic departments to directly pay athletes with a pool up to $20.5 million in Year 1.

On the facilities front, even with the long overdue facelift to the stadium, the McGugin Center is noticeably outdated with a weight room, team meeting room and offices that pale in comparison to those at other SEC schools. Lea is hopeful a new football operations building comes sooner rather than later but said he doesn’t need a complex loaded with bells and whistles.

Lea looks at the new Huber Center, Vanderbilt’s four-story, state-of-the-art basketball practice facility, and sees what’s possible.

“It’s less important to me and for this program to have things like DJ booths and whatever else,” Lea said. “But I want people to walk into our building and recognize that football is really important here.

“What we’ve done really well here is that our people are the best, and if we can combine that with competitive spaces that also optimize our efficiency, we’re on our way to being where we need to be.”

Some of the people Lea, 43, is talking about are hires that were made primarily during last offseason, when he overhauled just about everything that touched his program. In the last year-plus, he has brought in veteran football people such as senior offensive adviser Jerry Kill, senior defensive analyst Bob Shoop, offensive coordinator Tim Beck and head strength coach Robert Stiner, among others. Kill and Beck are both former head coaches. Stiner and Lea worked together for three seasons at Notre Dame, and Shoop is a former Broyles Award finalist with more than 35 years of coaching experience. He was defensive coordinator under James Franklin for Vanderbilt teams that won nine games in 2012 and 2013.

Offensive line coach Chris Klenakis, entering his second season at Vanderbilt, has seen 24 of his former linemen reach the NFL over a 30-plus year career. He’s also been an offensive coordinator and worked with Colin Kaepernick at Nevada and Lamar Jackson at Louisville.

Lea hasn’t been hesitant to evolve, either. He took over the duties as defensive playcaller last season after the Commodores finished 129th nationally in scoring defense (36.2 points per game) and 131st in total defense (454.9 yards per game) in 2023. Lea said former NFL safety and assistant coach Steve Gregory, in his second season at Vanderbilt, will call defensive plays in 2025.

“I think it’s the best coaching staff in the country,” Pavia said. “Guys are going to want to come here because they see what these coaches get out of players. They see how they develop you. I know what Coach Kill did for me in bringing me here and what that opened up for me.”

PAVIA, WHO EMERGED as one of the most electric players in the country last season after transferring from New Mexico State, played as big a role as anyone in Vanderbilt’s revival. He was the only quarterback in the SEC to pass for more than 2,200 yards and rush for more than 800, accounting for 28 touchdowns, and inside the locker room, he was the heartbeat of a team that reveled in doing what people said couldn’t be done at “little old Vandy.”

Last year’s 7-6 season easily could have been a nine-win campaign. Four of the Commodores’ six losses were by a touchdown or less, including a 30-27 double overtime defeat at Missouri and a 27-24 home loss to Texas in which the Longhorns had to recover an onside kick to seal the game.

And the best part for the Commodores? They return many of the key players from last season, which saw Vanderbilt reach five wins before the end of October, only to lose three of its last four games in the regular season when Pavia wasn’t completely healthy.

“We had one guy transfer out that played for us last year,” said senior linebacker Langston Patterson, who was Lea’s first verbal commitment and went to high school in Nashville at Christ Christian Academy. “It’s about culture. The reason some of those past Vandy teams didn’t sustain success is because they had some great players, but no culture. We have great players on top of great culture, and that creates a great team. But you still have to go do it. Coach Lea touches on it all the time. We’re as close to 2-10 as we are 10-2. We’ve got to keep pushing forward.

“Really, to us, last year was mediocre. We fell apart the last three games. Everyone else thinks we had a great year, but to us, we could have been so much better.”

Lea’s idea of culture transcends the football field. He said the program has had six straight semesters with a collective 3.0 GPA or better in the classroom.

“That’s not because we’re recruiting valedictorians,” Lea said. “It’s because we’re recruiting guys that care about how they’re developing as people too, and they allow us to put boundaries in place for them to reach their highest level.”

As Vanderbilt tries to build on its momentum from a year ago, one thing is certain. The Commodores won’t sneak up on anybody, not after wins over Alabama and Auburn and narrow misses against LSU, Missouri and Texas.

“Nothing changes with us,” Pavia said. “We came here to win games. Coach Lea said it, that we want to have the best program in the SEC. For a lot of guys on this team, it’s our last chance, sort of our last dance, to really flip this program.”

Vanderbilt’s success a year ago came largely thanks to a ball-control offense, shortening the game, winning the turnover battle, stopping the run (especially on early downs) and playing lights-out on special teams.

Even with the recent upgrade in player personnel, it’s always going to be difficult for Vanderbilt to “out-Alabama” Alabama and “out-Georgia” Georgia in terms of sheer talent and depth.

“I know Coach Lea doesn’t believe that we can be like every other SEC team philosophically and find ways to break through to the top,” said offensive coordinator Beck, who also has been a defensive coordinator and spent the first 32 years of his coaching career at Division II powerhouse Pittsburg State. “You have to be a little bit different, and we were a little bit unique. I’m not one of these young offensive coordinators that’s just trying to score as many points as we can every game.

“You try to find ways to reduce the margins a little bit, so you’ve got to play complementary football. We still want to be fun and exciting, which I feel like we are, but we’re not going to be in a huge hurry. We led the nation in forced turnovers last year, which was huge for us because the matchups that we had player to player are still not there yet. We’ve got to be smart about what we do on both sides of the ball.”

Vanderbilt beat Auburn 17-7 last season despite finishing with just 227 total yards. But the Commodores pinned the Tigers inside their own 5-yard line twice, started two of their drives in Auburn territory, committed just three penalties and didn’t turn the ball over once.

“They manage the game as well as anybody,” Auburn coach Hugh Freeze said. “They’re smart. They play to their strengths, and they don’t give you anything.”

As stunning as Vanderbilt’s win over Alabama was to the college football world, Tide coach Kalen DeBoer wasn’t surprised by what he saw this season from Lea and the way he reinvigorated the program.

“I’ve known Clark going back to when he was at South Dakota State, and it wasn’t like we were close friends or anything, but I followed the success he’s had as a coordinator and knew that he was really good,” said DeBoer, who started his coaching career at Sioux Falls. “I felt like watching the film before our game that you could see the defense and the team philosophy revolving around making the game as short as possible, and he did a good job in the critical moments of making some calls.

“I knew going in that they were a different team than what they had been in the past. There was no doubt, and I think everyone who played them would tell you the same thing.”

Now comes the hard part for Lea and Vanderbilt: Doing it all over again.

The only time in the past 50 years that Vanderbilt has put together back-to-back winning seasons was in 2012 and 2013 under Franklin.

Lea, who grew up in Nashville, knows the doubters persist and that history suggests sustaining football success at Vanderbilt is more fantasy than reality. Down deep, he’s energized by that doubt.

“I think we as a program, me in particular, can’t help but operate with a chip on your shoulder, and you can’t help but bathe in the doubt that surrounds you,” Lea said. “We love that, and we don’t recruit beyond that, meaning I don’t want people here that are entitled. I don’t want people here that don’t see the work that has to be done.”

Pavia’s take is a bit more on the coarse side, in typical Pavia fashion.

“I mean, [Lea] comes from ground zero,” Pavia said. “A lot of people weren’t believing in him, people wanting him fired a year ago, and now all of a sudden, he’s the biggest star in Nashville. I think that still fuels him, that people gave up on him, didn’t believe in him on his journey or believe in us.

“So it’s like, ‘F— you. Watch us do it.'”