Bill Belichick to North Carolina: How it happened, what it means and what comes next
The six-time Super Bowl champion is on to UNC, bringing the legendary coach to the college game.
Bill Belichick is on to North Carolina, a monumental move that will pair the second-winningest coach in NFL history with one of the biggest brands in college sports.
The news came Wednesday after nearly a week of reports and speculation, first from Inside Carolina, then with Belichick himself appearing Monday on “The Pat McAfee Show.” There, the coach openly (by his standards, at least) discussed his plans for coaching college football.
Belichick’s philosophy, as outlined to McAfee, mimicked that of a professional operation, with the six-time Super Bowl-winning coach saying: “Let me put this in capital letters: IF, I-F, I were in a college program … it would be an NFL program at the college level.”
Ironically enough, per a source involved in the search, this blueprint was similar to that of multiple candidates whom UNC interviewed, which inadvertently strengthened Belichick’s case.
With revenue-sharing on the horizon, and with programs flipping their rosters overnight thanks to NIL and the transfer portal, UNC brass repeatedly came back to the idea that a successful NFL coach like Belichick would be better-suited for this NFL-like era of college football than college coaches who had less experience operating that way.