If you had this prediction for where the most successful professional football coach in our time would next pace a sideline when you offered up your 2024 prognostications, I want to get a lock of your hair and encase it in plastic for posterity. What kind of odds would you have been given if you offered up this would be the opening paragraphs of Kendall Baker’s morning newsletter from Yahoo! in the middle of December:
In one of the most shocking coaching moves in sports history, six-time Super Bowl winner Bill Belichick is headed to North Carolina. Belichick (72 years old) is now the oldest head coach in the FBS. The previous oldest was Mack Brown (73), whom he is succeeding at UNC.
But as Baker’s colleague Ross Dellenger noted in the ensuing paragraphs, considering the current state of affairs that we find both the sport and the school in, we might not necessarily be so shocked:
Belichick knows pro ball. College isn’t so different any longer.
In seven months, in fact, college athletics takes another giant leap into the professional world: Schools are permitted to begin directly paying players under a salary cap-type system related to the NCAA’s settlement of three antitrust lawsuits.
Already, ahead of the implementation date of July 1, programs are offering guaranteed financial packages to players, some of them even sending school-issued revenue-sharing documents to recruits.
Most of these contracts are centered around purchasing an athlete’s commercial and endorsement rights, and some of them are even multi-year term deals featuring buyout language. Schools must stay within a cap, projected for now at $20.5 million in Year 1.
Contracts. A salary cap. Scouting departments and capologists. Sound familiar?
“A lot of colleges are looking at NFL-type models to structure personnel and coaching,” Belichick told Pat McAfee during an interview last week. “You need a general manager, a coach and salary cap manager.”
And what could be more opportunistic a template to demonstrate that than an afterthought football school in what has emerged in the new world order as an afterthought conference?
It can be argued that after basketball the second most anticipated season on Chapel Hill would be the women’s soccer program. The ACC has been relegated to coverage beyond the ubiquitous ESPN family of networks (including an underperforming one of their own that entered into the game far too late to develop a significant linear footprint) with merely the CW. North Carolina struggled to get to .50o and bowl eligibility under Brown and is looking forward to a showdown with fellow basketball-centric school UConn in of all venues Fenway Park on the morning of December 28th. Now all of a sudden the likelihood of Belichick showing up in his longtime home city to check out his new team has elevated the Fenway Bowl to national promience. Basketball? That’s a March thing.
And as for those who may be questioning how Belichick’s bedside manner, lampooned even as late as this past weekend by three of his former Patriots on FOX Sports (I strongly urge you to watch this; it’s perhaps one of Brady’s finest broadcasting moments to date),
Soon, the only things separating major college football from the NFL is the tether to higher education (they must still go to class!) and absence of employment (they have not, yet, been deemed employees).
Even college recruiting is changing. Players and their parents aren’t necessarily courted through in-home visits or campus trips. These are, often, transactional relationships with guaranteed cash.
So that bedside manner that the trio of trolls pointed out might not be so darn crucial after all.
And now other YAHOO! Sports contributors like Barry Werner are publishing detailed previews of their 2025 schedule. The ACC is indeed a conference that spans the entire country; conference road games will take Belichick from Syracuse to Berkeley. And if you don’t think a home match with CFP representative Clemson and its notoriously NIL-averse leader Dabo Sweeney hasn’t already taken on a level of importance that will undoubtedly bring College GameDay to Chapel Hill, then you don’t know what motivates sports media executives these days.
That kind of attention and relevance may even shut down the bitching and moaning from Clemson and Florida State about how they believe the ACC has diminished in importance and dragged down what they think they should be receiving for their legacies. Right now the biggest gribe any Noles Nation backer should have is the luck of the draw that doesn’t have them, or for that matter Boston College, on this year’s schedule.
And as for those who don’t think Belichick can emotionally connect with Generation A, need you be reminded of Exhibit A, his current romantic relationship, 24-year-old Jordon Hudson.
About the only concern I might have is the reality check that outside of New England he does tend to have a fear of commitment. Do recall what ESPN’s Rich Cimini reminded his readers on roughly the 20th anniversary of one of the more bizarre days in NFL history. Belichick didn’t even make it through the entire length of his ESPN commitment to the Manningcast. And he is still a mere 14 tantalizing wins away from Don Shula’s all-time NFL record. If he can have any sort of success with North Carolina, and especially if he can turn out talent that will be draftable, don’t think some NFL team mightn’t finally have some second thoughts, Robert Kraft’s non-endorsement notwithstanding.
In his press conference, Belichick attempted to assure people that “he isn’t coming to UNC to leave”. For now, at least on that topic, I suppose we need to accept his word at face value. But were I Hudson, I might want to tighten the leash on my man. You know how tempting those younger college-age women can be.
Courage…