Bill Belichick's hiring at North Carolina has reverberated throughout college football, including among the coaches who will now call him a colleague.
Belichick, a six-time Super Bowl champion coach with the New England Patriots, had spent his entire coaching career in the NFL, beginning in 1975 with the Baltimore Colts. His main connection to college football came through his father, Steve, a longtime college coach who worked mostly at Navy but also spent three years as a North Carolina assistant shortly after Bill was born. Bill evaluated college players for decades and visited Nick Saban and other coaching friends over the years, but his feet were firmly planted in the NFL until Wednesday.
Chapel Bill is taking over at UNC, bringing an unmatched pro football coaching résumé to the college game. He's not the first notable NFL coach to take over a college program. Bill Walsh, who won three Super Bowls with Joe Montana and the San Francisco 49ers in the 1980s, left broadcasting to take over Stanford's program in 1992. But Walsh had coached at Stanford before, while Belichick, 72, is a newcomer to the college ranks.
He arrives at a time when the lines between college and pro football are blurring because players are being paid through name, image and likeness deals, and most have agents. College programs are structuring themselves like NFL teams do, especially with general managers and personnel staff. Belichick wasn't just looking for any college job. He needed assurances and power to operate UNC football in a certain way.
How do coaches think he'll fare with the Tar Heels? What support will he need to truly elevate a UNC program that hasn't won a conference title since 1980 and has just two AP top-10 finishes since 1982? I reached out to several coaches with ties to North Carolina and to Belichick for reactions on a move few could have ever seen coming.
There's great respect for Belichick in college coaching circles. He has made an impact on the sport through his extensive coaching tree, leadership philosophy, schemes and other areas.
Still, the thought of Belichick sitting in ACC coaches meetings or sitting down with teenage players seeking lucrative NIL deals, leaves some college coaches in shock.
An ACC coach said he "cannot wait" for league meetings.
Michael Lombardi talks to Pat McAfee about how having more control of a program swayed Bill Belichick to UNC.
Several coaches said it will take some time to unpack the fact that Belichick is actually leading a college program. "He's truly one of the most intelligent football minds that I've ever been around," a Power 4 coach said. "It's just kind of hard to wrap my mind around how it could play out. It's just crazy."
Several coaches noted that Belichick's credibility will be his main selling point as he enters a new realm. He hasn't won a single college game, but he has eight Super Bowl rings, 12 Super Bowl appearances, 17 divisional titles and 31 playoff wins -- all NFL records.
"He'll have a lot of street cred walking in," said Illinois coach Bret Bielema, who was on Belichick's Patriots staff in 2018 and 2019. "He will say, 'Check my record.'"
Several coaches downplayed the gravity of Belichick's move from pro football to college, noting his knowledge of the game and desire to share his expertise. Boston College coach Bill O'Brien, twice a Belichick assistant with the Patriots, told WEEI radio in Boston on Thursday, "He's a very, very bright guy, so he's going to be able to adapt to his surroundings. In the end, we're teachers, so we have to adapt to who we're teaching."
LSU coach Brian Kelly has known Belichick for years and sensed that Belichick wanted to coach when he visited LSU last month.
"He did not say, 'Hey, I'm going to go coach college,' but you knew that he was coaching again," Kelly said. "There were a lot of questions. There was a lot of discourse about, 'Hey, talk to me about the transfer portal, talk to me about these kinds of things.' You could tell that there was an energy about him that he was going to be coaching next year."
Kelly called Belichick a "home run hire" for North Carolina, adding that Belichick's approach will work well in college, where players and schemes change from year to year.
"The college game complements his philosophical style and teaching," Kelly said. "His attention to detail and his fundamental approach just naturally fits."
Coaches who know or have worked with Belichick describe his personality as being very different behind the scenes than what he showed in news conferences and other public settings while leading the Patriots. An FBS coach who knows Belichick said he has a "sly sense of humor" and "will find great joy in coaching college kids."
"He has a relationship with media in the NFL that everybody wanted to make a big deal of, but when you're around him, he's one of the most engaging, entertaining, funny, spontaneous dudes," Bielema said. "He will be able to build relationships with kids immediately."
When Bielema showed up for work on his first day with the Patriots, he saw Belichick wearing a Rutgers sweatshirt. The next day, Belichick was repping a different college team. Despite being an NFL coaching lifer, Belichick was consistently connected to college football.
Belichick opened his introductory news conference Wednesday saying he "always wanted to coach in college football," and referenced his father's career.
"There was no bigger fan of college football than Bill Belichick," said Bielema, who had players at Wisconsin and Arkansas drafted by Belichick and the Patriots. "His Navy background and all that it was, that grew and manifested itself. He really always admired teams that played the game the right way and were able to win games, not lose them."
Some career college coaches have struggled to adapt to a sport where athletes carry more control, both financially and with where they play ball. The arrival of NIL and the transfer portal have removed power from coaches and required them to engage in different relationships with players and those around them.
Many college football programs have hired general managers and built up personnel staffs that work with the on-field coaches but also independently of them.
"College football is more parallel to the NFL than ever before," Bielema said. "The one thing that Bill has over every coach in college football is the résumé of a salary cap and how negotiations work and your value as a player. He's had an unprecedented level of expertise in a field that many are just trying to start to figure out."
A Power 4 assistant pushed back, saying the largely unregulated recruiting and transfer space that Belichick enters will require some adjustments.
"People think because of the way college football is now, it's more of a pro model, but it's not the pro model, because we don't have all the parameters [the NFL has] that are in place to make it better," the coach said. "Everybody's got unrestricted free agents. That's not the NFL."
Coaches are curious how Belichick absorbs the shifting college personnel landscape. As a Power 4 coach said, "This portal and poaching is so crooked. He's going to learn fast [that] he has little control."
But Kelly said Belichick is entering the sport at "the perfect time," calling college football "a new game." Belichick turns 73 in April and, after replacing the 73-year-old Mack Brown at UNC, becomes the oldest coach in the FBS, ahead of Iowa's Kirk Ferentz (69) and Utah's Kyle Whittingham (65). He will be interacting with players in recruiting, when North Carolina is competing with others for their services, as opposed to during the draft process.
How well will Belichick relate?
"Clearly players today, there are many things that they're looking for, but they want to be developed," Kelly said. "We make way too much of, at 72 years old, whether he knows what kind of music they like. Players aren't interested in that. They're much more interested in being in an environment that will allow them to win, be successful and eventually move on to the NFL."
Belichick's decision to enter college football would be a major story anywhere, but North Carolina is an interesting spot for him. How will UNC and its new coach adapt to each other?
There are reasons why a flagship school in a solid football recruiting state has gone more than 40 years without a single ACC title. There is an expectation that Belichick will receive more support and resources than Brown. Belichick's assistant salary pool is now $10 million, an increase of $2 million from what Brown had, UNC athletics director Bubba Cunningham told ESPN's Andrea Adelson.
"They did more for Mack, but it's still not what some places are," a former UNC assistant said.
Still, UNC isn't just paying for a coveted coach. Belichick arrived at North Carolina with Michael Lombardi, the former Cleveland Browns general manager who had worked alongside Belichick with the Browns and Patriots, as the school's general manager. Belichick referred to Lombardi's "scouting staff" and a structure that would indicate UNC will invest in its coach and his vision for the football program unlike ever before. Lombardi hasn't worked in college football since the start of his career, when he was UNLV's recruiting coordinator from 1981 to 1984.
"I guess if they're going to meet everything that he wants, then he feels like he can be successful, it's great," a former North Carolina staff member said. "It's awesome that it shows that they're finally going to make a commitment. He's not going to go in there not expecting to win. I can't see him taking the job without making sure they're going to be committed and not just talking about it, but actually doing it."
O'Brien, who has moved between college and NFL coaching jobs throughout his career, told WEEI that college coaches lead their organizations, rather than working under general managers and team presidents. Although general managers such as Lombardi are common throughout college football, they work for the head coach.
"Hiring a guy like Lombardi is perfect for this space that we're in right now, who can identify both high school players and portal guys," Kelly said. "A lot of people could take notes from what happened here. We're in this kind of chaos. A lot of people can make inroads during chaos, and I think North Carolina made some inroads today."
Most college coaches are also required to do more away from strictly football, even outside of recruiting. At his introduction, Belichick spoke of how much he looked forward to working on campus and being part of the university community.
UNC chancellor Lee Roberts welcomed Belichick with a Tar Heels sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off, and Cunningham donned a similarly tailored suit jacket. But a former UNC assistant said of Belichick, "Him doing all these events with all the so-called money people around there, all the sweaters and Dockers and Penny Loafers, I just can't see it."
Belichick will be interacting with donors and could be involved in fundraising efforts that take him away from UNC's football complex.
"I don't believe it is beneath him at all," an FBS coach said.
Bielema pointed out that for years, career college coaches moving to the NFL and career NFL coaches joining the college ranks have often struggled because of the differences in the two levels. But Belichick is entering college football at a time when areas such as roster composition and even the playoff are more similar to the NFL.
"When you come into new jobs later in your career, one of the greatest things that can come is new opportunities that you've never seen before," Bielema said. "I would guess that he would view this as exactly that. He's probably seeing it as a new opportunity for an old way of doing things. That's probably what's good for him and probably bad for all of us in college football.
"I just think he'll be exceptional at what he does."