Tarheels Make a Bold Move in Hiring Belichick. Is the Reward Worth the Risk?

By midseason in Chapel Hill, rumors began to circulate that long time Head Coach Mack Brown could be in his last year at the helm of the program. Brown himself questioned if he was the right man to move forward with the Tarheels. With such rumors, speculation is sure to follow in its wake. If a coaching change were made, would North Carolina hire a hot and upcoming young head coach from a MAC or AAC school? Would the next coach be a coordinator from a powerhouse? When the new coach was hired, would it be a recognizable name? When the dust settled and Brown was relieved of his duties, the answer to those questions was a resounding no. 

There are attributes, positive and negative, to the tenure of Athletic Director Bubba Cunningham. The strongest of them might be boldness and thinking outside the box. When he hired six-time Super Bowl winning coach Bill Belichick as his new head coach of the Tar Heels, Cunningham, to use a baseball analogy, swung for the fences. In mid-October, anyone projecting the Belichick hire would have been roasted beyond recognition on social media. Regardless of how this hire plays out, it will be studied for years as an inspired, industry changing pick, or the reason Cunningham is selling used cars in the Triad region.

At first glance it appears an odd choice. One can’t help to smile at the image of the prickly and irascible Belichick sitting in the living of a 17 year old high school star while making small talk with his parents by extolling the virtues of campus life in Chapel Hill and obtaining a degree from UNC. The discussions between himself and the compliance office and the academic advisors could be legendary. It will be interesting to see how well the old school, one word answer, Belichick’s personality meshes with dozens of young men unaccustomed to being told no.

It is also a relatively unprecedented dynamic. Only once has a successful NFL head coach, let alone one with multiple Super Bowl rings, taken on a college coaching position. Bill Walsh went from the San Fransisco 49ers to Stanford, with a brief announcing stint in between. He fared well in his inaugural season winning the Cardinal their first PAC-10 championship since 1971. However, two consecutive losing season sent Walsh back into retirement. 

The reverse has also seen a high rate of failure. Lou Holtz, Steve Spurrier, Pete Carroll 1.0, Dennis Erickson, and even perhaps the greatest college head coach of all time, Nick Saban, left successful college programs for the NFL. They all departed in humiliating fashion. In Carroll’s defense, a return trip to college led to a very successful second stint in the NFL with the Seattle Seahawks. History is not Belichick’s friend on this count, but he is a brilliant football mind.

Perhaps part of Cunningham’s motivation is the continuing blurring of the lines between the NCAA and the NFL. NIL and the transfer portal have made college rosters as transient as the NFL. Players now have representatives that negotiate deals and facilitate public relations on their behalf. NIL collectives have ballooning revenues into the of tens of millions of dollars. With the proliferation of social media, it is impossible for coaches to keep complaints in house. Cunningham’s calculus might have concluded that if the college players begin to act like professionals before they even step foot on campus, it would be beneficial to hire a head coaches already familiar with the trials and tribulations of the modern athlete’s mindset. If you are going to hire a coach accustomed to dealing in these matters, why not hire the most decorated coach available?

Belichick appears to have embraced that philosophy by hiring former NFL executive Michael Lombardi as the program’s general manager. In recent years, college programs have begun hiring general managers. The demands on a head coach have become a year-round, all consuming job. Budgets are approaching levels similar to the GDP of third world countries. Keeping up with facilitates and mollifying boosters is too much for one man. Cunningham and Belichick realize if the college game continues to forge into a version of the NFL, a person with vast NFL experience is essential to keep the whole house of cards from collapsing. College football is a huge business. General managers need to deal with the business so the coaches can get back to the x’s and o’s.

So why would Belichick throw himself into this no win situation? Often, these types of decisions are driven by money, ego, or both. Money? Belichick has made a fortune spending a lifetime coaching in the NFL. He is financially secure. Ego? He has won more Super Bowls than any head coach in NFL history. He is a guaranteed Pro Football Hall of Fame inductee in waiting. He is a star on Monday Night Football’s Manning Cast and other studio shows. Of course, there is his girlfriend, the source of endless social media admiration.

If he is not driven by power and money, maybe his motivation is more personal, legacy and redemption. Bill Belichick took a perennial middle of the pack franchise in the New England Patriots and turned it into one of the NFL’s great dynasties. If he can accomplish that with the Tarheels on the collegiate level, it will be forever decided who is the greatest football coach of all time. He also had written into his UNC contract a provision that names his son, Steve, as coach-in-waiting. By taking the North Carolina job and making his son his successor, he has ensured that the younger Belichick will finally get a chance to run a team on his own and the family business, started by his father, also named Steve, will continue.

Should Belichick succeed in turning the Tarheels into an ACC and College Football Playoff power, people will begin to forget the unceremonious end to his Patriots career. The whispers that his success came on the coattails of the greatness of Tom Brady will begin to fade. The sting of being bypassed for every NFL coaching vacancy in 2024 will ease. A redeemed Belichick could parlay success with North Carolina into a renewed attractiveness to NFL teams, especially if he displays the ability to relate to younger players. According to The Athletic, his $10 million buyout drops to $1 million on June 1, 2025. One million dollars is a rounding error to an NFL franchise. Belichick is 14 regular season wins away from tying Don Shula for most all-time and winning in Chapel Hill could be his easiest route back to the NFL and to that record.

It is impossible for anyone to predict how Bill Belichick and the North Carolina Tarheels partnership will play out. He already has one victory to his credit when he convinced four-star quarterback recruit Bryce Baker, from Kernersville, NC, to honor his commitment to the team. The long-term projection is unknowable and intriguing. Belichick could discover he enjoys the pace of college football atmosphere, the life in Chapel Hill, and remain a fixture. His stewardship of the program could completely change the paradigm of how to run a successful college football team. He could succumb to the siren song of the NFL and go chase more championships and records just as the program is taking flight. Of course, it could all be a disaster of epic proportions leaving the remnants of Tarheel football in an almost irrevocable state. Regardless of the eventual outcome, the thought process and decision making will be discussed for a long time.