By Aaron Beard and Rob Maaddi, Associated Press
It seemed as though Bill Belichick had been waiting for the ideal moment to rejoin the NFL. Rather, the head coach, who has won six Super Bowls, is going to the collegiate levels to take over at North Carolina.
Approximately one week after Belichick’s name emerged as an improbable contender to succeed Mack Brown, the program’s most successful coach ever, the school announced Wednesday night that it has negotiated a five-year agreement with Belichick. The agreement needs to be approved by the governors of the UNC public system and trustees; a press conference has not yet been planned.
In selecting the 72-year-old Belichick over the 73-year-old Brown, UNC is enlisting a coach who has never coached at the collegiate level but who, with quarterback Tom Brady, enjoyed remarkable success in the NFL for the most of his 24-year time with the Patriots, which concluded last season.
Additionally, Belichick has a tenuous family connection to the UNC program; his late father, Steve, served as the Tar Heels’ assistant coach from 1953 to 1955.
A statement from Belichick stated, “I am thrilled about the opportunity at UNC-Chapel Hill.” I loved the moments I spent growing up with my dad watching college football. I’ve always wanted to be a college coach, and now I’m excited to start the Chapel Hill football program.
His entrance on campus coincides with a number of significant changes in collegiate athletics, including the unrestricted movement of players via the transfer portal, the potential of athletes to profit from endorsement deals, and the impending implementation of revenue sharing. Imagine Belichick recruiting someone with a track record of accomplishment at the highest level of the sport to lead the school in reconsidering how it will handle those issues.
According to a statement from UNC sports director Bubba Cunningham, “We know that college athletics is changing, and those changes require new and innovative thinking.” The appointment of football great Bill Belichick to head our program is a fresh strategy that will guarantee Carolina football can develop, compete, and succeed both now and in the future.
Belichick’s 31 playoff victories are the most in league history, and his 333 total regular-season and postseason victories are second only to Don Shula’s 347 NFL record.
Bill Walsh, who won three Super Bowls with the San Francisco 49ers before going 17-17-1 at Stanford from 1992 to 1994, is the second coach to win a Super Bowl before going on to become a collegiate head coach.
Since leaving the Patriots, he has been connected to NFL positions, most notably with the Atlanta Falcons in January. This is why Belichick’s talks with UNC, which were initially revealed by Inside Carolina and verified by the AP last week, caused such a stir as a surprising and out-of-the-ordinary candidate.
However, after days of negotiating terms, the two parties came to an agreement to cap what had previously appeared to be an unlikely result.
On ESPN’s The Pat McAfee Show on Monday, Belichick stated that he had spent a significant portion of the previous year examining college football in greater detail and that he had had a few fruitful discussions with UNC chancellor Lee Roberts.
According to Belichick on Monday, if I were enrolled in a collegiate program, it would serve as a pathway to the NFL for individuals who possess the necessary skills. The training, diet, strategy, coaching, and procedures would all be professional and applicable to the NFL.
It would be a college-level NFL program. Additionally, the players would receive an education that would prepare them for their post-football careers, whether they were in college or at the end of their professional careers.
In 1975, Belichick started his NFL coaching career as an assistant with the Baltimore Colts. He then won two Super Bowls while serving as defensive coordinator for the New York Giants under Bill Parcells. In the first half of the 1990s, he also served as the Cleveland Browns’ head coach for five seasons.
In 2000, he was given another opportunity to lead the Patriots as head coach. And Belichick won his first Super Bowl championship as head coach in his second season, just as Brady was becoming a household name.
Belichick was named the Associated Press NFL coach of the year three times, and he and Brady went on to win the Super Bowl in 2003, 2004, 2014, 2016, and 2018.
FILE: On Sunday, October 8, 2023, in Foxborough, Massachusetts, Bill Belichick, the head coach of the New England Patriots at the time, watches the second half of an NFL football game against the New Orleans Saints. (Photo courtesy of Michael Dwyer, File)AP
He now assumes leadership of a UNC program that is dealing with the well-known problem of how to create a long-term winner. Either the Tar Heels momentarily cracked the top 10 of the AP Top 25 poll in 2015 and 2020, or Brown built UNC into top-10 national statistics (1996, 1997) to close his first stint in Chapel Hill before taking over at Texas, demonstrating that the program had achieved elite levels in moments rather than eras.
Following future No. 3 overall NFL draft pick Drake Maye, who was ironically picked by the Patriots for their first post-Belichick season, Brown’s second tenure peaked in 2022 with a nine-win season and a trip to the Atlantic Coast Conference championship game.
In his second stay in Chapel Hill, the school stated on November 26 that Brown will not return for a seventh season. This decision was made after the program’s all-time victories leader coached his final game in the Nov. 30 loss to rival N.C. State.
As the Tar Heels get ready to play UConn in the Fenway Bowl on December 28, Freddie Kitchens, a former Browns head coach, has been serving as the interim coach.
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