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You thought Deion Sanders at Colorado was fun and different for college football? Just wait until you see Bill Belichick at North Carolina.
Everyone in Chapel Hill should send holiday cards to Robert Kraft for pushing Belichick out of New England and to Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank for choosing not to hire the greatest football coach of all time prior to this season.
No NFL return for the man who has eight Super Bowl rings, six as a head coach.
Belichick is coming to the ACC.
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According to reports, it will be on a three-year, $30 million deal and while coaching contracts have grown to be laughably outrageous with bonuses that are beyond absurd and buyouts for failing ranging to $70 million, Belichick will be worth every cent to North Carolina.
“Being coached by one of, if not the best, to do it, that’s an exciting thing to happen,” signee Evan Haynes said. “Going to change the narrative in Chapel Hill.”
North Carolina athletics director Bubba Cunningham wanted to go younger when he pushed out Mack Brown at the end of this season.
That didn’t necessarily happen as Belichick is only eight months younger than Brown but the Tar Heels could not say no to Belichick once there was mutual interest there.
He is the GOAT. He coached the GOAT.
You think Nick Saban impressed recruits and their parents and their handlers when he whipped out the national championship rings?
Belichick almost has two fists full of Super Bowl rings and that’s where every top prospect in the country wants to go.
College coaches can talk about development out the wazoo. Belichick is the king of developing players and he has the phone number of every single person in the NFL to tout his players and talk them up heading into the draft process.
Sanders has done zero known recruiting visits since taking over Colorado and he’s turned the Buffaloes, who were a moribund program when he got to Boulder, into a serious contender getting his sons and five-star Travis Hunter, the probable Heisman winner, to follow him.
Belichick won’t have to step foot in one high school or take one private plane to some tiny airstrip to beg players to come play for him.
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Who wouldn’t want to learn under him, be coached by him, use the resources that he will deliver to Chapel Hill to get to where they want to go: The NFL. Belichick is the king of NFL football with four more Super Bowl wins than Vince Lombardi, three more than Andy Reid.
And Belichick is going to be clear-eyed about the landscape of college football. He has a manifesto. He knows the broad strokes of NIL and how his organization will have to be run like an NFL team through free agency.
He’s been through all this before.
Yeah, the constant NIL pandering and the transfer portal and navigating through roster management will be a pain but Belichick will have a staff for that. He will deal with Xs and Os (maybe with a little softer touch than he did with the New England Patriots) and no one is better.
“If I was in a college program, the college program would be a pipeline to the NFL for the players that had the ability to play in the NFL,” Belichick said recently on the Pat McAfee show.
“It would be a professional program, training, nutrition, scheme, coaching, techniques that would transfer to the NFL. It would be an NFL program at a college level and an education that would get the players ready for their career after football whether that was at the end of their college career or the end of their pro career.”
There are some doubters, though, Tom Brady being one.
Asked recently on the FOX NFL show whether he could imagine Belichick coaching in college football, Brady outright said:
“No. There are a lot of things he can do and he’s shown he’s tremendous and even showing his personality but getting out there on the recruiting trail and dealing with all these college kids, that would be frightening.”
Brady is missing the point. Belichick will have a structure in place for that and he won’t have to hit the trail to beg players to come.
They will be knocking down the doors in Chapel Hill begging to come play for the best to ever do it.
