Bill Belichick had just been introduced Thursday as North Carolina’s next football coach when chancellor Lee Roberts came armed with a gift: a short-sleeved gray hoodie — a bit of a trademark from Belichick’s NFL coaching days — bearing a blue interlocking “NC” logo.
It was the visual confirmation, which will take some getting used to, that the six-time Super Bowl-winning head coach whose name became synonymous with NFL success has taken an unexpected first dive into college coaching. He now leads a program at a school with a national name brand but one that has been unable to sustain fleeting pockets of high-level success when it comes to football.
“I’ve always wanted to coach in college football,” Belichick said during his introductory campus news conference. “It just never really worked out. Had some good years in the NFL, so that was OK.”
The school’s trustees approved terms of the deal to hire Belichick as the new football coach earlier Thursday. Specific terms have yet to be released, though the school said Wednesday there was a five-year agreement.
Belichick arrived wearing a dark suit, a light blue dress shirt and a tie bearing a white-and-light-blue pattern. He sat between Roberts and athletic director Bubba Cunningham, who paid his own tribute by donning a suit jacket with the sleeves cut off to mimic Belichick’s cut-off sideline look.
“I’m here to, as Bubba said, teach, develop and build a program in the way that I believe in,” Belichick said.
Moving on from the 73-year-old Mack Brown to hire the 72-year-old Belichick means UNC is turning to a coach who has never worked at the college level, yet had incredible success in the NFL alongside quarterback Tom Brady throughout most of his 24-year tenure with the Patriots, which ended last season.
Belichick holds 333 career regular-season and postseason wins in the NFL, trailing only Don Shula’s 347 for the NFL record, while his 31 playoff wins are the most in league history.
He had been linked to NFL jobs in the time since his departure from the Patriots, notably the Atlanta Falcons in January. That’s why word of Belichick’s conversations with UNC — first reported by Inside Carolina and confirmed by the AP last week — stirred such surprise as an unexpected and unconventional candidate.
There’s also at least a small family tie to the UNC program for Belichick; his late father, Steve, was an assistant coach for the Tar Heels from 1953-55.
When asked about fan concerns that he might leave quickly for the next NFL job, Belichick said: “I didn’t come here to leave.”
And when asked how long he might want to keep coaching, he quipped: “It beats working. My dad told me this: when you love what you do, it’s not work. I love what I do. I love coaching.”
He’s arriving on campus at a time of rapid changes in college athletics, from free player movement through the transfer portal and athletes’ ability to cash in on endorsements to the looming arrival of revenue sharing. And he’s taking over a program that for a school with a national name-brand — particularly as a tradition-rich blueblood in college basketball — has never sustained elite football success in its long history.
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