At 9:37 p.m. on Wednesday night this week, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill released a pair of statements — one from football coach Bill Belichick and another from athletic director Bubba Cunningham.
“I’m fully committed to UNC Football and the program we’re building here,” Belichick said.
“Coach Belichick has the full support of the Department of Athletics and University,” Cunningham added.
What that collection of 25 words essentially says is, “Bill Belichick still works here, for now.”
On the surface, for a football coach just five games into his first season on the job, putting out those statements at that time came across as pretty weird. But you don’t have to dig too deeply to figure out that Belichick’s time at North Carolina has been a complete disaster, a clown show, an embarrassment, and a waste of time and resources.
That’s why it’s time — as soon as possible — for the folks in power at Chapel Hill to put an end to this experiment and fire Belichick, no matter the cost. If UNC aims to pitch itself as an SEC-caliber program, it’s time to pony up the cash necessary for an SEC-sized buyout. If you want to be like Auburn and Texas A&M, act like it. Because the deep-pocketed folks associated with those programs would have brought an end to this circus already — probably around the same time Belichick’s 20-something-year-old girlfriend was prancing around the field at UCF before the Tar Heels got whupped.
What preceded those statements on Wednesday night was a flurry of reports from various news outlets in the past few days about the festering problems inside UNC’s football program. There were reports of recruiting violations, Belichick’s “weird” communication with his staff, and him contemplating his own exit strategy. Another story from a local and well-sourced reporter said UNC was having “preliminary conversations” about getting rid of Belichick, that an injured player was told he couldn’t use team facilities to rehab, and that there are “many other violations that have occurred.” Those reports came after one from WRAL that examined a divided locker room and a disorganized coaching staff. Following that report, UNC cornerbacks coach Armond Hawkins was suspended. Additionally, the plug was pulled on a Hulu documentary that was supposed to follow the Tar Heels through the season. That footage will never see the light of day.
Toss in all that with what we’ve seen on the field: A team that is 2-3, with its lone wins over hapless Charlotte and FCS Richmond. In its games against Power 4 opponents, the Tar Heels have been outscored 120-33 in a trio of lopsided defeats.
They have looked worse than every other North Carolina football team that we’ve seen over the past six years. And that’s not why you paid a six-time Super Bowl winning head coach $10 million a year to come to Chapel Hill. If these were going to be the results, you could’ve just kept the previous 73-year-old that you employed.
Let’s go back to December for a moment. And let’s also be reminded that in North Carolina’s Research Triangle, nothing happens in a vacuum. North Carolina wasn’t aiming to finally get serious about football just to set itself up for a potential future home in the SEC; it had to make a splashy hire because Duke and N.C. State had both surpassed them on the gridiron. Wolfpack head coach Dave Doeren made it a habit to trounce Mack Brown, and Mike Elko quickly turned Duke into a winner before being poached by the SEC. In his first season on the job last year, new Duke coach Manny Diaz went 9-4.
At Belichick’s first press conference, hundreds of media members showed up to Chapel Hill to see the architect of the New England Patriots’ dynasty be introduced as the Tar Heels’ next football coach after the search for Brown’s successor was hijacked by the Board of Trustees — specifically Chairman John Preyer. The messaging from everyone involved was that Belichick was supposed to make UNC elite at college football. He was supposed to awaken the sleeping giant.
And the messaging was not subtle.
UNC Chancellor Lee Roberts: “I’ve said many times that we want to be the best public university in the United States, and that means excellence in everything that we do. We’re going to have an excellent college football program. We want to compete with the best, and we’ve hired the best coach.”
Board of Trustees Member Jennifer Lloyd: “Coach Belichick will help us take that next leap. We are absolutely 100% committed to football and committed to winning in football. We want to win a national championship in football.”
To win national championships in college football, you need talent. And not just an abundance of talent, but talent that is better than the majority of the other teams in the sport. A coach cannot simply scheme their way to winning a national championship in college football. It’s not just that TCU, UCF and Clemson had much more talent than North Carolina this season — it was also that the Tar Heels seemed wholly unprepared for what those three teams were throwing at them and each of their opponents were bigger, faster, stronger and more skilled by a wide margin.
The reason why former Belichick understudy Matt Patricia garnered praise after his Buckeyes made Arch Manning and the Texas offense look mediocre in Week One is not because Patricia is smarter than everyone else — it’s because Ohio State has among the most talented players in the sport on its defense. The Buckeyes have the Jimmys and Joes — that’s the difference, not Patricia’s X’s and O’s. North Carolina doesn’t seemingly have either. And by the way, the best pass rusher North Carolina had last season under Mack Brown? He plays for Ohio State now.
Belichick and his stooges haven’t grasped this. They spent all offseason filling their staff with guys who had little-to-no experience — or in the case of Bob Diaco, little-to-no success — in college football and then telling anyone who would listen that they were the 33rd NFL team, that they were smarter than everyone else in college football, that turning North Carolina into a winner would happen quickly.
That was what the program was publicly implying when it pushed away some of Brown’s former players and brought in more than 70 new ones — that Belichick and general manager Michael Lombardi were better talent evaluators than the majority of people in college football, so they would find diamonds-in-the-rough, brighten them up, and flip the Tar Heels into winners.
Except the Tar Heels targeted the wrong players. One Group of Five head coach told the Athletic that he knew UNC was “gonna suck” when his program kept losing transfer portal recruiting battles to them. North Carolina wound up with players that belong in the MAC or Conference USA — not the ACC.
When Belichick was hired last December, his appointment in Chapel Hill drew comparisons to Deion Sanders being handed the reins at Colorado. Both entered these jobs with a certain amount of celebrity garnered by achieving success in the NFL.
Here’s the difference between Belichick and Sanders though: Deion has a dynamic, entertaining, compelling and polarizing personality and way of doing things that injected new life into college football and turned some casual fans into diehard Colorado watchers. Belichick coaches with the enthusiasm of a wolverine with an impacted molar. Deion has a smile that could light up an orphanage. Belichick has a stoneface stare that could melt a sparkplug. Deion seems like he wants to be in Colorado. Aside from his opening press conference where he held up a tattered sweatshirt and claimed that Little Billy’s first words were “Beat Duke,” Belichick looks like a guy who is calculating how long he has to stay in Chapel Hill before an NFL team comes calling. (Two things here: an NFL team ain’t calling ever again after this debacle, and nobody really believes those were Belichick’s first words, right? And if Billy really wanted to pretend like he understood the dynamics in the Triangle even a little bit, he would’ve claimed instead that his first words were “Beat State.”)
The other big difference between Deion and Belichick is that Deion had legitimate dudes playing football for him. His son was a good college quarterback, and Travis Hunter was an otherworldly talent that could play both ways at a high level. There were other players too that helped the Buffs go from 1-11 to 9-4 in just two seasons. And Deion had an understanding of the portal and high school recruiting by cutting his teeth at Jackson State.
Belichick, meanwhile, did not inherit this roster. He and Lombardi constructed it themselves. They were not forced to bring in more than 70 new players, but they did just that. Belichick and Lombardi tried to moneyball the transfer portal. They thought they could take a player from Holy Cross and turn him into an All-ACC offensive lineman. They thought they could turn Gio Lopez into Jacoby Brissett. They thought they could coach up Caleb Hood and make him a starting-caliber running back. In college football, it simply doesn’t work that way. You need great players to win — unless you’re at a Service Academy and you lean all the way into a unique offensive scheme that is extremely frustrating for opposing defenses. The Tar Heels don’t have good players and they don’t have an imaginative playbook to make up for the lack of talent. Both of those things are on Belichick.
Some, like Lombardi and UNC Chancellor Lee Roberts, have preached patience when it comes to Belichick.
But patience is not what the Tar Heels hired him for and patience is not what Belichick and Lombardi were selling when they told everyone via the Pat McAfee Show that this program would be a “pipeline to the NFL.” No one was sending the message last winter and spring that this was going to be a slow build. And every opposing coaching staff on UNC’s schedule was taking notes on what the narrative was.
Lombardi told UNC donors and boosters recently that they plan to bring in more than 40 freshmen in 2026 — but why should those folks believe those players will be any good? At this point in their careers, why should the people with money and power in Chapel Hill trust the talent evaluation skills of Lombardi and Belichick after seeing this dumpster fire on the field? Belichick is 73 and Lombardi is 66 — if their age doesn’t hold them back from learning something new in scouting, recruiting and evaluation, hubris will.
Belichick is not changing. He has no shame and he doesn’t care what the public thinks of him. If he did, he would be upholding the same standards he set in New England at Chapel Hill. With the Patriots, Belichick didn’t tolerate distractions or people who didn’t take their jobs seriously. With the Tar Heels, it’s Belichick who is the distraction and who is acting like an unserious person.
It all begs the question, why did Belichick sign up for this? Why, when he was just a handful of wins behind Don Shula for the most NFL history, did he come to college and allow his reputation to be tarnished in this way?
Money seems to be the answer. One can assume that Belichick looked at the overeager John Preyer and the rest of UNC’s Board of Trustees and saw a mark. So he called in a favor to a politician, Marco Rubio, to get him in the door at Chapel Hill, where he intoxicated decisionmakers with those shiny Super Bowl rings. After setting himself up with a fat payday, he hired his two sons and several buddies. For the Belichicks and their friends, UNC is their personal piggy bank.
Had Bubba Cunningham been left alone to execute the search, North Carolina might have ended up with Jon Sumrall. Instead, Preyer and the board intervened, Sumrall stayed at Tulane where he’ll likely be at the top of the list for any SEC openings in the coming months, and Sumrall’s very talented quarterback from last season — Darian Mensah — ended up at UNC’s rival, Duke.
The vibes were good in Chapel Hill heading into the Monday night opener against TCU. The town was rocking, the stadium was full, and despite a summer full of tabloid headlines and investigations focused on Belichick’s girlfriend Jordon Hudson, a lot of Tar Heels were optimistic about the season.
Michael Jordan was in Chapel Hill. Belichick’s debut was a big deal.
Reality began to settle in during the game, where the alleged genius walking around in his cut-off hoodie got exposed on national television for the first of three times this season. The party quickly turned into a funeral. ESPN’s Kirk Herbstreit became so bored and disengaged during UNC’s lackluster effort against TCU that the veteran broadcaster let his guard down during a hot mic moment and then handed his headset off to his dog. If the Tar Heels have looked like any NFL team, they mirror the perpetually incompetent Cleveland Browns.
Against TCU, fans were leaving in the third quarter. Against Clemson, they were filing out of Kenan Memorial Stadium like it was a fire drill to go drink their pain away on Franklin Street before the opening 15 minutes were up. That’s not the behavior of a fanbase that belongs to a football school — that’s an audience that has seen this movie before way too many times. The lead actor is different. The director is different. But the plot is the same.
If there is a tradition around North Carolina football, it’s this: Ever since Mack Brown left the first time, in 1997, every coach the Tar Heels have hired since (including Mack’s second go-around) has promised that UNC is finally getting serious about football. And then, what follows without fail is an enormous faceplant. John Bunting came back to Carolina with a Super Bowl ring from the Rams and won a Peach Bowl in his first season, then never posted another winning record over the next five years. Butch Davis came with his Miami and NFL bonafides, then played a significant role in sending the entire school into an academic scandal. Larry Fedora had one strong season of 11 wins while the other six were mired in mediocrity. In Brown’s second stint, he had two NFL-caliber quarterbacks — Sam Howell and Drake Maye — and never won anything significant with either of them, and lost too often to his Tobacco Road rivals and Group of Five programs like App State and James Madison.
If the giant has been sleeping for nearly five decades, perhaps the giant isn’t simply snoozing. Maybe it’s dead. And maybe that’s the reality North Carolina needs to accept: that its football team will only ever be merely Triangle Good. No matter how millions the Tar Heels spend, no matter how many politicians they call in favors to, no matter how many alleged geniuses they hire, the football team in Chapel Hill will never be elite.
Allegedly, it was longtime and accomplished Florida State head coach Bobby Bowden who first referred to the Tar Heels as a “sleeping giant,” though no record of him saying such a thing actually exists. What does exist, is this quote from Board of Trustees member Jennifer Lloyd at Belichick’s introductory press conference:
“Why is the University of North Carolina in a JV tier? We should not be JV in anything we do, ever. And we’re so excellent in every other way. The fact that we were accepting a relegated place in football was absolutely awful for most of us, and that’s really (why) this core group (has) been just working so hard to try to inspire people to get us to the next level. So now, we’re on the next level, and we’re going to have to win, and it’s not going to be a straight line, but at least we’re there. I’d much rather be in the top tier, competing every day, than be relegated to the kid’s table.”
With Belichick and Lombardi in charge, nothing has improved for North Carolina football. Things have only worsened. UNC is in a relegated place in college football. They are not at “the next level.”
The Tar Heels are in the JV tier. They are at the kid’s table.
Embarking on the path to changing that begins only one way.
