Former New England Patriots general manager and head coach Bill Belichick, who has also been speaking with North Carolina about its coaching vacancy, was on the Pat McAfee show Monday afternoon for his regularly scheduled weekly appearance.
The topic was all about his discussions with UNC, as Belichick noted speaking with UNC Chancellor Lee Roberts, and about his views on the college game being much more like the pro game.
The questions centered around program building, the structure of making it a pipeline to the NFL, recruiting, the transfer portal and more.
It should be noted Belichick did mention UNC but didn't get into the weeds of his ongoing conversations. McAfee, however, did a nice job of going between the lines with his questions. Plenty of interesting stuff here.
Below is a complete transcript of the interview:
Q: McAfee started out by asking him about college football being more like NFL more than ever before – his thoughts on that?
BELICHICK: “I did grow up that way. My dad was a college coach at North Carolina for three years, Vanderbilt for a year, and then Navy for 50. So, it seems like college football is more like pro football. I’ve talked to a lot of college coaches about things like the salary cap and putting value on players, negotiating, kind of mixing all that together.
“So, I think there are some similarities from what I’ve heard, I haven’t experienced it firsthand, but it feels like that.”
Q: Had he always thought about possibly coaching in college?
BELICHICK: “I grew up around college football. Some great Navy teams there and I learned a lot. Really kind of patterned a lot of my pro teams off the teams I grew up around in the 60s as a kid growing up around the Naval Academy.
“As a pro coach, you always go back every year to different schools and look at their players and see their programs and learn from those coaches and their situations as well. I had a chance this year to take a longer look at college football in the college seasons as opposed to in the spring from the draft perspective, it’s been interesting as well as staying up with pro football.
“It’s been a good year for me and I’ve learned a lot. I had an opportunity to talk with (UNC) Chancellor (Lee) Roberts, and we’ve had a couple of good conversations so we’ll see how it goes.”
Q: McAfee asked about the report that Belichick and UNC talked for five hours Sunday. Note that we reported Sunday that conversations and negotiations were taking place for most of the day.
BELICHICK: “Yes. Let’s just leave it at that, Pat. I don’t want to give out too much information. I want to get my press conference aura back.”
Q: Regarding the conversation with Roberts, the difference between an NFL interview and a college interview: culture building?
BELICHICK: “I think any time as a coach you join with an organization, whatever level it’s at, you just want to share a vision with that person. What are you goals, what are your expectations, what do you need to achieve those, how do we achieve them and so forth? Talking through a lot of things; I don’t think it really matters where the program is that team building and the structure of the program – it takes some time to just talk through.
“It’s a discussion, it’s not an argument or a debate, it’s just understanding what resources are available, what we need, how does that mix together, who’s working for who, and so forth. That’s all pretty common at every interview I’ve had has had an element of that in it. This will be no different. Whatever the organization or team is, it still has to be a structure to it and a common vision for it to work well.”
Q: Belichick was the general manager as well as head coach at New England, so he and the owner had to be on the same page. In college, will there be multiple departments going forward in the conversations, a GM, a head coach, and there is an AD and chancellor? What does the future of college ball look like? The question was asked what he sees in his eyes, not specifically with the interviews with UNC.
BELICHICK: “I think that there are a lot of football programs that are being structured similar to NFL programs. In college, you now have high school recruiting, but you have the college portal, (and) in pro football you have the daft and pro free agency. You have salary cap and negotiations with NFL agents, in college you have negotiations with whoever represents the player; a family member or a high school coach, agent or some other financial advisor or whoever it is.
“You have players changing teams in college, you have players changing teams in the NFL with a little different set of rules, but general structure. And you have to value your players in some way because you have a limited amount of money; whatever the revenue share is. The NIL component, it sounds like there is legislation that will need structure around that make it commonplace right now, but it’s probably headed in that direction. So, I think it’s a little different version of the NFL model much more so than it’s ever been before. Let’s put it that way.
“Coaching staffs now, there are limitations on that like there were in college, there’s some recruiting limitations aren’t the limitations. The scholarships have been expanded. There are a lot of changes in the college landscape. I’m not gonna sit here and say I’m an expert on all of them, but I think it’s a little bit of everybody trying to find not only their way but what’s best for their individual situation.”
Q: With how college football is changing, people with pro experience might be more interested in college jobs now? It’s a different NFL. Scholarships are the minimum salary, transfer portal is free agency period, high school is the draft, salary cap and roster construction is just like in the NFL. NFL people might be able to be ahead of the curve for college, is that what he’s thinking?
BELICHICK: “I would say based on my experience the last few months and all the people that I’ve talked to, a lot of college are looking at NFL-type models, some coaches are looking at some version of an NFL model to structure personnel and coaching.
“The job’s obviously too big for one person no matter what level it’s at. You need a personnel director, let’s call it a general manager. You need a coach and you need some type of let’s call it salary cap management, however that’s configured whether that’s a third person or it’s merged between the two, however you handle that.
“Somehow you have to have those bases covered. It’s certainly not a job for one person, it’s a job that’s going to take a lot of work no matter what level it’s on because it’s complex and there are a lot of people that you’re trying to evaluate. You’re trying to evaluate… if you’re in college, all the college players and you’ve got a big high school group.
“If you’re in the NFL, it’s all the free agency players, which is not the full league but it’s still a pretty big chuck of it, and all the draft-eligible players, which starts with over 500 players and it gets whittled down. So, it’s still a lot of volume however you slice it up. And again, it’s way too big of a job for one person, so you’d want to have a team that would handle the demands of the different areas to put the best team together that you can on the field.
“Unlike the draft, the recruitment element in college the players select a school as opposed to the team selecting the players in the draft until you get to college free agency at the end of the draft. There’s some differences but I think there’s some similarities, too.”
Q: McAfee said something about finding coaches he’s dealt with or coached against in the NFL so he likely has a rolodex of names and numbers. Belichick wanted to interject…
BELICHICK: “Let me put this in capital letters, if, is I was in a college program, the college program would be a pipeline to the NFL for the players that have the ability to play in the NFL. It would be a professional program: training; nutrition; scheme; coaching; techniques; transfers to the NFL – an NFL program at the college level, and an education that would get the players ready for their career after football, whether that’s college career or the end of their pro career. But it would be geared toward developing the players, time management, discipline, structure and all that would be life skills regardless of whether in the NFL or somewhere in business.
“I feel very confident that I have the contacts in the National Football League to pave the way for those players that would have the ability to have the opportunity to compete in the National Football League. Whether they are good enough or not, I don’t know, but they would be ready for it, I don’t have any doubt about that.
“That would be the first comment that I would make relative to the structure of the program, it would be an NFL program but not at the NFL level.”
Q: He was asked about recruiting in college and how it’s the biggest difference from coaching in the NFL and how different it would be for him to evaluate high school kids.
BELICHICK: “There’s a big level of development of players who are 16, 17, in that range compared to 20, 21-year-olds that come into the NFL. There’s still a level of development but in high school you just have a projection, it’s much more a projection element. Generally speaking, most high schools (at) most high schools, where’s the best player? Quarterback or maybe running back. That doesn’t necessarily mean that’s where the player’s going to play in college. But in a high school program, that’s generally where the best players go.
“There will probably be an element of projection for players like that. Coach Saban had a tremendous amount of success, as we all know, in his career taking wide receivers and moving them to corner who then became high round draft choices. So, there’s definitely a projection element that high school teams generally put their best players at the key positions; quarterback, running back, and receiver to score points.
“And if that’s where they’re at that may not necessarily be their best position going forward. So, I think the projection element, you don’t see that too much; I know we had (Julian) Edelman. But for the most part, you don’t see guys that played one position in college and play something else in (the NFL). There’s more of that going the other way. And with linemen, a lot of those kids at 17 aren’t the men that they are in the national Football League when they get to 25, 26 years old they simply mature.
“The time that I spent at (University of) Washington this year, those players gained a lot of weight; not just weight but also strength. So when you combine the strength and nutrition programs in a program, you see a lot of quality weight gain and guys go from 240 to 275 or 270 to 305 that’s just part of the natural growth for that age of a kid. So, I think the kid’s frame and his athleticism and you’ve kind of got a picture of what that’s going to look like when it fills out.
“That’s true, that’ll be something that I haven’t done a lot of, but that would be a big part of the projection element of recruiting, as well as whatever the school and the team has to offer.”
