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CHAPEL HILL – North Carolina introduced legendary NFL coach Bill Belichick as the new leader of its football program Thursday afternoon at the Lowdermilk Center for Excellence on UNC’s campus.
As part of the Blue Zone, the scene for Belichick’s press conference overlooked the field inside Kenan Stadium, where the winner of six Super Bowls as a head coach and two as a defensive coordinator will lead the Tar Heels onto the field to formally kick off his era August 30 against Texas Christian.
So, as a Carolina blue sky hovered above shining onto the turf below, Belichick, who turns 73 in April, offered a clear vision for UNC’s future. He wants to coach, he wants to teach, and he wants to win.
“Excited to be here,” Belichick said as part of his opening statement. “Excited to be in college football, excited for the opportunity to build and develop young student athletes, young men, and prepare them for their life, either in the NFL or professionally.
“The lessons they learn will be professional lessons. They will be pros in all areas. That’s what we want to develop as having a winning program; a successful program.”
The move hiring Belichick signals an earth-shattering shift in how UNC approaches football. While previous coach Mack Brown had twice as much money to work with for the program as did his predecessor Larry Fedora, Belichick’s resources will dwarf that.
His contract is $50 million for five years with bonuses up to $3.5 million per season. Brown earned $5 million per year. Another $10 million for assistant coaches, $5.3 for general manager and related position, and other expenses related to crafting a program with the intent on being “elite” as Athletics Director Bubba Cunningham said after the press conference.
This is a new way of doing things in Chapel Hill, as the school is jumping into the deepest of waters.
“In the immortal words of Yogi Berra, ‘The future ain’t what it used to be,’” Cunningham said during the press conference. “We are embarking on an entirely new football operation, and we can’t wait to have Coach Belichick leading the charge for us.”
With Name Image and Likeness (NIL) exploding in college athletics along with the transfer portal, all college sports essentially have annual free agency for most players. UNC plans on being highly competitive in that market, but it will also fully fund the $20.5 million revenue sharing for athletes. The numbers provided after the presser show $13 million of that will go to football.
Thus, Carolina Football the way it’s been is a thing of the past.
“The future of college athletics is changing, and we want to be at the forefront of that,” Cunnningham said.
The motivation for arguably the greatest NFL coach of all time to step down into the college ranges, and at a school known much more for basketball than the gridiron, has been the most often asked question among local, regional, and national media over the last several days.
The question was posed to Belichick, so he replied.
“I’ve always wanted to coach in college football,” he said. “It just never really worked out. I had some good years in the NFL, so that was okay. This is really kind of a dream come true. I grew up in college football with my dad as a coach at Navy for 50 years. As a kid, all I knew was college football, so it’s great to come back home to Carolina and back in the environment I really grew up in.”
Steve Belichick was an assistant at the Naval Academy for 30 years mostly raising his family there. Before that, he was an assistant coach at UNC from 1953-55, with Bill claiming Thursday his first words were, “Beat Duke,” followed by plenty of laughter and applause from the few hundred boosters and university personnel on hand.
And Belichick wants what North Carolina wants. It’s a program that hasn’t won an ACC championship since 1980, hasn’t finished ranked in the top 10 since 1997, has won more than nine games once since that same season, and just twice has won more than eight games in the last 27 seasons.
He politely swatted away any notion there is a small window for his stay in Chapel Hill. He said there’s no timetable and that he’s “ready” to get to work, which started an hour before the press conference.
“I talked to the players a little earlier, and it was a great opportunity to start to get to know them and build the program,” Belichick said.
And with that, a new era of North Carolina Football is underway.
