Sports heroes rarely go out on their own terms, and the same appears to be true for the coach who’s been arguably the most successful antihero in football. Yes, I’m talking about Bill Belichick, who led the New England Patriots through an epic two decades of NFL dominance. The 72-year-old Belichick, who wasn’t directly involved with a football team this season for the first time since 1975, has been hired to coach next year’s team at the University of North Carolina.
Belichick will be trying to make the transition from coaching pros who could be his sons to college players who could be his grandsons.
Belichick will be the oldest head coach at any major college football program in the country, and he will be trying to make the transition from coaching pros who could be his sons to college players who could be his grandsons. He’ll attempt this feat at an age when most Americans who can afford it are enjoying retirement — and as college football players have more power than they’ve ever had.
Irascible septuagenarian seeks career redemption by agreeing to lead entitled young men. What could possibly go wrong?
How about everything?
I won’t argue that The Hoodie, the nickname that Belichick’s preferred game-day ’fits earned him, has no shot at success in the college ranks. But I will argue that Belichick’s accepting a college coaching job is proof that he’s accepted that NFL owners don’t want him. Belichick wants an NFL job. With 333 wins in the regular season and the playoffs, he’s won the second-most games of any NFL coach, sitting 14 games behind the 347 won by Don Shula. He could possibly catch or pass Shula with a couple of more seasons on an NFL sideline. What more proof do we need that Belichick’s time in the NFL is over than his losing coaching opportunities to far worse, albeit younger, coaches?
Belichick is rightly regarded by most as the GOAT among NFL head coaches. Even fans who still hold New England’s cheating controversies against him have to admit that nine Super Bowl appearances and six Super Bowl rings make him the best game planner and football disciplinarian we’ve seen. His former players swear by his approach, and the opposing NFL coaches he’s humbled almost never speak ill of him — at least not publicly.
However, Belichick’s past success didn’t guarantee NFL opportunities when he and the Patriots parted last season. ESPN reported that even Pats owner Robert Kraft told Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank not to hire him for their head coach opening. The Patriots deny this. What’s not up for debate is that for all his winning, Belichick also earned a relationship for being controlling — he was also the Patriots’ general manager — and for being a difficult boss and employee.
That perception still hasn’t faded in the NFL. The New Orleans Saints, the Chicago Bears and the New York Jets have already fired their head coaches, and the New York Giants, the Jacksonville Jaguars and the Dallas Cowboys have head coaches who could be on the way out. It says something that a coach with Belichick’s incomparable rep would take a job at a 6-6 college program instead of waiting to see if an NFL team looking for a coach rings his phone.
Belichick saw the door closing, if not already locked, on an opportunity to resurrect his glorious NFL career.
Belichick saw the door closing, if not already locked, on an opportunity to resurrect his glorious NFL career, and UNC was happy to fling its doors open. The question is: Will Belichick like what he finds once he walks through it? (Other than, you know, the reported $10 million a year he’ll reportedly get and the royal status given to college football coaches, especially those in the South.)
College football bears little resemblance to the sport it purported itself to be for most of Belichick’s coaching career, and he’s likely to find himself out of step. After decades of totally exploiting the free labor of “amateur” student-athletes, the NCAA is years into the name-image-and-likeness era, which allows big-time athletes to sign seven-figure deals before they even step on campus. Belichick will have a reported $20 million in NIL cash at his disposal to help with recruiting, but therein lies the rub. He has to go out and recruit, which means he with the gruff and grouchy demeanor has to persuade teenagers to sign up for his fabled no-nonsense brand of coaching. The upside: If you want to go to the NFL, who better to teach you the game?
Sure, Belichick dealt with the NFL’s free-agency era just fine, but those players are under contracts collectively bargained by a union regarded as among the weakest in American pro sports. NFL players don’t have a transfer portal they can hop into when they don’t like their coaches. The NFL has a salary cap and a trade deadline, which can make it hard for players to force their way out of uncomfortable situations. Those things don’t exist at the college level. Belichick could well find himself, like some other coaches have lamented, spending more time on recruiting and managing player relationships than on actual coaching. No one who knows anything about Belichick can imagine him enjoying that. Another wrinkle is that when he was coaching the Patriots, Belichick had only one boss: Kraft. College football head coaches, especially those at public universities, have many masters. University presidents and athletic directors are part of a mix that also includes rich and powerful alumni boosters who are the ones who put the money in the NIL kitty to begin with. Then there are the public officials who have their own political interests (and sometimes those of taxpayers) to look out for. NFL players don’t have a transfer portal they can hop into when they don’t like their coaches. Kraft may have been able to coax Roger Goodell and the other NFL owners to make Spygate go away for the sake of “the Shield,” but imagine Belichick as a public employee, called to appear before a hearing of some North Carolina legislative subcommittee to talk about some aspect of his leadership of the Tar Heels. Maybe the only thing that’s a bigger part of the Belichick mythos than the New England dynasty he helmed is the idea that he’s the die-hardest of football guys, that nothing that makes him feel more alive than X’s and O’s and the turf under his feet watching one of his masterful game plans unfold. At UNC, he’ll get another chance, maybe his last, to stand in that glory. It’s just hard to imagine that this is the game plan the Hoodie drew up for himself.
Keith Reed
Keith Reed is an award-winning journalist and a past senior editor at ESPN. His work has appeared in The Boston Globe, The Root, Vibe, Essence and elsewhere. 
