CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — Seven minutes after 2 p.m. ET on Thursday, North Carolina’s football future entered Kenan Memorial Stadium donning a baby blue button-down shirt, an argyle tie — and, for once, sleeves.
Welcome to the Bill Belichick era, college football edition. Starting Thursday, when the NFL legend was officially introduced as UNC’s coach, Chapel Hill will be ground zero for one of the most fascinating experiments in the history of college athletics.
“I’ve always wanted to coach in college football,” Belichick said. “It just never really worked out. Had some good years in the NFL so that was OK. But this is really a dream come true.”
To see Belichick — who led the New England Patriots to six Super Bowl titles as coach, who partnered with Tom Brady to form two different dynasties — actually here, in a quaint college town hundreds of miles from Massachusetts, is still difficult to believe. Countless former Belichick players and coaches have said as much from a distance. And that’s why there was such a scene (or circus) inside UNC’s football center.
Reporters and UNC officials alike flooded the center well over an hour before Belichick, athletic director Bubba Cunningham and chancellor Lee Roberts sat at a makeshift podium and explained one of the most unfathomable hiring decisions in recent memory. From their seats, they stared through a glass wall of windows at an illuminated jumbotron with an impossible-to-believe graphic: Bill Belichick, Carolina Football Head Coach. No wonder all 20 rows of navy blue conference chairs were full (former Tar Heel great Julius Peppers among them), all for just a glimpse of the moment.
When North Carolina fired coach Mack Brown in November, the expectation internally and across the college football universe was that the Tar Heels would lean younger, hiring someone with the long-term juice to professionalize a program that needed a facelift befitting the modern era. (Technically, yes, the 72-year-old Belichick — who immediately becomes college football’s oldest active coach — is younger than the 73-year-old Brown.)
But instead, as UNC officials — both from the Board of Trustees and athletic department — began interviewing potential candidates, they realized most planned to conduct a pro-style overhaul of the Tar Heels program. So if that were the case, why not hire the guy who ran a professional franchise with more success than any other coach in history?
This story will be updated.
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(Photo: Andy Lewis / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
