The College Football Playoff doesn’t begin until next weekend, which is good timing. Right now, all anyone can talk about is the North Carolina Tar Heels, a team that lost six games in 2024 and never sniffed the CFP.
That is because North Carolina pulled off the hiring coup of the year, landing six-time Super Bowl champion Bill Belichick as its next head coach. Belichick becomes the oldest coach in college football, a distinction previously held by Mack Brown, who was fired by North Carolina three weeks ago.
Belichick has only coached in the NFL, beginning his career on the sideline with the Baltimore Colts in 1975 right after graduating from Wesleyan University in Connecticut. However, Belichick’s father was an assistant football coach at North Carolina in the 1950s, so he does have a family history with the Tar Heels.
Before accepting the job, Belichick talked about what a college team under his leadership would look like.
“If I was in a college program, the college program would be a pipeline to the NFL for players who had the ability to play in the NFL. It would be an NFL program at the college level.
“There are a lot of changes in the college landscape. I’m not going to sit here and say I’m an expert on all of them, but I think it’s a little but of everybody trying to find not only their way, but what’s best for their individual situation.”
Excitement in Chapel Hill
UNC Chancellor Lee H. Roberts decided that what was best for his university’s situation was the Belichick Way.
“Carolina is committed to excellence and to creating opportunities to succeed in everything we do, from the classroom to the field of competition,” Roberts said in a released statement. “I know after speaking with Coach Belichick that he shares that commitment. His legacy speaks for itself, and we look forward to working together on the next chapter of Carolina football.”
National signing day has passed, Belichick has never had to recruit before, and Tom Brady said on NFL on Fox that he has a hard time imagining his former coach on the recruitment road. But even as there are doubters, there are also believers. The over/under on wins for North Carolina in 2025 went from 6.5, up to 7.5, after the hiring was announced.
One thing working for Belichick, as he alluded to in his comments earlier in the week, college football has changed. The transfer portal now exists, and this year, there are more than 1,200 FBS players in it. That means that along with the top returning players for North Carolina, he has an opportunity to build a program quickly, like Deion Sanders has done in Colorado.
It’s also much easier to get an 18- to 22-year-old to sign on to your program when a future Hall of Fame head coach declares that it’s a pipeline to the NFL.
In a fun twist of irony, Belichick’s first game as the North Carolina head coach will be August 30, 2025, against TCU. Deion Sanders’ first game as the head coach at Colorado was September 2, 2023, against TCU. Coach Prime won that game, 45-42.
Why Not the NFL?
When Belichick and the New England Patriots parted ways after the 2023 season, he was just 15 games short of passing Don Shula for most career head-coaching wins. And Belichick has made it known in the past that he wanted to break the record. So why take a job in college?
Just a month ago, we wrote about the possibility of Belichick becoming the next coach of the Dallas Cowboys. The odds at the time were +600. When the New York Jets fired Robert Saleh in October, the odds that Belichick would become their next head coach were +1600.
There are also more jobs expected to be opening in a month.
The reality is that during last year’s hiring cycle, of the seven NFL head coaching jobs, only the Atlanta Falcons gave Belichick serious consideration. He turns 73 in April, and with the chances of missing out on another hiring cycle, he acted. He wanted to coach, and North Carolina is the highest-profile job available. Plus, he’s close friends with former Alabama head coach Nick Saban, and if he needs any help in making the transition from the NFL to college, who better to lean on than a seven-time national champion?
With over 25 years of experience as a distinguished sports writer for renowned platforms such as Fox Sports and ESPN, Kyle Garlett is a sports betting specialist who has been at the forefront of documenting the global surge in sports betting and online gaming. Based in Denver, Colorado, Kyle hosts an NFL betting YouTube show and podcast. Kyle also has two sports books published by HarperCollins.
Kyle graduated the Azusa Pacific University in 1996 with a B.A. Degree in Communication and Journalism.
