Belichick Introduced as North Carolina Coach, and He’s There to Stay: ‘I Didn’t Come Here to Leave’
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It’s official: The University of North Carolina introduced Bill Belichick as its next head coach on Wednesday, and the eight-time Super Bowl champ wasted no time putting to bed any rumors that he will retire soon due to age or take an NFL job.
“I didn’t come here to leave,” Belichick told reporters.
While most coaches are handed a jersey at their hiring, given Belichick’s strong association with sweatshirts, specifically the type with cutoff sleeves, he was gifted the item of clothing for which he is most closely associated.
However, Belichick brought something of his own to the press conference: the sweatshirt his father, Steve, wore as an assistant in North Carolina from 1953 to 1955.
“I always wanted to coach in college football, but it never really worked out,” Belichick said. “I did some good years in the NFL, and that went okay, but this is really kind of a dream come true.”
Belichick, 72, has no experience coaching in the college ranks. He has been an analyst and guest host on ESPN’s ManningCast this year since leaving the Patriots at the end of the 2023-2024 season. During his 24-year tenure as head coach in New England, Belichick guided the Patriots to nine Super Bowl appearances and six championships.
In addition, he holds the record for most Super Bowl wins (8), six with New England and two as a defensive coordinator with the New York Giants. Belichick is a three-time AP NFL Coach of the Year (2003, 2007, 2010) and enjoys a lifetime .652 winning percentage. His 333 wins put him only 14 behind the all-time NFL wins leader, Don Shula.
Belichick stressed that his love of football drove him to jump at the opportunity with the Tar Heels.
“Beats working,” Belichick said. “When you love what you do, it’s not work. I love what I do. I love coaching. I love the interaction with the players, the building a team, working, the assistants, game planning, the games itself.”
North Carolina will need every bit of Belichick’s devotion and love for the game. The Tar Heels are coming off a disappointing 6-6 campaign that included losses to archrival Duke and North Carolina State and a 70-50 blowout loss to James Madison. In addition, the Heels were a woeful 3-5 in conference play.
The legendary NFL coach and future Hall of Famer detailed how he would right the ship at UNC.
“I want to be versatile and take advantage of the personnel that we have,” Belichick said. “I’ve always coached that way. I don’t want to just run one front, run four or five plays. I just don’t believe in that. I believe in attacking the defense and defending what the offense does well. We’ll have a system that can incorporate any good player. I’ve never told Michael, hey, that’s a good player; we can’t use them. Give us a good player, and we’ll try to find a way to work that player into the game.”
Belichick foresees a coaching staff with a strong NFL pedigree.
“I’ve had a lot of people contact me,” Belichick said. “I think there’ll be a strong presence of NFL people on the staff; I think that’s a certainty, not just in the staff but in the training area.”
Belichick also revealed his thought process as to how he became open to the idea of coaching college fooball.
“College kind of came to me this year,” Belichick explained. “I didn’t necessarily go and seek it out. I had many coaches — probably a couple dozen coaches — talk to me and say, ‘Hey, can we sit down and talk to you about these things?’ Let’s call it the salary cap of pro football relative to college football: the headsets, the green dot, the 2-minute warning, and the tablets on the sideline. Those were all rules changes this year in college football that were either the same or similar to what we had in the NFL. …
“As those conversations started — and then the personnel conversations started relative to salary cap and how you spend whatever the allotment of money you have … I had multiple conversations with several coaches. … Sometimes, there were coaches who were on the staff that were responsible for situational football — or in some cases, a person in the organization that was maybe in football but was moved to a semi-general manager type role that wasn’t familiar with that aspect of what was now invading college football with the revenue sharing and the NIL.
“That started to make me a lot more aware of it because the first thing I had to do was learn about it. … As you learn different things about different programs, you start to put it all together. There are some common threads, and there are some variables.”
Belichick has already begun attacking the “common threads” and “variables.” According to reports, he has already made a transfer portal offer to Ivy League star runner Malachi Hosley.
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