Bill Belichick on UNC football head coaching job discussions: ‘We’ll see how it goes’
Bill Belichick on Monday acknowledged he’d shared discussions with North Carolina about its head coaching vacancy but offered few hints about where those discussions are, or how soon — or not — he might become the Tar Heels’ new head football coach.
During his regular weekly appearance on the Pat McAfee Show on ESPN, Belichick said he’d talked with UNC Chancellor Lee Roberts and that “we’ve had a couple good conversations.”
“So we’ll see how it goes,” Belichick said.
He has, over the past couple of days, become the leading candidate to succeed Mack Brown as UNC’s head coach.
When Belichick’s name first surfaced in connection with the opening last week, it seemed far-fetched and unlikely that he’d become a serious candidate. A source has since told The News & Observer, though, that the school’s conversations with Belichick have grown more serious.
Belichick, 72, spent 29 years as an NFL head coach, the last 24 of those with the New England Patriots, but he has never coached in college. With Tom Brady at quarterback, he helped lead the Patriots to six Super Bowl victories in the 2000s and 2010s.
Without Brady, the Patriots finished with losing records in three out of Belichick’s final four seasons.
The Patriots fired Belichick after a 4-13 finish after the 2023 season, and he has spent this season as an analyst and making various regular appearances on television shows, including McAfee’s.
During Monday’s show, Belichick danced around questions specific to the UNC opening — including one, based on an ESPN report, about whether he interviewed for five hours on Sunday.
If he were to become a college head coach, though — and Belichick said to put the “if” in “capital letters” — then he would design his program to be a college version of an NFL franchise.
“The college program would be a pipeline to the NFL for the players that had the ability to play in the NFL,” Belichick said. “It would be a professional program — training, nutrition, scheme, coaching techniques, that would transfer to the NFL.”
This story was originally published December 9, 2024 at 2:53 PM with the headline "Bill Belichick on UNC football head coaching job discussions: ‘We’ll see how it goes’."