‘I didn’t come here to leave’: Bill Belichick introduced as UNC’s new head football coach
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UNC football hires Bill Belichick to be its next head coach
Bill Belichick led the New England Patriots to six Super Bowl victories during the 2000s and 2010s. He has never been a college football head coach. UNC picked him to lead the the Tar Heels following the firing of Mack Brown. Here is ongoing coverage from The News & Observer.
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In one of the more anticipated news conferences in recent memory at North Carolina, the Tar Heels formally introduced six-time Super Bowl-winning coach Bill Belichick as UNC’s next head football coach Thursday.
The news conference came nearly a week to the moment after word began to spread that Belichick was in the conversation to replace Mack Brown, a former NCAA national champion and two-term UNC head coach who’d been fired less than two weeks prior.
Belichick, whose 24-year run as head coach of the New England Patriots of the National Football League ended in January, won six Super Bowl titles and appeared in nine during that run. Belichick also appeared in three Super Bowls as an assistant coach prior to his head-coaching tenure, earning two rings with the New York Giants under Bill Parcells.
This will be Belichick’s first foray into college football, though. His father, Steve, was briefly an assistant at North Carolina from 1953-55 before a 30-year run as an assistant at Navy.
Follow along here for some of the answers from Belichick during his first news conference as the Tar Heels’ head coach
What Bill Belichick said
On coaching in college football: “Always wanted to coach college football. It just never really worked out. I’ve had some good years in the NFL. So that was okay, but this is really kind of a dream come true.”
On his family ties to UNC through his father “Obviously, I was too young to remember a lot of things from Carolina. But as I grew up, you know, you hear the same story over and over and over and over again, and so one story I always heard was, Billy’s first words were, ‘Beat Duke.’ So, full circle.”
On reports he presented a 400-page document to UNC during the process: “I mean, don’t believe everything you read in the papers. All right. I have no idea where that came from. I don’t have a 400-page document. I mean, and to think I was going to hand it (over)?”
On hiring Michael Lombardi as UNC’s general manager: “So grateful to have Michael with me in this process. Michael and I have worked together going all the way back over 30 years, and he has a great knowledge of the general manager role. In this type of position, in terms of scouting two sets of players, high school players and college portal players, as well as dealing with some version of what’s called salary cap, which is now part college football.”
Why take this job at age 72? “Well, it beats working. When you love what you do, and my dad told me this, 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. Love building a team, working with assistants, game planning, the game itself, which, there’s some good ones, there’s some bad, but they’re all learning experiences.”
On adjusting to the college game from NFL: “I do think there are a lot of parallels. There’s certainly some differences, but there are some parallels and I think that’s the reason for the general structure of Michael, as a general manager, myself as a coach, and working together collaboratively like we have done being in a professional organization. So yeah, I do think there’s some parallels and there’s differences.”
On if he wants to return to the NFL: “I didn’t come here to leave.”
On filling out his UNC staff: “We’ll hire the best coaches we can hire. I want to do everything I can to help this program and make it as strong as possible. So the best moves we can get. There are several college coaches that are involved in bowl games and so forth. So I wouldn’t interfere with the process at those schools with their commitments to their team. So we’ll see how it goes. Look, in the end, I’ve already had a lot of people contact me. There’ll certainly be a strong presence of NFL people on the staff. I think that’s a certainty, and not only in the staff, but in the training area. But at the same time, looking for the best people we can get for Carolina that fit. I think it’s a little different than what an NFL team would have, but we’ll see.”
On how he turned his attention to a college job: “That’s a great question. Here’s what I would say: College kind of came to me this year. I didn’t necessarily go and seek it out, but I had many coaches. I mean, there were probably a couple of dozen coaches talk to me and say, `Hey, can we can sit down and talk to you about these things.’ The let’s call it salary cap of pro football relative to college football. The headsets. The green dot. The two-minute warning. 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. And and these coaches said, `Hey, coach, can we just talk to you about how you did this? How you did that? How did you use this? How did you handle the two-minute warning? How did that affect your strategy at the end of the half, the end of the game? How did you look at it, you know? How did you break it down?’
“And so, as those conversations started, and then the personnel conversation started, relative to salary cap and how you spend whatever the allotment of money you have is whether that’s by player, by position, by freshman recruits transfer. How did you look at that? And so I had multiple conversations with several coaches in this conference, within the Big 10 and Southeast Conference, and others ... sometimes there were coaches who were on the staff that were responsible for what’s called situational football. For kind of organizing that, or in some cases, a person in the organization that was maybe in football, but is now being moved over to the, let’s call it semi general manager type role that wasn’t familiar with that aspect of what was now invading college football, right? With the, revenue share and the NIL. So that started to make me a lot more aware of it, because the first thing I did was learn about it and say, `Okay, well, what are you dealing with here?’ And then they would kind of explain. Here’s our situation. Then you hear another coach at another school explain it sort of the same way, but it was different at his school for whatever reason it was, and so forth, on and on and on.
“So in the end, long answer to a short question here. Sorry, you know, I like to ramble on at press conferences, right? But as you learn different things about different programs, you start to put it all together.”
What Bubba Cunningham said
On the future of college football: “In the words of Yogi Berra, ‘The future ain’t what it used to be.’”
On the job search turning to Belichick:“We looked at a wide variety of people, and obviously when it became realistic that he was available, that certainly was a path that we really wanted to go down and explore. We’re just really fortunate to be here today and just that he was willing to say yes and to lend his expertise and knowledge to Carolina. Very excited about it.”
On UNC’s funding its top programs in football and basketball: “I think it’s why we’re trying to do what we’re doing. I think if you go all in on those two sports, those two sports provide all of the finances for the rest of the department. The more successful we are in football, more successful we’re in basketball, the more opportunities we’re going to be able to provide for everyone else here. So I’m delighted with it, and I think our future is incredibly bright given (Belichick’s) leadership and that of Hubert Davis. Our women’s basketball program starting revenue share this year with the NCAA tournament. Courtney (Banghart) has done a fantastic job. So I think the continued investment is an investment in the future of Carolina athletics.”
What Lee Roberts said
On UNC football history, which began in 1888: “I suspect there have been few days in those 136 years that have been as auspicious as this one.”
This story was originally published December 12, 2024 at 2:00 PM with the headline "‘I didn’t come here to leave’: Bill Belichick introduced as UNC’s new head football coach."
