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Everybody’s wondering why Bill Belichick accepted the head coaching job at the University of North Carolina. A Hall of Fame pro football coach, 72 years old, wants to go back to the college ranks? To win UNC an ACC championship after hoisting six NFL Super Bowl Lombardi Trophies? To win a national championship?
Really?
It’s a bold, brash, and bewildering business move on multiple levels that I believe will become a big-time business boondoggle for Belichick and the university. It all feels like one big money grab. Greed permeates the whole deal; it’s a Hail Mary pass.
The thinking goes that by hiring Belichick UNC will be able to attract more talented players to join the team, which will lead to more wins and more lucrative donations from alumni to boost the team’s record and chances of making the lucrative 12-team College Football Playoff, then winning it.
The problem with this is that Belichick’s personality – inflexible at best – will not be a particularly strong lure for players. Well established for his ruthlessness as a coach who leans in to his prickly and evasive personality, he won’t be the kind of person high school recruits and transfer portal players will want to come play for. They won’t want to be belittled, which is his style, and they’ll be on different wavelengths than a man over 70 years old. He won’t connect with them.
He may get some more talented players in the portal, but not as many as he hopes to. Players don’t flock towards mean coaches. And once they find out what it’s like playing for him – a major psychological and physical endurance test – many will leave his team quickly for the portal.
The second apparent business reason for this move is so UNC will be well positioned to be brought into the Big 10 or Southeastern Conference if the ACC folds or reconfigures itself, likely by downsizing, and therefore has less money to pay the most talented players.
Carolina is well known nationally because of its successful men’s basketball program – not now and not ever for football.
The strategy seems to be to position Carolina as a money-generating additive into the bigger conferences delivering the big-name clout of Belichick. Switching to another conference with more money-making opportunities will meet UNC’s goal. This is all about money everywhere you look; the same is true of everything in college football right now in this transmogrified Wild West system.
The problem with this is that Belichick will only be coaching this team for two or three years, probably, and then plans to hand off the job to his son. But no one in the big conferences will be nearly as interested in bringing in his son as they would him. Star coaches sell programs and bring in bucks; not sons of star coaches.
The third reason this business decision won’t pan out as envisioned is because Belichick won’t be able to re-recreate a pro football model program at the college level. UNC seems to have bought his argument that he understands how to run a pro football team, and college football is becoming much more like the NFL, so he’s got the expertise to replicate his model at UNC and get more players money in the NFL.
The problem with that, as I see it, is he’s going to find out that college players don’t want their college football experiences to be completely transactional and not super hard. Yes they want to get paid more money, but many of them won’t enjoy the cut-throat way Belichick will run the team. He’s famous for cutting players on his Patriots team in or near their primes so he wouldn’t have to pay them a lot more when their contracts were up for renegotiation. If he starts “cutting” players in college – not playing them, ignoring them, berating them – he’ll lose more of them. Fewer will then join him from the portal.
The sales pitch that he’ll get players to the pros leveraging his contacts there will only benefit a few of his players; the vast majority won’t be good enough. And it’s not as if the NFL seems eager to do business with Bill given no team offered him a job last year after he stepped away from the Patriots.
There’s one more thing: his girlfriend who’s in her twenties. This sets up as a constant mocking session by the entire nation and, if they start losing and probably even if they don’t, by the UNC students. His relationship with a woman more than 40 years younger will be fodder for fun and jokes but also ridicule. And this could become one big distraction detracting his ability to win games. If you were the parent of a high school football star, would you want your son to go play for a 72 year old coach dating someone old enough to be her grandfather?
This curious coaching hiring strikes me as an act of desperation by both Belichick and UNC. Belichick is desperate to get back into the spotlight as a high profile coach, and college ended up being his only opportunity. Former stars have trouble walking away: Michael Jordan, Joe Montana, and the rest.
UNC is desperate to have a more competitive football program that generates a lot more money. Neither of those visions will come true.
This has business boondoggle written all over it. I’m surprised UNC leaders bought what Chapel Bill was selling.
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Sammy Sportface, a sports blogger, galvanizes, inspires, and amuses The Baby Boomer Brotherhood. And you can learn about his vision and join this group's Facebook page here:
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