Bill Belichick declined to go into details.
But he confirmed Monday that he has spoken with North Carolina about the head football coaching vacancy. And he discussed what his vision for a college football program would look like if he took a college coaching job — at UNC or elsewhere.
Belichick made these revelations on “The Pat McAffee Show” amid multiple reports that he had been in talks with North Carolina, including one from his ESPN colleague Adam Schefter that he had met with UNC Chancellor Lee for five hours on Sunday Roberts.
“I had the opportunity to talk to Chancellor Roberts, and we had some good conversations,” Belichick told McAfee. “So we’ll see how it goes.”
McAfee then asked Belichick for more information and asked for the report of his Sunday meeting with Roberts. Belichick declined to provide further details.
“Let’s just leave it at that,” Belichick said. “I don’t want to give away too much information.”
Does Belichick really want to coach in college?
But Belichick was more than happy to talk about the state of college football, further confirming one of the biggest questions surrounding his talks with UNC. Does Belichick – who recently spent 24 seasons overseeing the six-time Super Bowl champion New England Patriots dynasty – really want to deal with the headaches of college coaching?
Is he interested in navigating the changing transfer portal and NIL landscape that has coincided with the retirements of college coaching titans including Nick Saban, Mike Krzyzewski and Roy Williams? The answer seems to be a resounding yes.
Belichick further discussed how the modern college landscape of team building mirrors the NFL salary cap structure he is intimately familiar with.
“I think there are a lot of football programs that are similar to NFL programs,” Belichick said. “Now in college you have high school recruiting, but you have the college portal. In pro football you have the draft and pro free agency.
“So you have a salary cap and negotiations with NFL agents. In college, you have negotiations with whoever represents the player, whether that’s a family member, a high school coach, an agent or some other financial advisor, whoever it is.
“You have players who can change teams in college, just like you have players who can change teams in the NFL with different rules but the same general structure. And you have to value your players somehow because you have a limited amount of money anyway, the revenue share is.
“I think it’s a slightly different version of the NFL model, much more so than ever before.”
What would Belichick’s program look like if he were to land a head coaching job? Belichick laid out his vision with an important caveat about taking a college job.
“If I was in a College program, it would be a pipeline to the NFL for the players that had the opportunity to play in the NFL.
It would be a professional program at the university level.
I have no doubt the players would be ready for the NFL” ~Bill Belichick #PMSLive pic.twitter.com/JyMDtzs2yR
— Pat McAfee (@PatMcAfeeShow) December 9, 2024
“Let me put this in all caps: if – IF – if I attended a college program, the college program would be a pipeline to the NFL for the players who had the opportunity to play in the NFL,” Belichick. “It would be a professional program – training, nutrition, schedule, coaching technique – that would be transferred to the NFL.
“It would be an NFL program at the college level and an education that would prepare the players for their careers after football, whether that would be the end of their college career or the end of their pro career.”
That certainly sounds like a guy who has put a lot of thought into college coaching and prepared his pitch to potential employers and recruits. Does this mean he will be the next head coach at North Carolina – or perhaps another program?
Of course, that remains to be seen. There is reportedly no offer on the table from UNC yet. But according to reports, a decision on Belichick’s future in Chapel Hill is expected this week one way or another.
