By ESPN | Created at 2024-12-11 22:58:42 | Updated at 2024-12-12 02:04:45
3 hours ago
Pete Thamel, Adam Schefter, Chris Low
Dec 11, 2024, 05:28 PM ET
Six-time Super Bowl-winning head coach Bill Belichick is finalizing a deal to become the new head coach at North Carolina, sources told ESPN on Wednesday.
The expected hiring of Belichick, 72, will resonate as one of the most stunning and compelling moves in college football history. He worked in the NFL in some capacity from 1975 until his divorce from the New England Patriots after the 2023 season.
Belichick's father, Steve, served as an assistant coach for the Tar Heels in the 1950s.
Belichick's hiring at North Carolina, which hasn't won an ACC football title since 1980, was spearheaded by board chair John P. Preyer, who had honed in on Belichick in recent weeks. The sides met multiple times at length, including for five hours Sunday, and those talks culminated with Belichick finalizing the deal Wednesday.
For a program awash in apathy and mediocrity, this marks a distinct and compelling shift from Mack Brown, as Belichick gives the Tar Heels an unprecedented jolt of star power for 2025 and beyond.
The Patriots' six Super Bowls under Belichick is an NFL record (he won two more as an assistant coach). He enters college football with 333 NFL wins, behind only Don Shula's all-time record of 347.
North Carolina fired the 73-year-old Brown on Nov. 26 after a 6-6 season, ending his second stint at the school with a 44-33 record over six years. He coached the Tar Heels' regular-season finale, a 35-30 loss to NC State, then said it was a "great time for me to get out."
The expected hiring of the famously aloof Belichick, who joked Monday on "The Pat McAfee Show" about his news conference aura, represents a significant shift from Brown's syrupy Southern charm.
Belichick has spent his year away the sideline doing multiple media jobs while making it clear that he wanted to return to coaching. After exploring multiple NFL positions last year following his departure from New England, it was expected that Belichick would explore the NFL market again.
But sources told ESPN that a return to coaching in general had been paramount for Belichick. He spent a lot of time around his former assistant, Washington coach Jedd Fisch, and talking to friends and former assistant coaches around college football. Belichick's son, Stephen, is Washington's defensive coordinator and is expected to be involved with the North Carolina staff in some way.
Through the draft every year, Belichick has built up a reserve of college coach confidants, and he has popped up at places like Washington, Rutgers and LSU this year for college games.
Belichick also spent recent days familiarizing himself with the transfer portal and NIL, and spent a lot of time on how the organizational chart of a college system would work.
He made it clear in his interview with McAfee on Monday that he would create an incubator for NFL talent if he were a college coach.
"If I was in a college program, 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 and techniques that would transfer to the NFL."
He concluded a lengthy portrait of what the program would look like by saying: "It would be an NFL program, but not at the NFL level."
Other names that had emerged in North Carolina's search included veteran NFL coach Steve Wilks, Tulane coach Jon Sumrall, Georgia defensive coordinator Glenn Schumann, Army coach Jeff Monken and Steelers offensive coordinator Arthur Smith. Smith indicated he would stay with the Steelers, and Tulane reached an agreement in principle with Sumrall for a contract extension.
