Bill Belichick did not want to get into details.
But he confirmed on Monday that he’s talked to North Carolina about its head football coaching vacancy. And he discussed what his vision of a college football program would look like if he did take a college coaching job — at UNC or elsewhere.
Belichick made these revelations on “The Pat McAfee Show” amid multiple reports that he’d been in talks with North Carolina, including one from his ESPN colleague Adam Schefter that he met with UNC chancellor Lee Roberts for five hours on Sunday.
“I’ve had an opportunity to talk to Chancellor Roberts, and we’ve had a couple of good conversations,” Belichick told McAfee. “So, we’ll see how it goes.”
McAfee then pressed Belichick and asked about the report of his Sunday meeting with Roberts. Belichick declined to offer further details.
“Let’s just leave it at that,” Belichick said “I don’t want to give out too much information.”
So does Belichick really want to coach in college?
Belichick was more than happy to talk about the state of college football, further addressing one of the biggest questions around his talks with UNC. Does Belichick — who most 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 shifting transfer portal and NIL landscape that’s coincided with the retirement of college coaching titans, including Nick Saban, Mike Krzyzewski and Roy Williams? The answer appears to be a resounding yes.
Belichick went on to discuss how the modern college landscape of team building mirrors that of the salary-capped NFL structure that he’s quite familiar with.
“I think there are a lot of football programs that are being structured similar to NFL programs,” Belichick said. “In college, you now have high school recruiting but you have the college portal. In pro football, you have the draft and pro free agency.
“So you have 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 adviser, whoever it is.
“You have players changing teams in college as you have players that can change teams in the NFL with a different set of rules but the same general structure. And you have to value your players in some way because you have a limited amount of money whatever the revenue share is.
“I think it’s a little different version of the NFL model, much more so than it’s ever been before.”
So what would Belichick’s program look like if he were to take a head coaching job? Belichick laid out his vision with a significant caveat regarding 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 ability to play in the NFL..
It would be a professional program at the College level..
I don’t have any doubt that 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 capital letters, if — I,F — 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 technique — that would transfer to the NFL.
“It would be an NFL program at a college level and an education that would get the players ready for their career after football whether that was the end of their college career or the end of their pro career.”
That sure sounds like a man who’s thought a lot about coaching in college and has prepared his pitch for potential employers and recruits. So does that mean he’ll be the next head coach at North Carolina — or, perhaps, another program?
That’s yet to be seen, of course. There’s reportedly no offer on the table from UNC yet. But, according to reports, a decision one way or the other regarding Belichick’s future in Chapel Hill is expected this week.
