There may be truth to the old adage that people don’t change, but they sure will surprise you. Case in point: Bill Belichick as the next HC of UNC.
Imagine telling a New England Patriots fan, last December, that Belichick would be introduced as University of North Carolina’s new head coach and would bring his whole entourage south to Chapel Hill for what he predicts will be “a long time?”
One might have guessed he did something to get himself barred from the NFL. How could he not end up with the Dallas Cowboys and Micah Parsons, or back at his roots with the New York Giants? The truth appears to be that he simply surveyed his realistic options and chose what will bring him the most satisfaction.
"This is really kind of a dream come true," Belichick said during his introductory press conference Thursday.
It’s still a weird move. Although he has ties to North Carolina through his father, (in case you’ve somehow missed the dozen social media posts about his dad’s time coaching there), he’s still made his bread entirely in the NFL. He's the most accomplished coach in league history with zero experience at the college level. He’s also a 72-year-old entering a collegiate landscape undergoing extreme change. NiL, the transfer portal – it was all a big enough headache to drive his best bud Nick Saban into the media space Belichick will now abandon.
College football was barely mentioned by media prognosticators when considering Bill’s future post-Patriots, until Ollie Connolly first shared the news about his conversations with UNC. It seemed so out of nowhere, I initially disregarded it as a ploy to either: 1. Help UNC raise the profile of their search to succeed to Mack Brown, or 2. A bizarre media play by Belichick for job market buzz.
The man himself didn’t sound like he was fishing for the NCAA.
“"College came to me this year. I didn't go seek it out,” he told reporters.
We all should have paid more attention to how happy Belichick looked on the set of College Game Day. He was like a kid on Christmas morning in that Navy helmet. Maybe the old stomping grounds of his father and Lawrence Taylor are right where he belongs, because he realizes it’s the only place he’ll be able to exert as much power as he did in Foxboro - with Michael Lombardi at his side and his son, Stephen, as the coach-in-waiting.
But don’t pretend it’s not strange. It’s up there with Michael Jordan retiring from basketball in his prime to play minor league baseball, Kurt Warner transforming from supermarket employee to the Super Bowl, and Stephon Marbury getting banned by the Knicks and becoming a Chinese Basketball superstar.
As is the case with many celebrities, there are countless stories of sports heroes who meet tragic endings. I don’t need to detail them here; Netflix and FX already have the rights to most of those events. A fall from grace isn’t that uncommon. But reinvention? That’s a horse of a different color. In this case, Carolina blue.