While initially it may have seemed like a far-fetched idea or a joke, Bill Belichick returning to coaching as the next head coach at the University of North Carolina now seems like a real possibility.
According to a report from Ollie Connolly of Read Optional on Tuesday, Belichick has agreed to become UNC’s football coach if the university accepts his 400-page “organizational bible,” which reportedly includes stipulations about staff salaries and a request that his son Stephen be named his successor.
In addition to the reports from Connolly, Twitter sleuths discovered that Belichick’s girlfriend is now following several UNC-related Instagram accounts.
Despite how strange it would be that traditional and gruff Belichick could enter college coaching at a time marked by NIL, the transfer portal and player empowerment, the Patriots legend is apparently just 400 pages away from becoming a college coach.
Adam Jones and Rich Keefe reacted to the developments Tuesday on WEEI.
“They have a decision to make, because Bill Belichick, he's not talking to every single team in [college football],” Keefe said.
While potentially transformational, hiring Belichick would require a massive financial investment from the school. Not only would Belichick himself command a high salary, but his organizational bible asks for UNC to make spending moves that would match the top schools in the ACC.
“They have a chance to get this guy, change their whole organization or whole school for the next handful of years, or maybe they go a little safer, and safer can also mean cheaper and go a different route,” Keefe said.
Jones believed these requests signaled that Belichick’s vision of his status in 2024 may not match that of the general football public. Would North Carolina invest so heavily in someone who may have lost his fastball?
“It's all an indication that Bill may not get it,” Jones said.
“I mean, Bill still thinks he's Bill Belichick, hot commodity, highly wanted, highly sought after, a guy whose name still rings out, and it just may not the way he thinks it does, where they're going to compensate him through the nose and put up with all of his cronies and, on top of that, deal with all the other crap that comes along with Bill Belichick,” Jones continued.
Keefe believes, though, that the idea of him taking a college job demonstrates some self-awareness.
“I think he has to have read the room a little bit to even talk to North Carolina,” Keefe said. “If he was just waiting for an NFL job at the end of the year, somebody else would have gone to North Carolina, he would have sat there, and he would have been like, ‘Oh, crap, I have one interview again.’”
Could Belichick be running some broader scheme with these UNC rumors? Maybe by expressing interest in the UNC job, Belichick thinks more NFL teams will try hiring him.
“He wants a football job at a basketball school. Maybe he just knows it's the kind of place that's not going to throw that level of commitment behind football. And so if this is Bill's way of trying to get the phone to ring from an NFL team, it's a little sad,” Jones said.
All reports before this UNC story have suggested that Belichick would only return to coaching for an NFL job and that he wants to break Don Shula’s record for career wins by a head coach.
“I'm not sure about Bill's level of interest in the job. Does he really want it, or does he fake want it to try to drum up interest? I'm back to unsure about that,” Jones said.
“I'm pretty positive the NFL is showing him zero love right now and no interest. And I don't know how committed UNC is on their end. The ball is supposedly in their court, and they're balking at it,” Jones added.