IThere has never been a stronger brand in football than a team coached by Bill Belichick. For most of his nearly 50 years in the pros, that phrase referred to teams that prepared for every scenario, executed directions to perfection and faced every moment in between to secure victory time and time again. But since the NFL turned its back on Belichick, who resigned from the college ranks and took the head job at North Carolina State seemingly for the sake of appearances, the emblem of a Belichick-coached team has become less a sign of excellence than a shining warning sign for a program run by corruption.
The concerns at this point, still far from the halfway point of Belichick’s rookie season, are enormous. The misleading record, the stark images of home fans deserting the devastating loss to Clemson before halftime, the dramatic talent deficit — those were predictable results for a 70-year-old official trying to coach college kids. Belichick is simply not out of his element. He’s looking to have the whole world asleep at the wheel, too.
Last week Raleigh TV station WRAL Dropped a bomb About a program that was full of the kind of chatter and bug-finding that usually comes out after The coach gets fired. The scathing report — which included unofficial accounts from players, parents, coaches and administrators — paints a picture of a discordant program where Belichick’s recruits receive preferential treatment and parental concerns are completely ignored. As evidence of the Tar Heels’ disunity, a number of WRAL sources pointed to the Tar Heels selling their allotment of reserve tickets for cash rather than sharing them with teammates in need.
If you suspect that NCAA eligibility enforcers might not look kindly on player-driven ticket scalping, even in an era when amateurs have been granted a measure of economic independence, well, you’d be right. But ultimately, it was cornerbacks coach Armond Hawkins who fell for facilitating these “improper benefits”; Last Thursday, UNC’s athletics department placed him on indefinite leave while it “investigates other potential actions harmful to the team and the university,” according to a school statement. As those events came to light, Oliver Connolly — who, you’ll recall, was among the first to break the Belichick-to-UNC news — reported that the coach had… Takeover talks have begun With the school, his assistants were scrambling to get out in hopes of landing quietly on college football teams. “The rats are leaving the ship,” said one unnamed trainer. “What we did to those kids is terrible,” a defensive assistant added.
UNC’s underage conspiracy turned Cal’s dismal road game on Friday into the football equivalent of a girls’ trip on a Bravo TV series. When will the finger pointing start? What is something that he will never come back from? Who will be the first to raise his hands and blow? I have finished!? Both Belichick and UNC Athletics Director Bubba Cunningham have issued statements emphasizing their commitment to the cause, but the public relations model has proven to be no better than a filter against an endless wave of bad news.
Lost amid rumors of Belichick’s UNC demise, Hulu has canceled plans for a series tracking the team, a cancellation that comes six months after NFL Films pulled the plug on its North Carolina State-focused series Hard Knocks. The fact that these TV productions are no longer around the Tar Heels makes you wonder what a horror show the Real Coaches of UNC have become, and how bad it is for the kids in the locker room on one Bishop Sycamore scale. “We believe a lot in this process,” Belichick said in a press conference this week while addressing rumors about the program. “He loves [hall of fame coach] “The outcome will take care of itself,” Bill Walsh said. I’ve always thought so. You just have to keep working and grinding, and that’s exactly what we do.
On some level, you feel for the Tar Heels, who have allowed the winningest coach in program history He walks To try their luck with the most accomplished coach in NFL history. In theory, the decision reeks of logic. This professional resume alone will be enough justification to hire another unseen candidate. But Cunningham and the school’s board of trustees should have known it was better to sign Belichick to a five-year, $50 million contract without… truly Considering who exactly they were hiring. This is not a snapshot of Gordon Hudson, the ubiquitous friend and handler who has worked her way into the heart of all of the coach’s affairs. This is an indictment of Belichick — the cheerleader monk who preached against the dangers of off-field distractions, only to end up turning into the biggest one.
Belichick wouldn’t have been the same mastermind without Tom Brady, posting a coaching record of 29-38 with no playoff appearances in his final four seasons in New England. During that period, his obvious talent for spotting and developing talent quickly eroded. Belichick’s latest promising quarterback, Mac Jones, is thriving under new management in San Francisco. When Brady rode to Tampa outright to win his seventh Super Bowl ring and put distance between himself and his longtime coach, it seemed like a point-picayune. But since Brady took Patriot Ways and won a championship in his first year with the Buccaneers, you can’t help but wonder who the mastermind really is as Belichick stumbles through his final coaching days.
Whoever the Tar Heel decision-maker thinks Belichick, a very tough guy who speaks in mumbles, will have the charisma left to chat with boosters and coaches children The 73-year-old clearly has no idea how the big leagues work. It’s one thing for a middle-aged Belichick to manage a locker room full of self-motivated adults who live in constant fear of losing their lucrative NFL jobs; It’s quite another for an aging Belichick to leave it to a group of teenagers to figure out how much they need to watch film, achieve their fitness goals, and, I guess, attend classes, too.
Belichick’s coaching staff was supposed to impose their winning NFL ways on a wild, woolly college game, but they proved to be no better than a frustrating mix of loyalists and family members reporting to their longtime lackey Mike Lombardi — the UNC general manager known for inciting Belichick’s famous NFL flameout with the Cleveland Browns. Disturbingly, none of the employees seem to appreciate that the difference between wins and losses at the college level lies in the recruiting process. Belichick was supposed to be the coach who could make a credible case for playing football at a basketball school; They said he’d just need to flash one of his Super Bowl rings.
But in their rush to become the NFL’s 33rd franchise, UNC’s higher-ups appear to have completely ignored Belichick’s long NFL history of public relations reticence, managerial clashes and cheating allegations. (Maybe the basketball team was playing?) One of Belichick’s first moves as coach to lead UNC was to do just that He prevented the Patriots from scouting his team. “Obviously I’m not welcome there in their facility. So, they’re not welcome in our facility,” he said, even though he had just returned to Foxboro for Brady’s Patriots Hall of Fame induction ceremony. Belichick It is said He also blocked UNC’s social media team from posting news about Carolina’s alumni with New England, effectively preventing them from celebrating former Tar Heel player turned Pats quarterback Drake Maye. In the college game, coaches are held up as societal role models for young players especially — but Belichick is teaching all the wrong lessons with his immaturity, pettiness and grudge-holding.
Even if Belichick had reached a perennial championship contender — Georgia or Alabama, for example — one doubts the results would have been much the same. Belichick may have built his entire persona around being the man in charge. But his final nine months in Chapel Hill were a reminder that he fires players for far less troubling reasons and won’t hesitate to fire himself if he’s out of position, making a decision.
If UNC and Belichick do separate prematurely, the divorce could become complicated and expensive. per UralBelichick can return $1 million to get out of the contract or wait for the university to fire him without cause and collect $30 million. It will not be lost on North Carolinians that most of this money will come from state coffers, as UNC is a public school. But if the athletics department finds a reason to let him go — for a violation of NCAA rules, player abuse or a quiet resignation from the job, to name three examples that already seem to be in progress — they likely won’t owe him more than a courtesy arbitration battle. However the relationship ends, it seems unlikely that the NFL or a major college football team will give Belichick another chance to run the entire show.
It’s for the best. For more than half a century, Belichick has been a dutiful steward of the game and has been handsomely rewarded for his service. But the time has come for both parties to admit their mistake, sever ties, and move on. The longer this cross-marriage goes on, the harder it becomes to deny that what brought UNC football to this new level: the collision between the arrogance of a great man and the naiveté of a towering academic bastion.