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Congratulations, North Carolina. You managed to hire someone completely unqualified to be your next football coach. You did that thing so many schools do where they try to win the press conference instead of win football games. It rarely works.
GO DEEPER
Bill Belichick agrees to deal to become UNC football head coach
I realize I may get excommunicated from the football world for daring to question the merits of a six-time Super Bowl champion coach. But let’s remove the name Bill Belichick and replace it with Coach X. Here is who North Carolina just hired:
• Coach X has never coached a day in college football. He has never recruited an athlete. He has never had to deal with the transfer portal or NIL collectives. His dad was a college coach, at Navy, but that was 35 years ago.
• Coach X is known for being grumpy and introverted, two traits that don’t often go hand in hand with wooing recruits, glad-handing donors and giving motivational talks to 18- to 22-year-olds.
• Coach X made his first post on Instagram — which he referred to as Instaface at the time — on Sept. 4 of this year. He has since posted eight more times. He may not realize that many college athletes, particularly recruits, communicate primarily via social media.
• And Coach X is 72 years old, just one year younger than the guy he’s replacing, Mack Brown, as well as his buddy Nick Saban, who got out of coaching this year at least in part because, as he said at the time, “When you get to 72 years old, it gets harder and harder to promise people you’re gonna be there for four or five more years.”
But Coach X does have those Super Bowl rings. Which he’ll surely wear when he meets with recruits and potential transfers. Who will then say something to the effect of, “That’s great, but how much am I getting paid?”
Unless Belichick can magically restore eligibility for Tom Brady, I fail to see how this will end well. I’ve seen this movie so many times before: Big-name NFL coach comes to town vowing to turn the program into an NFL organization in college.
Bill Callahan and his master plan to scrap Nebraska’s famed triple-option offense for the West Coast offense.
Charlie Weis and his “decided schematic advantage” at Notre Dame.
Herm Edwards and his vaunted “new leadership model” at Arizona State.
Lovie Smith, with no discernible plan of any kind at Illinois.
Inevitably, school and coach soon realize that what works in the NFL doesn’t necessarily work in college. (And vice versa.) And yet … they just keep falling for it.
Former Belichick assistant Charlie Weis went 41-49 at Notre Dame and Kansas. (Jonathan Daniel / Getty Images)
Belichick has spent time this year at Washington, where his son, Steve, is the defensive coordinator. He’s clearly put a lot of thought into how he would run his own college program, as evidenced by his comments earlier this week on Pat McAfee’s show.
“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,” he said. “It would be a professional program — training, nutrition, scheme, coaching and techniques that would transfer to the NFL. It would be an NFL program at a college level.”
No question, player development is crucial to success as a college coach. But is he under the impression the current top programs aren’t already doing this exact thing? It’s delusional to think Belichick will show up, flash his rings and suddenly North Carolina will start producing more high-end NFL players than Georgia or Ohio State.
You need to do something else to distinguish yourself in this era.
The college coaching landscape is currently in a bridge process, following the exits of national championship coaches Saban, Brown and Jim Harbaugh. Kirby Smart and Dabo Swinney are the only ones left. As the next generation begins establishing itself, two specific archetypes are emerging.
The young/youngish high-energy guys: Smart, Dan Lanning, Steve Sarkisian, Kenny Dillingham, Deion Sanders, Spencer Danielson, Matt Campbell, Marcus Freeman, Shane Beamer, Eli Drinkwitz, Rhett Lashlee, Jon Sumrall, Fran Brown.
And the career college guy who just wins: Curt Cignetti, Jeff Monken, Chris Klieman, Lance Leipold (this season notwithstanding).
Belichick is so far from fitting within either of those groups it’s hard to think of any close comparison. It may actually be Coach Prime, who, though he came from Jackson State, has filled his staff with NFL coaches and welcomes all manner of NFL guests.
But he and Belichick fall on polar opposite ends of the personality spectrum.
GO DEEPER
What we know about Bill Belichick and UNC’s complicated coaching search
Nailing a coaching hire is hard, and it can be futile trying to predict which guys will succeed and which guys will fail. Like many, I thought Scott Frost would lead Nebraska to glory, and that Lincoln Riley would be contending for national championships by now at USC. Whereas I doubted Sarkisian was the guy to do that at Texas or that Josh Heupel would become Tennessee’s best coach in two decades.
But there have been a few over the years I felt were obvious disasters from the moment they were announced — Weis and Les Miles at Kansas, Edwards at Arizona State, Mike Riley at Nebraska and Karl Dorrell at Colorado come to mind.
I hereby add UNC/Belichick to that distinguished class of regrettable hires. Check back in two to three years.
(Illustration: Meech Robinson / The Athletic; photos: Andy Lewis, Grant Halverson / Getty Images)
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