Bill Belichick confirms he has spoken with UNC and discussed his vision for a college football program
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Bill Belichick confirms he has spoken with UNC and discussed his vision for a college football program

Posted on by Amelia Pressman

Will Bill Belichick be the next North Carolina football head coach? (Bill Streicher/Reuters)

Will Bill Belichick be the next North Carolina football head coach? (Bill Streicher/Reuters)

Bill Belichick didn’t want to go into details.

But he confirmed Monday that he has spoken to North Carolina about the head football coaching job. And he discussed what his vision of a college football program would look like if he were to actually take a college coaching job — at UNC or elsewhere.

Belichick made the revelations on “The Pat McAfee Show” amid multiple reports that he had 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 have.

“I had a chance to speak with Chancellor Roberts and we had some good conversations,” Belichick told McAfee. “So, we’ll see how it goes.”

McAfee then pressed Belichick and asked about the report on his Sunday meeting with Roberts. Belichick declined to provide further details.

“Let’s leave it at that,” Belichick said. “I don’t want to give away too much information.”

Belichick was more than happy to talk about the state of college football and also addressed one of the biggest questions surrounding his discussions with UNC. Does Belichick – who most recently oversaw the six-time Super Bowl champion New England Patriots dynasty for 24 seasons – really want to deal with the headaches of college coaching?

Is he interested in navigating the changing transfer portal and NIL landscape that coincides with the retirement of college coaching titans like Nick Saban, Mike Krzyzewski and Roy Williams? The answer seems to be a resounding yes.

Belichick went on to discuss how the modern collegiate team-building landscape reflects the NFL’s salary cap structure, which he is quite familiar with.

“I think there are a lot of football programs that are structured similarly to NFL programs,” Belichick said. “In college now you have high school recruiting, but you have the college portal. In professional football there is the draft and pro free agency.”

“So there is a salary cap and negotiations with NFL agents. In college, you negotiate with whoever represents the player, be it a family member, a high school coach, an agent, another financial advisor, whoever.

“There are players who can change teams in college, just like there are players who can change teams in the NFL with different rules but the same general structure. And you have to value your players in some way because you only have a limited amount of money.” The revenue share is.

“I think it’s a slightly different version of the NFL model, much more so than ever before.”

So what would Belichick’s program look like if he took a head coaching job? Belichick laid out his vision with a significant caveat about accepting a college job.

“Let me put this in all caps: If I were to attend a college program, the college program would be a connection to the NFL for the players who would have the opportunity to play in the NFL,” Belichick said. “It would be a professional program — training, nutrition, program, coaching technique — that would translate to the NFL.”

“It would be a college-level NFL program and an education that would prepare players for their careers after football, whether that would be the end of their college career or the end of their professional career.”

This certainly sounds like a guy who has put a lot of thought into college coaching and prepared his pitch to potential employers and recruits. So does this mean he will be the next head coach at North Carolina — or perhaps another program?

Of course, that still remains to be seen. There are reportedly no offers on the table from UNC yet. But a decision one way or the other on Belichick’s future in Chapel Hill is reportedly expected this week.

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