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Bill Belichick Rides Again: Hired at North Carolina to build NIL NFL Factory


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Posted
3 hours ago, aggie08 said:

Bill fucking Belichick rummaging through old media contacts to try to find a soft landing as a pregame talking head is quite humorous.

 

he was horrible on the manning cast. 100% disengaged / didnt want to be there 

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Posted (edited)
11 minutes ago, tx 3 putt said:

 

he was horrible on the manning cast. 100% disengaged / didnt want to be there 

As horrible as that was it wasn’t on the same level as Arnold and his donkey. Watching the Manning Bros during that whole segment before the reception went wonky was amazing. 

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Edited by Nicole44
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Posted
41 minutes ago, Nicole44 said:

She is the roughest looking mid 20 year old I have ever seen. She will wind up with a tattoo of a dagger on her side and be flinging herself at some hapless backup QB in Florida in 3 years. 

Ewers aims to 'go get noticed' on Dolphins after surprising draft slip |  theScore.com

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Posted

Apparently lol Uncle Bill is discussing a buyout w North Carolina, his coaches said they couldn’t get a hold of him during the bye week, and the school might be using recruiting violations to reduce his payout. Wow. Shoot, the story just keeps getting better but I’m gonna be sad if it’s over. 

https://www.foxsports.com/stories/college-football/bill-belichick-unc-reportedly-discussing-possible-buyout-options

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Posted
12 hours ago, PittsburghTiger said:

She’s got that hollowed-out look that lends itself to vodka for breakfast and speed for dinner.

And it goes without saying he can’t keep up and isn’t happy about it, which reminds me of some famous last words:

image.thumb.png.5f104c786f9f617b8992dd6912dc7958.png

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Posted

UNC should triple down on their geriatric football coach strategy and just hire a dead guy. And then find a fat dead guy for the general manager role. Their contracts will be easy to negotiate because their agents will also be dead. A staff full of dead people will be just as averse and incapable of adapting to a changing landscape as their recent hires and they'll provide the same amount of communication with the players and their families that they're getting right now. The athletic department could be a series of stainless steel mortuary cabinets. 

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Posted

The amazing thing about that WRAL article is that with all the dysfunction it covered, Jordon Hudson’s name isn’t even mentioned. 
 

Second most amazing thing is Gio Lopez getting paid $2 million this year. 

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Posted
2 hours ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

And it goes without saying he can’t keep up and isn’t happy about it, which reminds me of some famous last words:

image.thumb.png.5f104c786f9f617b8992dd6912dc7958.png

He was a beautiful writer, for sure. Just the first sentence of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas:

“We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.”

 

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Posted
16 minutes ago, TreatyOak said:

He was a beautiful writer, for sure. Just the first sentence of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas:

“We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.”

 

 

That’s way better than pulling into a sonic, turning to look at the board, and the mushrooms kick in. 

 

 

Or, um, so I’ve heard. 

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Posted
Spoiler

North Texas quarterback Chandler Morris had thrown for 3,774 yards and 31 touchdowns when he put his name in the transfer portal shortly after the 2024 regular season. Two days later, on Dec. 11, North Carolina announced its hire of Bill Belichick. Morris, now a sixth-year senior, who’d previously played at Oklahoma and TCU, made it known he was interested in coming to play for the six-time Super Bowl champion.

Belichick’s right-hand man, general manager Michael Lombardi, was already making the decisions when it came to overhauling UNC’s roster. He didn’t want Morris, who was about 6-feet, 190 pounds, and did not have the strongest arm. Purdue’s Ryan Browne, a 6-4, 210-pounder who had started two games for a 2-10 Boilers team, better fit the mold he and Belichick were seeking. Lombardi didn’t hold back letting UNC’s personnel staffers, a mix of holdovers and new hires, know why.

“You just don’t understand what it takes to play in the National Football League,” he told staffers, according to a person briefed on the conversation, who, like more than 20 people interviewed for this story, spoke on condition of anonymity about their experiences of private conversations and decision-making within the program.

Of course, knowing what it takes to play in the NFL might not be the same thing as knowing what it takes to win college football games, or more specifically, how the more mobile Morris might be a better fit than Browne to navigate behind an overmatched offensive line. Browne transferred to Chapel Hill, but bailed to go back to Purdue later in the spring. Morris signed with Virginia, a program that hasn’t had a winning season since 2019, where he’s led the Cavaliers into the AP top 20.

The Athletic made several requests to speak with Belichick and Lombardi for this story. Lombardi declined comment, and a football spokesperson, Brandon Faber, said Belichick and the program would not be able to comment Friday because of UNC’s open week and the coach’s travel schedule.

“It’s the arrogance of it all,” a university source told The Athletic. “Because they had success in the NFL — and by they, I mean Belichick only — they (thought) they could come in and replicate that without knowing how college football works.”

Only five games into Belichick’s first season, UNC football has spiraled from nationally relevant to national punchline. Tabloid fodder surroundingthe 73-year-old’s relationship with 24-year-old girlfriend Jordon Hudson has given way to mockery over the 2-3 Tar Heels’ lopsided losses to TCU (48-14), UCF (34-9) and Clemson (38-10). North Carolina ranks 133rd out of 136 teams in total offense (263.8 yards per game), and opponents are completing 70.3 percent of their passes, which ranks 131st.

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None of the issues with the roster are unique to North Carolina. Every program deals with it. Every first-year coach deals with it.

It’s gotten so bad that Belichick, who signed a five-year, $50 million contract last December, and athletic director Bubba Cunningham felt compelled to issue statements Wednesday responding to rumors the coach might step down.

“I’m fully committed to UNC Football and the program we’re building here,” the coach said, 10 days after the New York Post published photographs of Belichick and Hudson on a “romantic getaway” in Nantucket during an open weekend at the end of September. (He also attended a high school game that Friday in Eastern Massachusetts; many head coaches emphasize recruiting during an idle week. “There’s not often that the head coach can go out during the season, because there’s so much stuff going on,” Lombardi said on his radio show.)

UNC has no game this week, but a swirl of off-the-field headlines have kept the program in the news and raised questions about who is to blame for the mess. On Monday, WRAL-TV in Raleigh published a story describing “a divided locker room, a disorganized coaching staff and a failure to communicate.” News emerged that a planned behind-the-scenes Hulu documentary about UNC’s season had been scrapped, for unknown reasons. On Tuesday, The Athletic reported that Tar Heels cornerbacks coach Armond Hawkins had been suspended for an alleged NCAA extra benefits violation for giving a player’s family members sideline passes for a game. The school announced the suspension on Thursday.

UNC student body president Adolfo Alvarez said the university should launch an independent review of the program’s culture. The university’s chair of faculty, Beth Moracco, agreed. Moracco said the costs and processes from hiring Belichick were “demoralizing” for some of her colleagues. Since then, she said, Belichick’s hiring looks like a bad investment with a “circus-like atmosphere.”

“There were faculty concerns and questions at the time about how this decision was made and the optics of the whole situation,” said Moracco, an associate professor in the department of health behavior who leads the school’s faculty council. “I think many of us now are just — it’s kind of an embarrassment.”

The people who spoke to The Athletic on condition of anonymity about the leadership of Belichick and Lombardi have worked either for the football program or for the university over the past year, or had direct dealings with the team.

They described a culture of arrogance and ignoring of steep differences between college and pro football. There were some disagreements within the group regarding some specific assessments of Belichick and Lombardi, including a person inside the program who disputed that Belichick has been absent or inaccessible to his players.

But that person also said the pair underestimated the difficulty of coaching college players, as evidenced by their public proclamations that UNC would be run exactly like an NFL franchise — “We consider ourselves the 33rd team,” Lombardi said in February.

“Bill Belichick mentally prepares a team better than I’ve ever imagined a coach could do,” said the person inside the program. “The truth is, this is not the 33rd team. This is a team full of kids.”

Chancellor Lee Roberts and Malcolm Turner, chair of the university’s Board of Trustees, have publicly preached patience as the season unravels. Still, fans and university power brokers alike have wondered: Who thought this was a good idea, anyway? The worse things get in Chapel Hill — be it blowout losses or unnecessary off-field drama — the more finger-pointing emerges.

It’s a far cry from the hope that still existed on Labor Day, with Kenan Stadium glowing and UNC royalty — Michael Jordan, Mia Hamm, Lawrence Taylor and more — there to mark Belichick’s first game.

“Obviously,” Roberts told The Athletic ahead of Belichick’s debut, “it all comes down to results on the field.”

From the start, the hiring of Belichick was divisive. When Belichick was revealed as the next head coach, Lombardi, a 66-year-old New Jersey native, announced that same day he was leaving his show “The Lombardi Line” on VSiN to join him in Chapel Hill.

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Here’s why North Carolina is going to regret hiring Bill Belichick

What works in the NFL doesn’t necessarily work in college. Bill Belichick and North Carolina may find out the hard way.

The two began their bond more than 30 years earlier, in 1991, when Belichick became head coach of the Cleveland Browns. Lombardi was the franchise’s pro personnel director. After Lombardi was fired as the Browns GM in 2013, he joined Belichick’s staff in New England.

Lombardi said on “The Pat McAfee Show” last December that the two first had been part of a scouting trip to UNC in 1992 and had long thought of it as a “magical place.”

“We thought, ‘How in the hell can’t you win here?’” he said.

The winter transfer portal window opened two days before they took the lead in Chapel Hill, and the two embarked on a mad dash to flip UNC’s roster. Belichick, a career-long NFL coach, had never recruited high schoolers. Lombardi had last worked in college football in 1984, as recruiting coordinator at UNLV.

Two people at the university who interacted with the duo during that time said Belichick and Lombardi needed a crash course on how the college name, image and likeness space worked and revealed that they had no relationships with any players in the portal. For other programs in recent years, previous relationships have proven critical as coaches like Indiana’s Curt Cignetti (hired from James Madison) and Washington’s Jedd Fisch (Arizona) were able to jump-start their rebuilds by persuading several of their key players to make the move with them.

Belichick and Lombardi said they preferred doing their own evaluations, the sources said, as Mack Brown’s remaining staff prepared for the Fenway Bowl. A since-departed Brown staffer still there at the time described a chaotic atmosphere. Belichick had made only a few hires to that point, and they did not yet have defined roles.

“It was like this weird revolving door of people in and out of meetings,” the ex-staffer said. “They fired some GAs and QCs, and then realized they didn’t have enough help and called a couple of them to come back after having fired them.”

As expected, Belichick hired his son Steve as defensive coordinator. He’d spent the 2024 season in the same role on Fisch’s Washington staff. Two Huskies players, cornerback Thaddeus Dixon and linebacker Khmori House, followed him. For offensive coordinator, Bill promoted Mack Brown’s former tight ends coach, Freddie Kitchens, the one-time Cleveland Browns head coach.

Lombardi, who signed a three-year, $4.5 million contract that made him the highest-paid general manager in college football, serves as UNC’s point person when negotiating with agents. The Athletic spoke to six agents with clients who either played for UNC or were pursued by the team in the portal; most described Lombardi as either abrasive or dismissive toward them during their negotiations.

One who took his client on a visit there said Lombardi told him, “We don’t fall in love (with players)” and, “gave me the sales pitch about why would you say no to Bill Belichick?” Another said Lombardi made a strong initial offer for his client, then lowered it considerably over a subsequent series of calls: “He made it impossible to get a deal done because at some point, I’m being a bad agent for my client.”

Alvin Gibson, an agent for Prolifiq Sports Group, is the father of UNC defensive back Gavin Gibson, who transferred from East Carolina after Belichick was hired. Gibson negotiated his son’s deal with Lombardi.

“Mike is very confident in his abilities to evaluate talent,” Gibson said. “I don’t think he’s a mean person. I just think he looks at players and says, ‘This is the production and this is the valuation of that.’ I can’t say if it’s fair or unfair, because I don’t know what his skill evaluation is.”

One agent who visited North Carolina with a top-200 high school recruit this spring was shocked how uninvolved the on-field coaches were during the visit. The agent finally asked a position coach why he wasn’t chatting up his recruit.

“You should be up his ass for three days,” said that recruit’s agent.

Several sources said Belichick and Lombardi had little understanding of the salary structure in college; unlike the NFL, salary numbers aren’t public. Three people said they overspent on some positions while hunting for bargains at others.

“Initially, they thought people would flock to play for (Belichick) and take less money,” said a university source, “but they realized fast that that wasn’t the case.”

UNC ultimately brought in 70 new players, including 41 transfers. Nearly 50 players from last year’s 6-7 team went into the portal, including several players who left for schools that made bigger offers, such as pass-rusher Beau Atkinson (Ohio State), linebacker Amare Campbell (Penn State) and nose tackle Travis Shaw (Texas). Several of UNC’s current defensive starters are transfers who had barely played at their previous Power 4 schools.

“We don’t have one pro player on the whole roster,” one of the people within the program said.

Still, nobody at the university expected problems this severe, with the team failing to compete against Power 4 opponents and likely to miss a bowl game for the first time since 2018.

Can Bill Belichick bridge the gap between NFL and CFB differences in the sport? Mike Watters / Imagn Images

Hiring a new football staff is a big investment for any school, making it difficult (and expensive) to move on after just a year. But Belichick’s history of loyalty — and the circumstances of how he was hired in the first place — have created unique tension in Chapel Hill.

Belichick was hired, effectively, by two members of UNC’s Board of Trustees: then-chairman John Preyer and Jennifer Lloyd — a potential violation of university bylaws. Multiple sources briefed on the hiring process said their understanding was that, while Cunningham was engaged in his own negotiations, Preyer and Lloyd had already presented Belichick with a preliminary offer to become the Tar Heels’ next head coach — and a lucrative one, skyrocketing UNC into a financial situation the athletic department never intended to reach.

Once that genie was out of the bottle, there was no putting it back in. Belichick is making $10 million a year, double that of his predecessor, Brown, and a top-10 salary nationally (eight of the coaches paid more than Belichick have all made at least one College Football Playoff appearance).

With staff, revenue share and other pledges of investment, North Carolina’s all-in bet on Belichick comes to roughly $59.3 million.

The president of the statewide North Carolina education system publicly reprimanded UNC’s Board of Trustees for their meddling weeks after Belichick’s hiring, and temporarily stripped the board of some authority. But Preyer and Lloyd still remain in their positions.

At Belichick’s introductory news conference, Lloyd — whose son was a walk-on on the football team — gushed about how UNC landed the NFL great and called it “low risk” because of “the ownership and responsibility that coach Belichick assumes for his own success.”

“I am so proud of Lee Roberts,” she said of the chancellor. “It would have been easy, I think, to take a different road and just to go for the 40-year-old college coach.”

(That had been Cunningham’s focus: finding a proven and promising college coach. Multiple university sources reiterated that had North Carolina hired someone like Tulane’s Jon Sumrall, it could’ve invested the money it spent on Belichick’s salary into the roster for this season.)

How much Belichick values loyalty is shown in his hires. Lombardi is the only staff member with a three-year deal. Belichick’s two sons and Lombardi’s son, Matt, are also on staff.

Given the on-field struggles, there will clearly be pressure on Belichick to make changes.

If UNC wanted to move on from Belichick altogether, it would be on the hook for the remaining $20 million it owes him and would also have to buy out Belichick’s staff — the majority of whom are also on multiple-year, guaranteed contracts that include a pay raise in 2026. North Carolina’s public contracts have not been fully updated, but regardless, it would cost at least another $9.25 million to buy out the rest of Belichick’s coaching staff, plus Lombardi.

One former staffer under Brown agreed with other sources who suggested Belichick might be better off moving on from Lombardi.

“That actually would give (Belichick) a f—ing fighting chance,” the former staffer said.

Perhaps Belichick can still salvage his first season, especially given its light ACC schedule. Only one of UNC’s remaining foes, No. 19 Virginia, is currently ranked. Opponents Stanford (Nov. 😎 and Wake Forest (Nov. 15) are also rebuilding under first-year coaches.

“Right now they’re just not winning. But we’ve still got seven games left. We don’t know what’s going to happen,” said Gibson. “We might not, but again, if we win out the last seven games and finish 9-3, everybody’s going to be like, ‘Oh well, I guess I was wrong about this.'”

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Days before one of the most storied openers in Tar Heels history, UNC's all-in commitment to Belichick is coming to life.

But a letter made public has let many fans down. Over UNC’s first open week, following the Sept. 20 loss at UCF, Lombardi sent a long email to UNC donors, obtained by FootballScoop, laying out his and Belichick’s long-term rebuilding plan. In it he mentions several prominent coaches — Mack Brown, Nick Saban, Jim Harbaugh — who had rough first seasons at their schools.

“Not an excuse for how we have performed,” he wrote, “only making you aware (that) building a championship team takes time.”

The plan, he said, was to sign upward of 40 high school players in December (“essentially two high school classes in one”) and focus on developing freshmen over time rather than relying primarily on the transfer portal, which he decried as a “cash cow.”

“If that’s their plan, then they’re not taking a step forward, they’re taking a step back,” said one agent. “I don’t care who it is — Bill Belichick, Jimmy Johnson — if you don’t use the portal you’re not going to win.”

Numerous people interviewed for this story were flabbergasted at the tone of Lombardi’s letter, which essentially said: Be patient. This might take a few years, but we know what we’re doing.

But in many ways, that’s been the message all along, from the chancellor and the board members who hired him to the 73-year-old first-time college head coach and his loyal GM: He won six Super Bowls, so of course he’ll win here.

“The letter,” one senior school official said, “wasn’t received by our fans as we had hoped.”

 

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