UNC on to Bill Belichick: Tar Heels to hire NFL Super Bowl champion as next head coach

What first sounded like a far-fetched impossibility when the thought first surfaced late last week became an improbable and astonishing reality Wednesday: North Carolina plans to hire Bill Belichick, one of the most accomplished NFL head coaches ever, as the school’s new head football coach.

The university in a statement announced its intention to hire Belichick, 72, who led the New England Patriots to six Super Bowl victories during the 2000s and 2010s. He and the school reached an agreement to a five-year contract, the terms of which were not immediately available.

The UNC Board of Trustees would have to approve Belichick’s hiring, and a meeting has been scheduled for Thursday morning at 9 a.m.

If the trustees approve the hire, it would finalize a stunning development for a school that has desperately yearned for national prominence in college football, for decades. In a statement, UNC Chancellor Lee Roberts said, “Carolina is committed to excellence and to creating an opportunity to succeed in everything we do, from the classroom to the field of competition.

“I know after speaking with Coach Belichick that he shares that commitment. His legacy speaks for itself, and we look forward to working together on the next chapter of Carolina Football.”

This is the second consecutive time that a UNC head football coaching search has ended with the hiring of an aging coach who’d been working as a television analyst. The school in late 2018 brought Mack Brown, then 67, out of retirement to lead the Tar Heels.

Brown, who led UNC to prominence in the 1990s during his first stint at UNC, coached six seasons after his return until the school fired him late last month. UNC, which finished 6-6 after a fourth consecutive defeat against N.C. State, was believed to be interested in a younger successor.

Last Thursday, though, Belichick’s name emerged in connection with UNC’s vacancy.

“He blew them away in the interview,” a source said last week.

Belichick during an appearance on Monday on ESPN’s The Pat McAfee Show confirmed that he’d been engaged in discussions with UNC about its opening. He specifically mentioned he’d been in talks with Roberts, the UNC chancellor.

During the appearance on McAfee’s show, Belichick described, in general terms, how he would approach building a college football program. He said it would be “a pipeline to the NFL for the players that had the ability to play in the NFL.”

“It would be a professional program — training, nutrition, scheme, coaching techniques, that would transfer to the NFL,” Belichick said. “It will be an NFL program at a college level and an education that would get the players ready for their career after football, whether that was the end of their college career or at the end of their pro career.

“But it would be, you know, geared toward developing the player.”

Belichick’s hiring at UNC is believed to come with a massive institutional investment in football. The school has more than doubled its football spending since 2018, and now it will is poised to spend much more in an attempt to make a push toward national prominence.

“We know that college athletics is changing, and those changes require new and innovative thinking,” Bubba Cunningham, the UNC athletics director, said in a statement. “Bill Belichick is a football legend and hiring him to lead our program represents a new approach that will ensure Carolina Football can evolve, compete and win — today and in the future.”

UNC to hire Bill Belichick as next football coach. Take a look at his storied career through photos

Belichick and Iowa State coach Matt Campbell, whose team suffered a 45-19 defeat against Arizona State on Saturday in the Big 12 championship game, were believed to be the two finalists at UNC, which also interviewed former Carolina Panthers coach Steve Wilks, according to a source. Tulane coach Jon Sumrall and Georgia defensive coordinator Glenn Schumann were also among the candidates.

It was not clear in recent days whether Campbell, who has turned down several opportunities to leave Iowa State over the years, was officially offered the job at UNC, or whether he withdrew his candidacy. The hiring of Belichick, meanwhile, represents the most stunning development in UNC football history, and it’s among the most stunning hires in the history of the sport.

Belichick, one year younger than Brown, has spent his entire coaching career in the NFL and was a head coach for 29 years — the final 24 of those with New England. The Patriots, with Tom Brady at quarterback, won the AFC nine times during Belichick’s tenure. Three out of Belichick’s final four seasons with the Patriots, all without Brady at quarterback, ended in losing records.

New England fired him after a 4-13 finish in 2023, and Belichick has spent the past season out of coaching for the first time since 1974, the year before he began his career as a special assistant with the Baltimore Colts. Over the past several months, his name has been tied to various potential openings in the NFL, but none in college.

Belichick, who was a part of two Super Bowl-winning teams as an assistant coach with the New York Giants, has never coached in college, in any capacity or at any level. He does have familial ties to the college game, though, and grew up with his father, Steve, working as a college assistant coach. Steve Belichick, best known for his 34 years at Navy, was an assistant coach at UNC from 1953 to 1955, when Bill was a toddler.

At UNC, Bill Belichick will lead a program that has long sought to unlock potential the school never seems to be able to fulfill in football. The Tar Heels have not won the ACC since 1980. They’ve finished in the top 25 twice over the past 25 years, and are 9-16 against N.C. State during that span.

Belichick is among the oldest — if not the oldest — coach ever to be hired to coach football at an FBS school. He’ll be 73 when next season begins. Bill Snyder was 70 when he returned to Kansas State in 2009 and George Allen was 72 in 1990 when he became the head coach at Long Beach State.

“I am excited for the opportunity at UNC-Chapel Hill,” Belichik said in a statement released by the school. “I grew up around college football with my dad and treasured those times. I have always wanted to coach in college and now I look forward to building the program in Chapel Hill.”