What Kind of Program Will UNC Be?

The search to find the next head coach of the North Carolina Tar Heels football team has reached a crucial threshold. Cross it, and Carolina has the chance to compete at levels largely unseen in program history. Balk, and let everyone know that the school is unserious about football and will accept the eventual atrophy of all of its athletic programs.

The choice facing the University is whether or not to hire eight-time Super Bowl champion Bill Belichick, the greatest coach in the history of professional football. Belichick comes with a list of demands, financial and organizational. He requires full commitment from the school to its football program: if UNC isn’t all in, why should he bother?

Embracing Belichick is Embracing the Future

As the college game comes to resemble the NFL more and more – with paid players, free agency via the transfer portal, and increasingly larger staffs that separate the Xs and Os from recruiting the Jimmys and Joes – it is becoming the game that Belichick is best suited to win.

Looking at the collegiate landscape and UNC athletics more broadly, hiring Belichick is a no-brainer to secure the future of every sport that Carolina competes in. At age 72, he isn’t likely to coach UNC Football for a lengthy span of time. But what he will do is demand the kind of firm commitment in both dollars and structure that the Tar Heels need in order to get over the 10-win hump that the program has so rarely surmounted.

More importantly, the resources and dedication that Belichick is going to require of the University in order to take the job are what would really be needed for anyone to turn Carolina into a big time football program. Up to this point, however, UNC has demonstrably not done what it takes to compete in the sport at the highest level. And that’s the problem.

Football and men’s basketball are the only two sports at UNC that generate more revenue than their cost. Everything else, from field hockey to baseball to soccer – 26 of UNC’s 28 varsity sports – loses money. To ensure that Carolina can consistently compete at the highest level across this wide range of sports, football and men’s basketball have to win, sell tickets, and draw eyeballs on TV and streaming. And football is the key: even at a traditional basketball powerhouse like UNC, football is ultimately what brings in the most revenue.

The idea that Carolina can continue on as a basketball school without worrying too much about the gridiron is pure fantasy. No one can perfectly predict the future, but it can safely be said that the most likely outcome for the future of college athletics is this: the SEC and Big Ten, who have just absorbed the biggest brands from the Big 12 and the old Pac-12 into their ranks, are going to end up with the most prominent ACC programs sometime between now and 2036 when the present ACC Grant of Rights expires (The GoR is the deal that led to the creation of the ACC Network in partnership with ESPN). In the meantime, the SEC and Big Ten will continue to earn more from their broadcast rights and provide more funding to their member institutions than the ACC, Big 12, and any other athletic conference is capable of. Due to the nature and length of the broadcast rights contracts each conference is bound by, the widening of the gap between Power 2 and ACC revenue is baked in. The schools that end up in the Power 2 are, within reason, secure in their quest to continue fielding the best teams in college sports. Those that don’t will fall behind.

Carolina has to make sure that it is ready to make the jump to the SEC or Big Ten when the opportunity arises. The most crucial aspect to that is becoming more competitive in football. Men’s basketball is important – absolutely – as that has been the backbone of Carolina’s athletic brand since Frank McGuire coached UNC to its first* NCAA Championship in 1957 in the formative years of the ACC. But, though basketball is what North Carolina is most known for, football is where the big bucks are. Enter Bill Belichick.

Mack Brown hit a ceiling in his second tenure at UNC. He brought some great NFL talent to Chapel Hill and had some of the best offenses in the country over the past six years. Where he failed was on defense, and without strong defense it is nearly impossible to play for the conference title, let alone attempt to make the College Football Playoff (just ask the 2024 Miami Hurricanes). Eventually, the results on the field, the failure to develop many four and five-star players into strong professional prospects, and his age all caught up with him. High school recruiting dried up such that UNC’s 2024 class was the worst in the ACC at the time of Brown’s dismissal. This was a lethal position for the style of program that Brown was trying to run.

Bill Belichick promises to revolutionize Carolina football and change the culture of the program from the top down. In addition to his knowledge of Xs and Os and his managerial expertise, he has demonstrated his ability to put together a highly competent staff on both sides of the ball at the professional level. He will be a massive recruiting draw for players who want to maximize their chances of playing in the NFL. And in an era where Deion Sanders and Curt Cignetti have masterfully used the transfer portal to turn traditionally terrible football programs (Colorado and Indiana, respectively) into contenders, Belichick will be highly attractive to players who only have a year or two of eligibility remaining, regardless of his age.

Belichick’s greatest contribution, besides the gravitas he would bring to the table – greater than that even of Mack Brown – is his ability to force UNC to commit to football in a more significant way than it ever has before. He will not take the job if Carolina is not all in. In that respect, his arrival in Chapel Hill alone would signal a big win for the program’s long term health and, thus, the health of all of UNC’s athletic teams. By firing Brown, Carolina told the country that it was not complacent about where it was in football. By hiring Belichick, Carolina would make it clear that that signal wasn’t a one-off. It’s time to swing for the fences.

*The 1923-24 UNC Basketball team played their unbeaten (26-0) season prior to the creation of the NCAA Tournament in 1939.