- Bill Belichick’s tenure at North Carolina has seen the cancellation of two behind-the-scenes television deals, first with HBO and now with Hulu.
- The team, under Belichick, has had one of the worst starts against Power conference teams in the program’s history.
- Belichick’s hiring, led by the university’s Board of Trustees, has been a source of controversy and criticism.
So let me get this straight, because it’s more difficult by the day to filter fact from fantasy with Bill Belichick and North Carolina football.
On the same week the hard-working North Carolina creatives department defied strict orders and posted on X about former Tar Heel great Drake Maye living the dream with the NFL’s New England Patriots, the coach who once latched onto the greatest player in the history of the NFL for a bucket of trophies with those same Patriots, 86’d a deal with Hulu for a behind the scenes look at his now spectacular fail of a buildout in Chapel Hill.
This, of course, comes months after fallout from the highly-anticipated marriage of UNC and HBO’s Hard Knocks, which wanted a similar program until The Muse nixed that one, too.
You remember The Muse, right? Jordon Hudson, she of the five decades in the rearview to Belichick’s remarkable life, tagging along with Belichick’s new gig and running all things Team Beli.
It was Team Beli that — ahem — allegedly ordered UNC creatives to avoid all mention of the New England Patriots on the school’s social media accounts. Even if it meant ignoring one of the program’s greatest players ever (Maye), whose family just happens to be Carolina royalty.
And if you don’t think Team Beli laid down that law, let’s not forget that when Belichick began his offseason media book tour, one revealing thing stood out: Patriots owner Robert Kraft, who gave Belichick the opportunity to coach and provided him with endless financial and professional backing, wasn’t mentioned.
Since that bizarre book media tour — which ended quickly after The Muse was offended by the simple, softball question of how did you and Belichick meet? — a whole lot of bad has unfolded among the stately pines on the pristine campus in Chapel Hill.
How much embarrassment and shame is enough for North Carolina? Is it WRAL reporting that Belichick has lost the locker room already? Or that Belichick doesn’t even speak to some players, and the culture is a ‘complete disaster’?
And we haven’t even reached the level of distress on the field.
Belichick turned over the UNC roster, built on four straight strong recruiting classes by former coach Mack Brown, and added 70 new players. That’s a roster of 82% who had never played a down at UNC.
Chapel Bill (which The Muse had copyrighted) then lost by 34 to TCU in the season opener, in front of a packed house at Keenan Stadium and a national television audience — as the only game played on the Monday of Labor Day weekend.
After two gimme putt wins against Charlotte and Richmond, the 33rd team — Belichick’s name for the Carolina program, in reference to it being ‘the 33rd NFL team’ — lost by 25 to UCF and by 28 to Clemson.
This is an abject train wreck at every possible angle. It’s also a steep and painful learning curve for one of the nation’s greatest academic universities.
When the Board of Trustees at any university gets knee-deep in coaching change, bad things happen.
It’s ugly enough the board allegedly violated open meetings laws in approving Belichick’s contract. It’s worse that Trustees chairman John Preyer, a vocal critic of UNC athletic director Bubba Cunningham, was essentially a one-man search committee and initiated the Belichick deal without input from Cunningham or anyone else associated with the athletic department.
Instead of Cunningham hiring flawless and spotless (and pretty damn good) Iowa State coach Matt Campbell, Preyer pulled out his pompoms and hired Belichick without any clue of the tentacles that came with it.
Instead of hiring a humble, hard-driving coach who has thrived in lesser situations at Iowa State and Toledo — with significantly less money to build and develop players and a winning program — Preyer decided, on his own, to hire high maintenance Bill and The Muse.
A surly, my way or the highway personality who had never coached at the college level, much less in the new, unbridled environment of player empowerment. A coach who was toxic and unhireable in the NFL because of his personality and want of total control, and because of the whole chicken and egg thing with a guy named Brady.
So Preyer decides to give Belichick $50 million over five years, with the understanding that Beli’s son, Stephen, sure would be a helluva candidate to take over once Bill and The Muse decided to drop cash on a Caribbean island somewhere.
Then — and here’s the kicker — Preyer decided to hit up donors for $20 million in NIL funds to go all-in and buy a championship. Now here we are 10 months later, and this is what North Carolina has to show for it.
Team Beli pulling out of not one, but two cable/streaming site deals to showcase the glorious rebuild from the greatest football coach in the history of the game. What would’ve been hours of free publicity for the program (hello, recruiting advantage), is now just another strange twist to the embarrassing story.
And we haven’t even dug into the hastily-built and woefully prepared team with holes everywhere. The group of high school and transfer portal players that two men (Belichick and UNC general manager Michael Lombardi) with decades of NFL experience and not a sniff of college knowledge, haphazardly threw together.
The bye week couldn’t have come at a better time. A chance to reset, focus on what works and try to get a win in two weeks at California.
Then the Hulu news broke and we’re reminded once again what this really is. It’s not too late to throw $30 million go away money at the mess, and hire Campbell after the season.
What a glorious social media post that will be from the UNC creatives.
Matt Hayes is the senior national college football writer for USA TODAY Sports Network. Follow him on X at @MattHayesCFB.
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