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Jim Alexander: They talk about “winning the press conference” – shorthand for an acquisition or coaching hire that’s more splash than substance. Given Bill Belichick’s historic reticence with the media, I’m not sure that’s what the University of North Carolina did Wednesday. But win the announcement? No doubt.
Hiring the 72-year-old Belichick, winner of six Super Bowls in New England and also famously reluctant to share decision-making duties, to his first college coaching job seems weird at first glance, and also at second and third. Asking a guy who referred to America’s favorite photo sharing app as “Instaface” a while back – which is actually, I believe, a Belichick running joke – to try to connect with young people for whom social media is almost more important than eating? Good luck with that.
But this isn’t as nutty as it appears, in my mind, for one reason: College football is becoming more professionalized by the day. NIL agreements, the transfer portal, players represented by agents, a future where schools themselves will pay the players, and maybe even unionization down the road? Guys whose whole careers have been spent in college football are starting to wonder if they can handle these changes.
So why not bring in an NFL coach to help with this transition? Especially one with the résumé of Belichick? It’s a risk, but who’s to say he can’t handle the transition to coaching 18- to 22-year-olds better than college football lifers can when it comes to dealing with agents, rustling up NIL money, etc.?
And yes, I realize there’s a slight flaw in that logic, because Chip Kelly was both a college and a pro head coach, and we saw how little energy he directed toward NIL matters and how far back it set UCLA’s program. Will Belichick lean into it with more energy? We’ll see.
What do you think, Mirjam? They’re already putting up betting propositions – in this case, at BetOnline.ag – on not only North Carolina’s record under Belichick this coming season but how many power conference transfers will come to UNC (the over/under is four), how many years he’ll stay (2½, or half his contract), and – get this one – What will happen first with Bill Belichick’s 20-something girlfriend? Enroll in classes at UNC or date a UNC football player?
Yeesh!
Mirjam: Wait, are there really odds on that last one? Oh boy.
You mentioned Chip Kelly, and I’ve also been thinking about his up-and-down track record, in college and the pros, since he caught lightning in a bottle at Oregon. Also about Deion Sanders, who has been anything but traditional in how he’s approached his job at Colorado – making recruits come to him, being up front about treating the transfer portal as free agency – and how that’s transformed the Buffs from doormat to contender in two short years. And how before that, he was at Jackson State from 2020 to 2022.
But Belichick doesn’t have the charisma Coach Prime does. Sure, he’s got his own aura as the NFL’s greatest modern coach, and if he wants control – which is a large piece of why he hasn’t been invited to coach another NFL team – he’d have it as a college coach, where reports are that UNC will increase its NIL package for football to $20 million from $4 million.
But will he be too blunt for today’s college player, who isn’t contractually obligated to stay anywhere longer than a year? Too honest and critical in his assessments? Will he simply pass on the fanfare and glad-handing that’s supposed to be required of college coaches?
We’re gonna find out. But if I were betting, I wouldn’t bet on North Carolina becoming a powerhouse under Belichick. Or even on Belichick loving the gig, because you can take the amateurism out of college football, but still it’s not the NFL.
Jim: I’d take the under on the 2½ years, and that has nothing to do with age or energy. Trust me, I’m the last guy who would call someone too old to do whatever. But college football is different, especially in that region of the country. I saw something a while back in the Washington Post which suggested that the hatred for rivals in college football is a feature and not a bug. And that intensity of emotion extends to everything involving the sport, which is why alumni and boosters play such a large role.
Let Belichick start out, say, 2-4, and see what the reaction is. Yeah, NFL fans can be rabid, but it’s nothing compared to the way emotions seesaw in college football nation.
All of that said, I stand on the premise that the changes in college football – in all of college sports – require an adjustment in the way coaches and athletic departments do business, and I’m not sure the old idea of the program as the coach’s fiefdom applies any longer. More programs in football and basketball are hiring “general managers,” which are positions to oversee NIL payments and the groups that make them – and, ultimately, the disbursements from the schools themselves – and probably also will have a role in player personnel matters.
As an aside, the one guy I’m sure – positive, actually – could handle this transition seamlessly has been teaching classes at USC this fall. Pete Carroll made the switch from pro to college the first time and built a dynasty, made the switch from college back to the NFL and built a Super Bowl champ in Seattle, and if he wanted to and felt up to it I’m sure he could handle the new era of college football.
(And let’s hear no talk about extra benefits or the like during Carroll’s USC run. You really don’t think stuff was happening elsewhere? The beauty of today’s system is that everything everywhere is above the table now.)
Next subject: Is the transfer portal out of control? Is it approaching, or has it already gotten to, the point where there’s too much movement and requires some additional limitations?
Old friend Lane Kiffin came out and said what I’m sure lots of other people in the game are thinking: The timing – the combination of the transfer portal opening and early signing day right around the time teams are preparing for bowl or playoff games – is “dumb.” He’s right, but it’s another consequence of a sport that has no leadership and thus has become pure chaos.
How do we solve this? I say the first step would be to make Kiffin college football’s first commissioner, but that’s just me.
Mirjam: It’s a whirlwind, for sure. Utter chaos. And that free agency is happening on the eve of bowl games tells you everything you need to know about how little college football values bowl games anymore.
There’s something to be said for giving athletes agency in a game where coaches come and go all the time. There’s something to their being categorized as employees and given rights as employees, free to give notice and change jobs when they find a better one. Shoot, the non-athletic regular people studying on college campus known as students are free to transfer schools whenever they like, too.
But there’s also something to be said about the grass not always being greener. We’ve heard stories about programs allegedly reneging on payment promises, for one. And despite whatever tampering abounds, athletes have to be careful before jumping into the portal with both feet – and it’s doubtful most of them are, considering how incredibly many are transferring.
Like, will starting from scratch – or maybe not scratch, but as a player whose last situation didn’t work out – be for the best? Will they really end up in a better situation when the music stops and everyone’s fighting for a seat? Maybe, every case will be its own. It’s hard to know in a scene so chaotic. So, yes, Lane Kiffin, or a conference commission – as Chip Kelly suggested – or some entity helping create and enforce transfer guidelines would sure help everyone.
Jim: My suggestion, beyond having someone – anyone – fully in charge of all of the sport’s various stakeholders? Employment, and contracts. This is something the NCAA is resisting with all of its might, while hoping for Congress to hand out an antitrust exemption. But it might be the only way to restore sanity to the process.
Make players employees, with signed contracts – could be one year, could be two, could be four years for true stars, could include option years. The system would allow players free agency but would also give programs a certain amount of certainty from year to year, as opposed to a coach walking into the locker room after the final regular-season game and wondering how many of these guys will opt to stay.
Another advantage: Those contracts would include bowl games, and there would be no more sitting out just because. That’s something that drives college football people crazy.
And we have to understand: College football is a different beast from every other sport on campus. Other sports may come up with different rules. Other levels – Group of Five, mid-major basketball schools, etc. – will have different needs and require different rules as well. But again, a leadership vacuum at the top helps nobody, aside from FOX and ESPN.
Before we go, however, we must note that 2024, the first year without the Pac-12 as we knew it, turns out to have been a statement on behalf of college football in the West.
Oregon – your alma mater, Mirjam – is the top seed in the College Football Playoff. Fellow Pac-12 refugee Arizona State is in the mix as champion of the Big 12 and the Sun Devils’ coach, Kenny Dillingham, is a former Oregon guy. Boise State will represent the Mountain West (and future reconstituted Pac-12) in the field. Meanwhile, three of the four Heisman Trophy finalists are from the West – Oregon’s Dillon Gabriel, Colorado’s Travis Hunter and Boise State’s Ashton Jeanty.
Makes me miss the old Pac-12 a little more.
Mirjam: Right?! How ’bout them Ducks? Both top-ranked/seeded Oregon and Dillingham. Season’s not over yet, but what a showing by the westerners … and what that tells me is, yes, it’s a shame the Pac-12 is no more.
But also, Oregon – with its 14 transfers in starting roles and a reported $23 million in NIL money – is good at playing the modern game.
And so too is Dillingham, who has used a few of his postgame pressers as marketing opportunities, making direct pitches to Arizona businesses to funnel money into the program: “If you had fun watching [Cam Skattebo] play and make those plays, it was there all night … because it’s a different day and age in college football. And if that was something that we want to continue to do, then what’s that saying? Pay the man his money, right? Isn’t that a saying? Pay the man his money. Pay these guys what they deserve to be paid because right now our team is underpaid. We’re doing more with guys who just got it out the mud, but eventually you should get what you deserve. Our guys deserve more …”
Now imagine Belichick making that kind of pitch.
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