UNC Football Catch-all | Bill Belichick Era underway

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I reckon we are never, ever going to be able to successfully convince some people that it isn't the big, bad media that is UNC's worst enemy, but rather UNC itself. The true enemy of UNC is that there is a real, deep-seated cultural problem at the University of North Carolina, at least among the power brokers (top university leaders/administrators, trustees, top benefactors).

Every single one of these people in positions of influence values style over substance. Every single one of them values winning the press conference, winning the headlines, being able to hob-knob with "famous" people, etc. over actually putting in the hard work, the tough work, the grunt work, the thankless work, the work away from the spotlight. These folks always want to take a shortcut to success. They don't want to grind for it. That soft, flashy, style over substance, "to seem rather than to be" country club atmopshere that everyone bitched about under Mack Brown? Guess what. It wasn't all Mack- it was just as much, if not more, the people who hired him and continued to support him against all evidence otherwise. These same people are the ones who followed up their Mack mistake with an even more colossal mistake in forcing Bill Belichick upon us all even though quite literally every. single. other. professional. franchise. within the organization in which Belichick had spent quite literally his entire career, wouldn't touch him with a 50-foot pole.

I hate to be so blunt, but UNC is always going to suck in football as long as the folks in charge continue to behave this way. UNC is going to continue to get its ass kicked on the field by other programs and universities- many of which we routinely out-talent if you believe the recruiting rankings- that have way better program and institutional cultures than we do.

UNC does not *have* to have a shitty football program. It is our choice to have a shitty football program. We make that choice every single time we allow a small subset of boosters to make coaching hires. We make that choice every single time we allow politicians to get involved in our coaching searches. We make that choice every time we decide that we want a flashy big name (even if that flashy big name has been long out of work, has long lost their fastball, and wouldn't be hired by literally any other institution with an ounce of self-respect) at the expense of someone without the big name but who has worked their tail off and grinded their way up through the college coaching ranks the hard way.

Maybe one day it will change- anything is possible, after all- but it will not change anytime soon so long as people like John Preyer and a few wealthy boosters and political lapdogs like Lee Roberts are the ones running the show. The state motto of North Carolina is "to be rather than to seem" and it's such a shame that the state's flagship institution works so hard to be the exact antithesis of that motto. I love my alma mater with all of my heart and I am forever deeply grateful that it changed my entire life trajectory, skyrocketed my upward socioeconomic mobility, and was the place I met my wife and a handful of lifelong best friends. But I am just calling balls and strikes as I see them, and as I currently see them, UNC is far away from living up to its full potential because the leadership at the top is spectacularly awful.
 
wmheel1287 said:
Head Coaches do not have "regular meetings" with administrators midseason. It just doesn't happen. I've spent too many years working in college athletics to believe that BS. Administrators only meet with coaches outside of competition times and even then...rarely. Mostly administrators show up at games and glad-hand with coaches as far as personal interaction. If a meeting took place between our administrators, the head football coach, and the football GM during the middle of football season, it was most certainly an emergency meeting.
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You should tell Adam Smith. That said, I am of the mind that if it was not a regular meeting, and emergency meeting should have been called. Clearly there is an emergency.
 
heel79 said:
Yea, name a coach in history fired after 5 games. I will hang up and listen. The product is beyond disappointing, and as I have said repeatedly, that falls to a large degree on BB and Lombo. But football coaches typically get a few years to build a program and although the portal changes the metric some, not to 5 games IMO. Our staff whiffed on the portal, especially having to settle for QB No. 3. They can't whiff again if they get the chance.
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I do think it would be highly unusual, if not unprecedented, to fire a coach after five games. But the hire itself was also highly unusual, if not unprecedented (hiring a 70+ year old who is the greatest coach in history but could not find a job in the NFL and never even so much as sniffed any college job) so that sort of comes with the territory.

I personally would not have thought it possible that we were actually considering parting ways with Belichick after five games. In fact I said on IC a couple days ago that towards the end of the season is the earliest I would consider firing him (though that was before most of the recent reporting came out). If we're sticking with him we really have no choice but to hope he turns it around. But personally I think that the only chance we turn around is if BB demonstrates a capacity for humility and self-reflection and a willingness to change his approach that I have never seen him exhibit in his career as a head coach. It will require a realization from him that, among other things, (1) he badly underestimated the differences between college and pro coaching and badly misunderstood how the process of getting sufficient talent on his college team would work; (2) he make a huge mistake in bringing along his buddy Lombardi, who is by all objective measures an unqualified and untalented clown who is inexplicably being paid more than any other GM in college football; (3) he needs to ditch the focus on family members and sycophants as coaches and actually hire people with the capacity for independent thought who are independently good at scheming, especially on the offensive side; and (4) young, immature college players are not the same as professionals in their mid 20s through mid 30s and he will need to tweak, if not significantly alter, his coaching approach if he wants to effectively coach them.

I honestly doubt that BB, who has a lifetime of experience in not giving a crap what anyone else thinks and thinking he's the smartest guy in the room (which he earned, legitimately, by having the most rings of anyone in history) can somehow change the way he does things at 73. That was probably my biggest concern about hiring him in the first place. And even if he address all those things, the last 5 years in NE + 5 games at UNC do not give me much confidence that he can still outscheme and outcoach the competition, which was a lot of the justification for hiring him in the first place (and another reason I was concerned about the hiring from the beginning). So personally, my guess is that if we keep him around for 2-3 years we're just delaying the inevitable. But none of us are in charge of whether he gets to stay the coach so I guess we just have to hope for the best.
 
can you imagine being ad bubba and not being allowed to hire the head coaches in bb or fb? whut a gutless clown of an ad and nothing more than a whore for a paycheck to sit back and do or say nothing.
 
wmheel1287 said:
Head Coaches do not have "regular meetings" with administrators midseason. It just doesn't happen. I've spent too many years working in college athletics to believe that BS. Administrators only meet with coaches outside of competition times and even then...rarely. Mostly administrators show up at games and glad-hand with coaches as far as personal interaction. If a meeting took place between our administrators, the head football coach, and the football GM during the middle of football season, it was most certainly an emergency meeting.
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Your experiences cast doubt on IC's two reports, including one from Greg Barnes, which use the term "regularly scheduled meeting", or at least cast doubt on the "truthiness" of their sources.

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and
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And at this point i'd believe you just as quickly as I'd believe any reporting given how tight-lipped and locked-down BB and Bubba have tried to make things. All this just backs up the tone of what people like heel79 are saying which is that we shouldn't light our torches based on reporting which seems unverified or could be from skewed sources.

Tommy Ashley and Joey even had reactions which appear to have been over-reactions if we're to believe the SOURCES of their counterparts Adam Smith and Greg Barnes.

There is a crap-ton of smoke, but let's not light a fire that might not exist YET.
 
OGtruthhurts said:
can you imagine being ad bubba and not being allowed to hire the head coaches in bb or fb? whut a gutless clown of an ad and nothing more than a whore for a paycheck to sit back and do or say nothing.
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I wonder if he goes on message boards anonymously every day and spreads manure. Talk about gutless.

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Learfield Directors' Cup final 2025 Division I standings revealed

Texas has won the Learfield Directors' Cup, an award given annually to the colleges in the United States with the most success in athletics.
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look at me i made great hires in sports that lose money but wasnt allowed to make hires in the two biggest revenue sports. that paycheck eases the humiliation im sure

the director cup is nothing more than alumni viagra altho you a limp dick regardless
 
OGtruthhurts said:
look at me i made great hires in sports that lose money but wasnt allowed to make hires in the two biggest revenue sports. that paycheck eases the humiliation im sure

the director cup is nothing more than alumni viagra altho you a limp dick regardless
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How do you think it works at other schools?
 
gregh1 said:
Your experiences cast doubt on IC's two reports, including one from Greg Barnes, which use the term "regularly scheduled meeting", or at least cast doubt on the "truthiness" of their sources.

1760016608453.png

and
1760016817493.png

And at this point i'd believe you just as quickly as I'd believe any reporting given how tight-lipped and locked-down BB and Bubba have tried to make things. All this just backs up the tone of what people like heel79 are saying which is that we shouldn't light our torches based on reporting which seems unverified or could be from skewed sources.

Tommy Ashley and Joey even had reactions which appear to have been over-reactions if we're to believe the SOURCES of their counterparts Adam Smith and Greg Barnes.

There is a crap-ton of smoke, but let's not light a fire that might not exist YET.
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Heel79 is going to have more experience than any of us on evaluating the credibility of sources and different reports. Dude spent a career doing exactly that. I'm sure he could be wrong but the odds favor him being correct.
 
gtyellowjacket said:
Heel79 is going to have more experience than any of us on evaluating the credibility of sources and different reports. Dude spent a career doing exactly that. I'm sure he could be wrong but the odds favor him being correct.
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I just spent 20 mins on phone with RC guy and we'll, let's just say we agree. I know I know. But he pointed out Ollie had BB paying us $1 million to leave and we said no?
 
Sheetsfaced said:
How do you think it works at other schools?
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Every school has a handful of major boosters and other admins beyond the AD that have influence over football and basketball coaching hires. UNC seems to be particularly dysfunctional at getting all of those people on the same page to execute on those hires compared to most schools. I think everything that’s happened with the Belichick hire makes that fact pretty obvious.
 
I believe the report was that BB was open to the idea of a $1m buyout if he could find a coaching or media position to move on to. My guess is that there have been a lot of conversations behind the scenes and little dribs and drabs have made their way to various media reports. Obviously nothing is official at all at this point.
 
heel79 said:
You should tell Adam Smith. That said, I am of the mind that if it was not a regular meeting, and emergency meeting should have been called. Clearly there is an emergency.
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I wasn't arguing with you. Just with the point. You posted the information and I'm stating I find it not to be credulous.
 
heel79 said:
I just spent 20 mins on phone with RC guy and we'll, let's just say we agree. I know I know. But he pointed out Ollie had BB paying us $1 million to leave and we said no?
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Trying to understand your perspective a little more here. Help me out if you don't mind. Note: this is not "shouting you down"- I am simply trying to understand the perspective of someone with whom I may not agree.

Is your perspective that you believe that all of the swirling rumors and innuendo are baseless and are just media members with axes to grind against UNC and are therefore making things up completely out of thin air, and therefore the football program *isn't* currently experiencing unprecedented internal chaos and turmoil?

Or is your perspective that the program is, in fact, experiencing internal chaos and turmoil, but you just don't like that many national and local media outlets are running with reporting the swirling rumors and innuendo? Genuinely trying to understand your view on this.

It seems extremely, transparently clear to me that there is a ton of internal chaos and turmoil rocking out football program right now. Whether every one of the rumors, or even many or most of the rumors are true, is immaterial to me because it is very obvious that we have a very unhealthy, very tumultuous football program. I don't see how anyone can look at what is going on and think that media members are just making all of this chaos and drama up out of thin air.
 
rodoheel said:
I don't think IC and Tarheel247, among others, are just picking up on N&O and WRAL reporting.
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Exactly. It’s so bizarre that IC went out on a limb to say that staff changes were expected and even hinted at something even more than that yesterday, and then literally nothing happened lol. The smoke and fire analogy for this situation is getting very cliche, but I have to think IC had good sourcing that something of substance was going to happen. I find it hard to believe that they were also just getting swept up in fake twitter rumors.
 
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