Here are my thoughts and feelings on the (potential/probable) Bill Belichick hire.
1. I think it’s very much a “to seem, rather than to be” type of hire. What I mean by that is it seems like UNC wants to go for a huge media gimmick to generate eye balls, media attention, ticket sales, etc. I think UNC is potentially sacrificing long-term program stability for a get-rich-quick, shot-in-the-arm, pie-in-the-sky type of Hail Mary.
2. There is no doubt that Bill Belichick is the greatest NFL coach of all time and one of the greatest football minds of all time. It is also true that Bill Belichick has never coached in college, has never recruited a high school or college athlete, has never navigated the politics of a high-major university, has never had to interact with boosters, is years removed from his most recent major professional success, had a career sub-.500 record sans Tom Brady, and is currently out of work and looking for a job and….not receiving any interest from several NFL jobs that are already open or about to be open. That’s a red flag to me.
3. It is completely unserious to fire one 73 year old coach- who himself was hired in the first place when he was out of work, had no other coaching job prospects, and was brought in to be a stopgap measure that ended up not being a stopgap measure- just to turn around and hire another 73 year-old coach who is out of work and apparently has no other coaching job prospects.
4. At the same time, UNC doesn’t really have much to lose. We are already enormously perpetually mediocre. So maybe completely rolling the dice and shooting for the stars with what is an enormously high risk but also enormously high reward type of hire may not be the worst idea in the world.
5. Ultimately all I want is for UNC Football to win games. And if Bill Belichick is able to win more games than what we’ve been winning, then I’ll be more than thrilled to have to eat some crow for being skeptical of this hire. I never mind being wrong- and in fact in most cases like this I relish being wrong. So if he is ultimately our head coach, even though I will be skeptical, he and the program have my support- with, again, a very healthy dose of skepticism.
6. I want to see Dave Doeren call our players pieces of shit or have his yokel players try to plant their flag on our field with Bill fucking Belichick as our head coach.