The Bill Belichick experiment will be hailed a success so long as North Carolina gets to call its shot in the next round of conference realignment.
North Carolina’s brand might be ready for prime time, but its team isn’t on the level of the SEC or the Big Ten.
Can Bill Belichick maintain a Deion Sanders-like effect for North Carolina? He electrified UNC football for one night, but will that last?
The luminaries assembled the way luminaries do. Jordan. Roy. The Muse. They gathered in luxury boxes.
They hovered above a sell-out crowd of 50,500 to create a scene worthy to be dubbed college football in the South. Maybe, one day, even worthy to be called college football in the SEC.
Because, that’s what this is about. You didn’t really think North Carolina hired Bill Belichick to deliver national championships, did you? Even university administrators aren’t that stupid.
The Beli Ball experiment and investment will be hailed a success so long as he ensures North Carolina gets to call its shot in the next round of conference realignment.
Which, is probably only a handful of years away. Best prepare now.
And, let’s be real, Belichick probably won’t be coaching North Carolina by then. By 2030, perhaps he’ll be enjoying retirement, unemployment and marital bliss, celebrating his wife’s 29th birthday, and waxing nostalgic about how he rode the coattails of a quarterback named Brady and convinced everyone he’s a coaching savant.
So long as Belichick sufficiently elevated UNC to a place to where the school can name its destination into a “Super Two” conference, where the cash flows, he’ll have achieved a feat.
UNC’s brand and media market — everyone and your mother is moving to Charlotte — make the Tar Heels appealing to either the Big Ten or the SEC. The football program needs work. Never has that been more apparent than in Belichick’s college football coaching debut.
Belichick, wearing a snug hoodie, watched stoically as TCU humiliated his Tar Heels, 48-14. Belichick’s first impression spoiled before halftime. Behind him, fans filed out in the third quarter, probably with basketball on the brain.
As for UNC football, it looked as reputable as the school’s Afro-American Studies department.
Never mind UNC’s cheating past, though. A history of academic fraud wouldn’t make it a pariah for the SEC. If anything, its decades-long harborage of phony classes shows the SEC and Big Ten that UNC cares enough about winning to execute an academic sham and then mount a successful defense to justify it to the NCAA.
Tennessee and Michigan could take inspiration from such chicanery.
The SEC and Big Ten won’t be inspired by the football product we saw on Labor Day, though. This team showed it’s not ready for prime time.
In the short term, Belichick’s hiring galvanized a sleepy program. North Carolina already sold out its home games for the season. How much will those tickets be selling for on resale sites in November?
Because, if the opener is an accurate indication, Belichick’s team stinks.
If only it didn’t, because everything else about North Carolina makes it a slam dunk for either the SEC or the Big Ten the next time the realignment carousel swings into gear.
North Carolina is one of those AAU schools the Big Ten likes. It would give the Big Ten an entry point into the South, which remains untapped terrain for a conference that spans from Los Angeles to Seattle to New Jersey and many outposts in between — except for lands that say y’all.
The SEC’s past expansions operated much differently from the Big Ten’s quest to acquire brands from coast to coast. The SEC prefers to move into contiguous states to methodically expand the league’s footprint without betraying its carefully crafted Southern identity or its football fabric.
The SEC Network is headquartered in Charlotte, and yet North Carolina remains the Southern-most state without an SEC school. For now, anyway.
ACC schools, like North Carolina, will become more accessible once their conference exit fees reduce in 2030.
It’s unrealistic to expect Belichick to turn basketball-forward UNC into Georgia or Ohio State. But, could he do for North Carolina what Deion Sanders did for Colorado?
Sanders supercharged the Buffaloes’ program and brand and helped ensure Colorado did not get left behind in the last round of realignment. The Buffaloes found a home within the Big 12. He made Colorado a television ratings dynamo. Games in Boulder became a party pad for celebrities.
Belichick is no Prime. The latter is a magnetic personality and a cultural icon who brought to Colorado a proven college football coaching record, albeit in the FCS ranks. Sanders benefited from installing his talented son as his quarterback. He also brought along a dual-position superstar, Travis Hunter, who revered Sanders. Hunter would go on to win the Heisman Trophy.
Oh, and Sanders beat TCU in his Colorado debut, too.
Unlike Prime, Belichick is a past-his-prime coach whose winning percentage in games not quarterbacked by Brady leaves a lot to be desired. He installed a son who’s an assistant coach. Steve Belichick is no Shedeur Sanders. None of the scores of transfers North Carolina nabbed this offseason compares to Travis Hunter. Belichick possesses not one-tenth of Coach Prime’s magnetism, nor his experience as a college coach and recruiter.
No matter what Sanders achieves the rest of his Colorado tenure, he’ll have been worth it. Just check out the school’s swelling enrollment, its Power Four status, and its TV ratings that defy gravity.
For one night, Belichick electrified the place — up to the point TCU began the rout, anyway. How long can that last? Improving the team to the point of competence would help.
By 2030, Belichick might be retired to Maine, living as Mr. Hudson. Greatness may have eluded him at North Carolina. It’ll have been worth it for the Tar Heels, though, if they can say that a coach formerly known as an NFL legend helped them take their place at the vanguard of the next realignment rat race.
Blake Toppmeyer is the USA TODAY Network’s senior national college football columnist. Email him at BToppmeyer@gannett.com and follow him on X @btoppmeyer.
