Former New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick is making the jump to college football.
North Carolina has announced Belichick as its next head football coach, making the six-time Super Bowl champion the successor to Mack Brown in Chapel Hill. The deal is three years for $30 million, according to The Athletic.
It’s the first time in Belichick’s decades-long football career that he’ll coach at the college level. He started as a special assistant for the Baltimore Colts in 1975 and rose up the ranks from there. He took his first NFL head coaching job for the Cleveland Browns in 1991 and eventually joined the Patriots in 2000.
After the 2023 NFL season ended, Belichick and the Patriots mutually agreed to part ways. When the 72-year-old didn’t get a job in the ensuing hiring cycle, he settled for a one-year hiatus from coaching. For the last few months, Belichick has been a regular in ESPN’s ‘Pat McAfee Show’ and its ‘ManningCast’ with Peyton and Eli Manning during ‘Monday Night Football’ games.
Going forward, Belichick will try to right the ship at UNC, where his dad was an assistant coach in the 1950s.
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This season, the Tar Heels finished 6-6 with a 3-5 conference record that was fifth-worst in the ACC. It was another year of regression after a 2023 season that saw UNC finish 4-4 in conference, failing to follow up on its 2022 ACC championship appearance.
Bill Belichick hired by UNC: Social media reacts
On Wednesday evening, ESPN’s Adam Schefter reported that Belichick and UNC were finalizing their deal. The news sent waves across social media and generated a wide spread of reactions, ranging from excitement to disappointment and disbelief, and from quick, gut feelings to nuanced takes.
Here are a few of them:
A consensus from many of the reactions seems to be that, if nothing else, football fans will have a really good reason to watch UNC play next year.
