Maybe at some point after a future loss to Virginia Tech, we’ll once again get a glimpse of the Bill Belichick persona as a way-too-serious, perpetually annoyed, “We’re on to Cincinnati” hater of answering questions from the media.
But on Thursday, the new North Carolina coach — it still feels weird to type those words — struck a different tone at his introductory press conference.
He sounded like something we don’t usually see in college athletics during these days when coaches and fans are riding the sugar high of a new marriage. Belichick, quite simply, came off like an adult.
During a roughly 45-minute session that touched on everything from his age to recruiting to his father’s short stint as an assistant at North Carolina in the 1950s, one moment toward the end stood out.
Asked what challenges he might face in the transition from coaching adult pros to young people who are often still in their teenage years, Belichick didn’t recite his résumé or make grandiose promises about winning national titles or get caught up in the hyperbolic lovefest that these rituals usually devolve into.
Instead, even the most successful NFL coach of all time left himself some room for uncertainty.
“Well, I mean, we’ll see,” Belichick said. “I’ve had an opportunity to coach young players at various points in my career whether it was other players on my kids’ teams or having an opportunity to be around University of Washington for multiple weeks out there. But again, it’s a process. And I’d say as a teacher you try to find ways to help the students, help the players, and if you can do that they have a tendency to listen and want more if they’re motivated, which most of them are. And if you can’t, then you know, they look somewhere else.”
That answer may seem unremarkable, but within this genre of introductory press conferences, it was downright refreshing.
When Texas A&M hired Jimbo Fisher, it gave him a mock national championship trophy with a date to be filled in. Charlie Weis’ honeymoon at Notre Dame was defined by his declaration of having a “decided schematic advantage.” At his first LSU press conference after leaving Notre Dame, Brian Kelly couldn’t help but to pander with the promise that his family was going to “immerse ourselves into the culture of Louisiana. We’re not here to change anything. We’re here to get changed by it.”
Now here was North Carolina, in the midst of a potentially transformational moment for its football program, and its new coach wasn’t waving the pom-poms or talking like a used car salesman or making this anything bigger than what it is.
He’s there to do a job. He’s there to build a program and help players get better. Will it work? What will success look like? Belichick wasn’t making any promises beyond the effort he’s going to put into the job.
That’s smart. And it’s a whole lot more realistic than some of the discourse that has emerged in the 24-plus hours since Belichick officially took the job.
On one side, there are a lot of myopic college football people − especially within the sport − who are convinced that this is all a big joke and that a 72-year-old who has never worked on a college campus will find this environment too complex and frustrating to be successful.
And on the other end of the spectrum, a lot of NFL-affiliated media members seem to be certain that Belichick is going to waltz into college football with all his championship rings and suddenly start wrecking shop.
ESPN’s “Get Up” on Thursday was particularly over-the-top. NFL insider Adam Schefter suggested that success was a slam dunk because Belichick has more energy than younger coaches. Jason McCourty got a little weird talking about how Belichick would hold multi-hour coaches’ meetings without going to the bathroom while his assistants were, um, struggling to hold it in. Dan Orlovsky predicted that coaches in the ACC and even the SEC were saying curse words out of fear for what Belichick is going to do to college football. Even Paul Finebaum, who normally revels playing the role of fecal matter in the punch bowl, said Belichick is “not going to have to deal with the usual problems most college coaches deal with.’
Uh, Earth to Paul: Yes he is. And the reality of his task at North Carolina is that he may well be up to it, or he may not be. The uncertainty is what’s going to make it fun to find out.
Belichick is obviously a confident man. You can glean that much from his success, his willingness to do something that is a bit unfamiliar at this stage of the game and even in some of the details we know about his personal life.
But he is not approaching this job like it’s going to be light work, and that’s already a level of understanding that a lot of coaches with an NFL-heavy background who failed in college football didn’t have until it was too late.
Just look at some of the names who tried it: Bill Callahan at Nebraska, Weis at Notre Dame, Jim Mora at UCLA, Herm Edwards at Arizona State. All of them, in one way or another, probably expected that their experience relative to the competition was like the varsity against the JV. And that went poorly for them because once they were in it they realized that a lot of the skills that made them successful at the highest level simply didn’t translate to college kids.
With Belichick, maybe they will. Maybe they won’t. This is such an unusual situation, with so little precedent, that it would be foolish to declare right now whether it will work.
But Belichick seems to understand the assignment, with a clear vision of what his role is going to be. Truth be told, most of the new initiatives you’re going to hear about at North Carolina — a more professional and larger staffing structure, a beefed up recruiting budget, a cutting-edge training program — are not novel ideas. They may be new to North Carolina, but most of the top college programs already operate that way.
And there’s little doubt that on a week-to-week basis, Belichick has the potential to out-scheme and out-coach his opponents in the ACC.
That doesn’t mean he’s going to win.
The difference is simply going to be whether Belichick’s approach to developing players and building a system around his personnel like he did in New England is going to work on the college level. It’s no more complex than that.
“The lessons they learn will be professional lessons,” Belichick said. “They’ll be pros in all areas, and that’s what we want to develop. As well as having a successful program, we want to develop good people and good football players.
“I’m going to do everything I can to help this program and make it as strong as possible.”
For someone of Belichick’s stature, that’s a big enough promise. Whether he can follow through on it will depend on dozens of factors, some of them probably out of his control.
But if his introduction to North Carolina is a preview of what’s to come, the Tar Heels are now being run by a realist rather than a football televangelist. That’s already an improvement.
