Before the University of North Carolina ended up here -- here being an introductory press conference for one of the most successful professional football coaches ever, but one who has never coached a single collegiate down, seated between a chancellor who comes from finance and not academia and a typically impeccably dressed athletics director wearing a $9 thrift-store suit jacket with the sleeves haphazardly cut off -- the Tar Heels' brass reached a critical conclusion in this new era of college sports.
It was years in the making.
Indeed, when UNC announced last week the blockbuster deal to hire coach Bill Belichick, the university signaled that it is now all-in on football -- financially and philosophically. And not necessarily because it wants to be, though many at UNC do. Rather, it is making this football commitment because it has to. It's as much a symptom of a changing landscape in collegiate athletics as it is a sign of what may come.
"We are absolutely 100% committed to football and committed to winning in football," said Jennifer Lloyd, the mother of a current football player and a member of the UNC Board of Trustees, the governing body of the flagship school in the University of North Carolina system.
"We want to win a national championship in football."
UNC has never won a national title in football, barely sniffed it since the creation of the ACC in 1953. It hasn't even won a conference championship in more than four decades.
Football's popularity and the ability to make money off the sport has transformed the financial calculus of college athletics. UNC has to become a football school. Especially if it wants to be a men's basketball school and a women's soccer school and a field hockey school and the two dozen or so other sports it sponsors, many of which have had more on-field success and national recognition than the football program.
"It's a risk," UNC athletics director Bubba Cunningham said after Thursday's press conference introducing Belichick. "We're taking a risk that we're investing more in football with the hope and ambition that the return is going to significantly outweigh the investment."
And that's how Cunningham -- two-plus weeks after he fired Mack Brown, the school's all-time leader in victories -- ended up in his sleeveless jacket next Belichick, an almost-too-perfect embodiment of the school's latest -- and, by far, most expensive -- pursuit of football glory.
Belichick, 72, signed a five-year deal worth $50 million, though only the first three seasons and $30 million are guaranteed. UNC committed more than $16 million for assistant coaches, strength and conditioning staff and support staff, including a general manager. The Tar Heels also committed $13 million in revenue-sharing to the football program.
His résumé and the excitement generated from the hire have the Tar Heels thinking big.
"We're going to have an excellent college football program," Chancellor Lee Roberts said at Thursday's press conference. "We want to compete with the best and we've hired the best coach."
College football, sprinting ahead with structural and rules changes making it increasingly look like the pro game -- with sponsorship deals for athletes and ever-changing rosters thanks to the so-called transfer portal -- became an option for the NFL lifer. Known for his meticulous preparation, Belichick brings a strategic know-how uncommon at the college level.
Belichick won six Super Bowls during a 24 seasons as head coach of the New England Patriots. He won two more as defensive coordinator of the New York Giants. Over his near 50 years in the National Football League, he coached who many believe to be the game's greatest quarterback, tight end and linebacker. He's been bathed in triumph, but also embroiled in cheating allegations -- from purported spying on opponents to seeking an edge through deflated footballs. His gray sleeveless hooded sweatshirt became a signature look. His gruff, no-nonsense demeanor in press conferences spawned many an impression.
Despite the 333 NFL coaching wins, second all-time, Belichick found himself out of a job 2024.
A coach without a team.
Given his age and how the NFL had treated him after his dismissal from the Patriots -- seven vacancies, just one team willing to interview him, none hiring him -- there was no guarantee he'd find an NFL team this offseason.
Belichick learned how to watch, evaluate and process the sport at the feet of his father, Steve, a college coach and scout for more than five decades, including, crucially to this moment, three seasons at North Carolina in the mid-1950s. Little Billy's first words, after all, were "Beat Duke," he recounted. Belichick brought his father's old UNC sweater to the press conference.
And his son, Steve, is a college coach, a first-year defensive coordinator with the University of Washington. Belichick spent time around the Huskies' program throughout the year. He also met with college coaches who wanted to pick his brain about the changes: How best to allocate money across a football roster. How to handle two-minute timeouts and tablets on the sidelines and in-helmet communications between coaches and players, all changes brought from the NFL.
"The college game came to me," Belichick said.
After UNC's dispiriting 70-50 home loss to James Madison on Sept. 21 -- and locker-room comments by Brown, 73, that left some wondering if he had quit -- it became clear that the Tar Heels may be looking for a new football leader. Cunningham started getting unsolicited calls from agents and others.
One came from the Belichick camp.
During Brown's six-year second tenure in Chapel Hill, UNC doubled its football spending, topping out at more than $44.7 million this year. The entire athletics department budget was $139 million.
The football spending is the median among teams in the biggest conferences in college football. But it lags far behind the sport's powers, according to data from the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics.
The program's results have been similarly average.
Dick Crum's Tar Heels went 11-1 and won the ACC title in 1980, led by Lawrence Taylor, who along with Belichick as defensive coordinator would win two Super Bowls with the Giants and become known as, perhaps, the game's greatest linebacker.
Since that title team, the Tar Heels have won 10 or more games in only five separate seasons. They've won three or fewer games eight times. They've had eight head coaches, including Brown twice. They've finished the year ranked in The Associated Press' Top 25 just twice since Brown left UNC the first time, for Texas after the 1997 season.
"Why is the University of North Carolina in a JV tier?" said Lloyd, the UNC trustee. "We should not be JV in anything we do ever, and we're so excellent in every other way. Once you're in the top tier, you're going to win and lose. Alabama's not in the playoffs. You're going to win and lose. But the fact that we were accepting a relegated place in football was absolutely awful for most of us."
Lloyd added: "I'd much rather be in the top tier competing every day than relegated to the kids' table."
Unspoken in that is the Tar Heels' conference affiliation. UNC is a charter member of the Atlantic Coast Conference. The North Carolina-headquartered league was long at or near the top of the athletic hierarchy in college athletics. But football's ascendancy -- and basketball's decline -- in overall importance, an ill-timed, long-term television deal combined with consolidation of major brands into other leagues have left the conference far behind its peers in revenue generation and distribution.
The annual gap, fueled by television, is large and larger. Bigger football stadiums and more attractive conference foes mean financial windfalls from every home game. The lucrative 12-team College Football Playoff stands to benefit the Southeastern Conference and Big Ten above all with more sports and a larger percentage of the revenue, which can be used to fuel not only football success but strength in other sports.
"If we don't get into that game, we're going to get left behind. It was now or never," said UNC Trustee David Boliek, a former chairman of the board who was elected state auditor in November. "That's what this amounts to: now or never to have someone like Coach Belichick come in and try to change the trajectory and do something different."
Boliek wants UNC in another league, preferably the Southeastern Conference. One hope: Belchick and an in-demand football program can close the financial gap in the short term while positioning the Tar Heels to a conference jump in the medium term.
The SEC behemoth is instructive. Those fat football-driven checks have not only elevated football, but men's basketball and women's basketball and baseball and softball and gymnastics.
The ACC still reigns in some Olympic sports, such as women's soccer and field hockey, swimming and tennis. But the league, once the nation's premier basketball conference, has lost that claim amid an exodus of hall-of-fame coaches and other leagues' influx of cash. The SEC's recent 14-2 demolition of the ACC in their recent men's basketball challenge series only put an exclamation on the point.
"Football is the economic driver of college sports, and we need to be really good at football to continue to remain relevant on a national basis," said Cunningham, the chairman of the men's basketball tournament selection committee and a member of the United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee board. "We're there in basketball. We're there in a lot of our Olympic sports. But we need to make sure that our football program is elite, and I think this demonstrates our commitment to it."
He added: "We do see the future of college athletics very dependent on a successful college football program."
Enter Belichick.
Cunningham and company could have played it safer. As one of only four Power 4 conference jobs open, North Carolina attracted strong interest. Cunningham's hiring across the department has turned out very well.
Maybe an up-and-coming coordinator like Tommy Rees (Cleveland Browns) or Glenn Schumann (Georgia) or an established, successful coach from one of college football's lower-tier programs such as Jon Sumrall (Tulane) or Jeff Monken (Army) would have been successful on the field. Maybe they'd have added a 10-win season to the list or moved the program up the ACC pecking order a bit.
All would have cost less. None would have moved the needle like Belichick has.
"Hiring the best football coach that there has ever been kind of feels like it's on-brand and feels right and exciting," said Veronica Flaspoehler, the president of Carolina Alumni.
"That gets the Tar Heels on [ESPN's] SportsCenter every other night. It's going to put them in the national conversation," said outgoing North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, a UNC alum.
Belichick's hire was a top story on ESPN. But also on The Today Show. Football games will be must-see events, at least at the beginning. If it is anything like Deion Sanders' hire at the University of Colorado, UNC can expect better time slots and television windows at the beginning of Belichick's tenure.
Several Tar Heel players withdrew from the transfer portal to remain in Chapel Hill after Belichick was hired. Four-star quarterback Bryce Baker committed to Belichick on Saturday, the new coach's first recruiting win.
Roberts told members of the UNC faculty on Friday about Belichick's first interaction with the team.
"There really was this immediate rapport that he was able to form with the team, and you could watch them respond to him in a positive way almost immediately after he started speaking," Roberts said.
The athletics department generates revenue in four primary ways: tickets, television, sponsorships and donations. Ticket prices are going up. On Friday, UNC began accepting season-ticket deposits. The cost of sponsorships are going up. Donations, likely, will go up. Television exposure, if not revenue right away, will go up.
That's the bet the school has made, needing to generate additional money not just for Belichick and his staff but for the $20.5 million in revenue sharing that is expected to begin in July.
"This is the most visible thing we've done in a long time," Cunningham said.
Or, as Boliek put it: "High risk, high reward."
Cunningham started with a list of about 30 names for the job, some he'd collected throughout the year from those reaching out. Belichick's name was on it -- and some within the university community had no doubts.
"If you can hire Bill Belichick," Lloyd said, "you hire Bill Belichick."
Of course, Belichick's name was intriguing. But he's 72 -- months younger than Brown, who dealt with age-related questions throughout his tenure. Belichick has never coached in college. How long would he stay? He's just 15 wins away from the NFL record, would he go back? Is Bill Belichick going to high school games and living rooms to recruit 16- and 17-year-olds?
John Preyer, the chairman of the Board of Trustees and one of the small group of search committee members, pushed for Belichick. Lloyd said she first heard Belichick's name as a legitimate candidate on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, two days after Brown was fired and three days before he coached the regular-season finale against NC State. Boliek said the Belichick buzz really started building the night of UNC's game against North Carolina State University.
As Belichick's name got more attention, the fan reaction was positive. That helped Cunningham get more comfortable with the idea.
The on-field impact of the hire has been met with healthy skepticism from some who aren't convinced that Belichick can immediately elevate the UNC program. Given the Tar Heels' history, it's not a hot take.
Roberts anticipated questions, likely critical ones, at Friday's General Faculty and Faculty Council meeting on campus. There was not a single question about Belichick's hire -- or the huge financial commitment to football.
"For our alums that are less excited, I think it's not about Bill generally," said Flaspoehler, the alumni president. "I think it's just the commercialization of football."
It was not a search without pitfalls, without some frictions spilling out into public. There were national reports of confusion from candidates about who was running it. A senior official at UNC blamed members of the board for prolonging the process.
Roberts played a large role, too, and opened Thursday's press conference by praising Cunningham, who has faced criticism from the board.
"We always get a lot of input, a lot of feedback and there's an enormous amount of enthusiasm for Tar Heel football," Roberts said. "That was reflected in the input and feedback we got around the search. But we followed our process. We ran our process and we're elated with the results."
In the end, the Tar Heels got their man to lead them into a new era of college sports.
"Coach Belichick has demonstrated his passion for teaching, for coaching and for lifelong learning," Cunningham said at the press conference Thursday. "He's an absolute perfect fit for us at this time in the history of the university and the history of college sports."
In this precise moment, UNC athletics has bet big on the legendary coach and the fans and the sponsors and the donors and anyone else who can hark the sound of Tar Heel voices.
"That table's been set," Boliek said. "We've got a fantastic coach with a different mindset. The opportunity is now there. Now it's up to everyone associated with the university to execute."