NFL Execs Agree That UNC Gives Belichick Two Things They Could Not: 'Challenge and Freedom'
Now that I've had a night to sleep on it (meaning I stared at the ceiling the whole time thinking about this like I have with so many other moments in the man's career), I come to understand why Bill Belichick chose the North Carolina job before even testing the waters of the NFL. And I realize that even I, The Belichick Whisperer, failed to truly appreciate the depths to which he loves to coach football. Even as I wrote this last night when the news broke:
Being away from the game as just a casual observer is not for him. He's still his father's son. The one who learned the ropes of breaking down game film at Belichick the Elder's knee at Naval Academy. He's that guy who wants to be spinning a whistle around his hand in July practices, telling stories about working for Ted Marchibroda during the stretching period. He wants to be pulling some raw roster bubble guy aside and giving him some minor coaching point. He wants to be on one knee in front of the bench with a white board, showing his defensive line what he's looking for during the next series.
Simply put, he's a football coach. And being something other than a football coach was a crime against nature. Even if it means taking the job of leading a program that hasn't won as much as a conference title since 1980, he's in. And the football world is a much better place with him in it.
Though it pains me to admit it, I underestimated just how much he wants to be back on the sidelines. regardless of where those sidelines are.
To put it another way, him leaving the pros for the college ranks isn't a Belichick problem; it's an NFL problem. He didn't need the league's bullshit anymore:
Source - Team ownership members praised the stellar résumé that Belichick amassed in his 49 total seasons in the NFL, not appearing particularly concerned that the pro game was ceding one of its sharpest minds to college. …
In conversations with Yahoo Sports, two NFC executives and another AFC executive agreed: Belichick knew which pro teams with current or looming openings would consider him and in what context. Rather than go through a hiring cycle in which he would not reach an agreement with an NFL team, and thus return to media rather than coaching for another year, the 72-year-old found a deadline to test the waters sooner. …
NFL teams in need of coaches, if not all NFL teams, do not align with Belichick on his desired role in a program.
That does not necessarily mean no teams were conditionally interested in the second-winningest coach in NFL history. It does mean that North Carolina offered a specific structure the NFL does not.
That confluence of challenge and freedom seemed to allure Belichick, voices across the NFL believed. The possibility of setting up for success his son, Steve Belichick, also allured a father returning to the campus on which his own father was once an assistant coach.
Belichick has already accomplished plenty at the pro level. Sure, he could chase the 15 elusive wins that would move him past Don Shula for the winningest NFL coach of all time. But more growth potential exists in college for a man who has already won 333 combined NFL regular season and playoff games.
“There’s an element of this that is fun and different and you can do it however you want,” one NFC executive told Yahoo Sports after news broke Wednesday afternoon. “He can be more of a change agent in college than he can in the NFL. He can go build something in a unique way and be like, ‘Oh, I helped revolutionize or change modern college football and how the programs are built.’
“That’s not going to be the case in the NFL.”
To summarize: Belichick wants to coach football more than he wants to coach professional football. To have to deal with a league that spent decades trying to discredit him, diminish all he accomplished, accuse him, punish him, and change the rules to try and stop him. To get hired by a franchise only to have to deal with layers of bureaucracy. To share power with lesser mortals who don't have a subatomic particle of his football knowledge and none of his success. To have to bend the knee to some Lucky Spermer owner who was born at 1st & goal and thinks he drove the team the length of the field. Nothing, not even beating Don Shula, is worth all that.
What North Carolina offers is "challenge and freedom." Autonomy to build a program, teach the game, and guide his players into NFL careers. Which is all he wants. He doesn't need to be on prime time, the subject of debates on the cable shows, front and center of the national public discourse. Been there. Done that. Now he just gets to coach.
There are just so many parallels, I don't know where to begin:
--Paul Newman was the king of Hollywood. A respected movie and sex symbol who could make any movie he wanted. But what he wanted was to race cars and hang out with a bunch of real men who could rebuild a carburetor but hadn't seen Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. And he became a true champion of the sport.
--David Bowie once gave an interview where he was asked why he hadn't had a hit song in a while. And on the spot he improvised a song that he promised would hit the top of the charts. He just didn't need that any more. He'd had all the platinum he ever wanted, and decided to spend his time exploring new genres.
--After the game-changing success of The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger published his last novella in 1965, then moved to New Hampshire and led a quiet, normal life. In doing so, he became the inspiration for the James Earl Jones character in Field of Dreams. In fact, a fictionalized Salinger was the actual character in the WP Kinsella novel Shoeless Joe the movie was based on.
But you know what? There's no better apples-to-apples example than Bill's own father Steve Belichick, He was constantly getting offers to become a head coach. But rather than drag his wife and prodigy son around the country, getting hired just to be fired, he stayed on as the defensive coordinator at Naval Academy. Even becoming a tenured professor just so he could stay put and do what truly made him happy.
Coaching.
And now his son not only continues that legacy, he'll get to pass the Tar Heels torch to his own son. Or sons.
So this is him turning his back on the NFL. And turning his career back to what he loves most. Just don't make the mistake of thinking he's done with winning. It's been less than 24 hours and he's already building his empire:
Be afraid, ACC. Be very afraid.
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