Bill Belichick, the most successful coach in NFL history, is off to college.

The architect of six Super Bowl titles with the New England Patriots has agreed a deal with North Carolina to become the school’s new head coach. A year after his exit from the Patriots, he is leaving the pro game behind to dive into the wild west of college sports in the pay-for-play era.

When you first heard the news, you probably shrugged your shoulders. It looked like a vintage case of an out-of-work coach sending a message to NFL owners: I’m ready to work. But Belichick’s interest in the college game is sincere. He sat down with North Carolina’s decision-makers for multiple interviews last week, and confirmed his interest in the job on the Pat McAfee Show.

Belichick’s move is unprecedented. In his 49-year coaching career, he has never worked outside the NFL. But Belichick has spent the last year travelling around college campuses to understand the sport’s new landscape. He will become the first Super Bowl-winning coach to drop down to the college level without any college coaching experience.

The question is: Why?

1) A lack of interest from the NFL

Belichick spent his coaching sabbatical doing the media rounds. And he’s everywhere: Belichick has seven different media gigs. At one point, two of his shows aired at the same time. His move into the media was a chance to show he was a normal, football-loving coach who wanted to get back into the NFL if someone gave him a call.

But, based on all reports, the interest from the NFL side was not there. The Bears, Saints and Jets all have head coach vacancies. Any of those franchises could have talked to him – although the Jets were a long-shot given their history with Belichick – after dismissing their coaches. If not those franchises, Belichick is so intertwined with the league that he can put out feelers about potential vacancies in Jacksonville, Dallas or anywhere else whenever he likes.

Belichick’s willingness to engage with a college program was a signal that the anticipated interest was muted. And that makes sense. He will be 73 at the start of next NFL season, which would have made him the oldest head coach in league history if a team had picked him up this cycle.

Only one team showed interest in speaking to Belichick last offseason. The Falcons interviewed him for their opening, but Belichick did not make the team’s list of three finalists. “They viewed Belichick as an older, stoic coach who’d blow up the building and wouldn’t likely stay beyond two years after he sets the wins record,” ESPN’s Seth Wickersham reported last offseason.

With no signs of incoming offers from the league, Belichick chose to jump at his first concrete offer, sparing him the indignity of missing out on another round of jobs, and losing another year of coaching.

2) Control

Beyond just his age, there is another hangup for NFL teams: Belichick is no ordinary coach. Wherever he landed, he would require full autonomy over a team’s roster, salary cap and draft, the kind of singular power that ownership groups are shying away from – and the sort of power they would be unlikely to hand to someone approaching their mid-70s.

The dynastic Patriots were not built on the “Patriot Way”. It was the “Belichick Way”. That will carry over to North Carolina. But in the NFL, there are few overlords. The era of Bill Parcells, Bill Walsh or Belichick running every department is gone. In 2024, franchises are siloed. There is overlap between departments, but the coaching ranks have become so transitory that the head coach no longer controls huge swathes of the building. That is left to a team president or general manager. A coaching staff may come and go, but more often than not key members of the personnel and analytics departments, nutrition staff and back office remain the same.

That is not Belichick’s vision. In New England, he was the all-seeing, all-commanding emperor. He ran the front office, coaching staff and signed off on all football decisions. Only a handful of franchises would cede that control to one individual in the modern game, and they’re not handing those keys to a 73-year-old who may only stick around for four or five seasons. Those odds were even longer given Belichick’s recent poor track record as a general manager. After presiding over six Super Bowls with the Patriots, Belichick’s magic touch wore off once Tom Brady moved on to Tampa Bay. By the end of his time in New England, Belichick the general manager had essentially kneecapped Belichick the coach. The source of his contentious departure from the Patriots was New England’s owner, Robert Kraft, looking to wrestle back some power.

In college, Belichick will have free rein. The head coach remains omnipotent in college football, even as it inches toward a pro model. They are a CEO, general manager, head coach and play-caller wrapped into one. If Belichick was willing to relinquish control, then an NFL franchise may have come calling on Belichick the coach. But by prioritising his authority over an organisation, college was the only option.

Even at one of college football’s upper-tier institutions, it’s unlikely Belichick would have been able to amass total control. Alabama, Texas or Ohio State are not turning their programs over to a first-time college coach in his 70s. But North Carolina is a second-tier program in a second-tier conference. The school’s only shot at landing a coaching legend was to agree to Belichick’s demands, allowing him to an organisation in his image.

3) The new college era

It’s a new landscape in college football. With Name, Image and Likeness, players are now being paid. There is even a (relative) salary cap. Soon, college football players are likely to become employees.

That shift has turned college from an amateur sport into a professionalised one. That shift has also changed the requirements for a college head coach. The front offices of college football programs now echo their NFL counterparts. There is a delineation between those who scout and recruit talent and those who coach the players once they’re on campus. Before a 2024 rule change, coaching staffs were limited and the coaches had to juggle both jobs.

“I think there are a lot of football programs that are being structured similar to NFL programs,” Belichick told Pat McAfee this week. “In college, you now have high school recruiting but you have the college portal. In pro football, you have the draft and pro free agency … think it’s a little different version of the NFL model, much more so than it’s ever been before.”

In the old world, where Belichick would have to pitch 16-to-18-year-olds to play for him, a move to college would make little sense. How would a some in their 70s be able to relate to and attract talent? But in an era where players are paid and recruiting has changed, that is less of a pressing concern. It may even be an advantage.

Take Deion Sanders. Through the power of his intellect and charisma, Sanders turned Colorado from a doormat to a playoff contender in two seasons. After leaving Jackson State for the lowest rung of big-time college football, Sanders showed the sport a new model for recruiting. When he arrived at Colorado, he brought with him unparalleled media attention, which turned into dollars for the school, which turned into a budget Sanders could use to recruit talent – including his son, Shedeur, who is expected to be the top quarterback selected in the 2025 NFL draft and Travis Hunter, the favourite for this season’s Heisman Trophy.

Sanders has shown a new way of winning. He doesn’t race around the country shaking hands and chasing teenagers. He doesn’t even leave Colorado to recruit. His staff hits the trail, but recruits have to come to Sanders, not the other way around. Sanders uses college football’s “transfer portal”, the way in which players can move between schools, as a form of pseudo-free agency, building out his roster with transfers and sprinkling high school recruits on top. The time when Nick Saban was landing on a high school field in his private helicopter to woo prospects is long gone. Winning in free agency is the name of the game.

Belichick does not have Sanders’s charisma. But he will bring eyeballs. With Belichick on board North Carolina is immediately one of the most relevant football brands in the country. In the attention economy, that can tip the scales in fundraising and recruiting battles. His pitch is that he will get college players ready for the NFL. You come here, I will put you in the pros. Now sign on the dotted line. Which player with the goal of making the league will pass on working with the greatest NFL coach of the modern era?

As colleges try to get to grips with juggling the salary demands of players, Belichick will be right at home. Managing a roster is his world. In the current college football scene, a head coach can sit back and operate as a closer, with a dedicated staff engaging in all the shenanigans that land a prospect on campus. And with the transfer portal, a coach can churn over his roster in one season. It is now easier to transform a college program in a couple of months than to work through the slog of a multiyear, NFL rebuild. Belichick may have only three years left of coaching at the highest level – and he could build a contender in Chapel Hill quickly.

4) Legacy

Belichick is only 14 wins short of Don Shula’s all-time NFL wins record. That fact has been bandied around as the reason why Belichick’s preference was to return to the league. If he could pass Shula, the thinking went, he would cement his legacy as the greatest. But does Belichick care?

“If you ask that question, you really don’t know Bill Belichick,” Michael Lombardi, Belichick’s confidant, said this week. That may be true. But Belichick’s NFL legacy is already solidified. He has more Super Bowl rings than any coach in league history, eight if you include his stint as the Giants’ defensive co-ordinator. Securing the win record will not alter his place in the football pantheon.

Then there’s this. Let’s say Belichick did return to chase the all-time wins record. What happens if Andy Reid supplants his record? Reid is 36 wins behind Belichick as things stand and six years younger. Reid is also the head coach of a franchise with Patrick Mahomes. It’s not inconceivable that he matches Belichick’s mark within three seasons. If Belichick joined a rebuilding NFL franchise, he may only hold off Reid for another season or two. But is the grind of a rebuild worth it if he ends his career with another losing record and Reid pips him to the all-time win mark anyway? A sour return to the league would have also added fuel to the never-ending Brady-Belichick debate about who was more responsible for their duo’s success in New England. (For the record: the answer is both.)

Belichick’s legacy is about championships – not wins. There is a reason his boat is called “Eight Rings” and not “333 Wins”. Unless he was able to land on an NFL team with a shot at winning a title next season, the record was not factoring into the decision.

Moving into the college ranks will also allow Belichick to tee up his son Stephen Belichick, the defensive co-ordinator for the Washington Huskies, as his long-term successor. No NFL franchise would sign off on a legacy plan that smacks of nepotism, but a second-tier, desperate college program was open to Belichick charting a path beyond his years as coach if it meant landing the marquee name on the market.

There is a broader family aspect, too. Inside Carolina reports that part of Belichick’s motivation for accepting the job is “honouring his father’s legacy,” who was an assistant coach at UNC when Belichick was a scowling five-year-old.

Plus, only three coaches – Barry Switzer, Jimmy Johnson and Pete Carroll – have ever won a Super Bowl and a national championship, and none have done so in reverse order. Taking the North Carolina job gives Belichick another chance to attempt something no one has ever done. As a coach, he would run circles around those in North Carolina’s conference, provided he could get the right talent on the field. Whether he can do that at his age, with North Carolina’s relatively meagre resources – they’re not exactly a college football powerhouse like Alabama or Georgia – is an open question.

There is logic to Belichick’s move. But it is still kind of, sort of mind-boggling. The most successful coach of his age has signed up for … North Carolina, a prestigious college that wracks up sports titles in everything besides football.

Only Walsh has dropped to the college ranks after winning a Super Bowl. The NFL is the pinnacle of the sport. Once successful coaches finish up there, they hit the lake. Nick Saban and Jim Harbaugh returned to college after stints in the NFL, but both made their reputations at the college level before moving up to the league. Walsh was a returnee, too. But he did so after retiring from the San Francisco 49ers – and he returned to Stanford, where he had coached before moving to San Francisco.

Like Belichick, Walsh missed the rush of coaching. And that is probably the reality here: Belichick just wants to coach. He misses the whistle, the players and the crowd. The NFL told him implicitly or explicitly that it was no longer interested. So now, get ready for Chapel Bill. – Guardian