“They will win press conferences, not matches. Having won the NFL six times will not make him a suitable college coach. He almost doesn’t use Instagram”
FOXBOROUGH, MASSACHUSETTS – DECEMBER 17: Head coach Bill Belichick of the New England Patriots and Patrick Mahomes #15 of the Kansas City Chiefs hug after Kansas City’s 27-17 win at Gillette Stadium on December 17, 2023 in Foxborough, Massachusetts. Sarah Stier/Getty Images/AFP
Sarah Stier / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / Getty Images via AFP
“Congratulations North Carolina. You managed to hire someone completely unqualified to be your next football coach. You did that thing that a lot of college programs do, which is trying to win press conferences instead of winning football games. It rarely works.” And so the New York Times (The Athletic) intervenes promptly on an event that is a real case for American sport: the transition of Bill Belichick, the most important (and cumbersome) coach of the modern NFL era to the university championship. We wrote about it here, remembering that in the United States college football is a huge industry, with 100,000-capacity stadiums and millions of dollars in salaries. A context that is almost inexplicable in Europe.
The debate in the American sports press is ongoing. The New York Times itself has published various analysis pieces to explain the various scenarios. And if “awe” is the key word, it is interesting to read how our perspective can be subverted: for the NYT, in fact, it is not so much the superstar coaches who might regret the downgrade, but the University that hired him. And he lists the reasons, starting with “that we could be excommunicated from the world of football for daring to question the merits of a six-time Super Bowl champion coach.” But here it is:
Belichick “never coached a day in college football. He has never recruited an athlete. He never had to deal with the transfer portal or NIL collectives. His father was a college coach, at Navy, but that was 35 years ago.
Belichick is known for being grumpy and introvertedtwo traits that don’t often go hand in hand with the ability to woo recruits, extend hands to donors and give motivational speeches to 18- to 22-year-olds.
He made his first post on Instagram, which he called Instaface at the time, on September 4 this year. He has since published eight more times. He may not realize that many college athletes, especially recruits, communicate primarily via social media.”.
In short, he’s old: “he’s 72, and when you get to 72, it becomes increasingly difficult to promise people that you’ll be there for another four or five years.”
“But Belichick has those Super Bowl rings. Which he will definitely wear when meeting recruits and potential transfers. People who will then say something like: “Great, but how much do they pay me?“.
“Unless Belichick can magically reinstate Tom Brady’s eligibility, we can’t see how this thing can end well. We’ve seen this movie so many times before: A big-name NFL coach comes to town vowing to turn the program into an NFL-in-college organization. Inevitably, the school and the coach quickly realize that what works in the NFL doesn’t necessarily work in college. And vice versa. And yet… they continue to fall for it.”
“It’s illusory to think that Belichick will show up, look at his rings, and all of a sudden North Carolina will start producing more top-tier NFL players than Georgia or Ohio State. You have to do something else to stand out in this era.”
