The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL - Bill Belichick goes back to school

Episode Date: December 19, 2024

Bill Belichick, head coach at the University of North Carolina. It's going to take some getting used to. Robert Mays starts that process from two different angles on this episode of The Athletic Football Show. First, he's joined by Seth Wickersham of ESPN to discuss why a move to the college game would be attractive to Belichick at this stage of his career. Then, David Ubben, host of The Athletic's Until Saturday podcast, jumps on with Robert to dig into the Belichick/UNC pairing from the college football perspective.Host: Robert MaysWith: Seth Wickersham and David UbbenExecutive Producer: Michael BellerProducer: Michael BellerSubscribe to The Athletic Football Show...AppleSpotifyYouTubeFollow Robert on Bluesky: @robertmays.bsky.socialFollow Derrik on Bluesky: @qbklass.bsky.socialFollow Seth on Bluesky: @sethwickersham.bsky.socialFollow David on Bluesky: @davidubben.bsky.socialFollow Robert on X: @robertmaysFollow Derrik on X: @QBKlassFollow Seth on X: @SethWickershamFollow David on X: @davidubbenTheme song: HauntedWritten by Dylan Slocum, Trevor Dietrich, Ruben Duarte, Kyle McAulay, and Meredith VanWoert / Performed by Spanish Love SongsCourtesy of Pure Noise / By arrangement with Bank Robber Music, LLC Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the Athletic Football Show, brought to you by Thursday Night Football only on Prime Video. I'm Robert Mays. Different sort of show for you guys today. We're talking about Bill Belichick and Bill Belichick heading to the University of North Carolina. Full disclosure, we were going to release this on Tuesday. Obviously, some stuff happened this week that threw a wrench into our schedule. So we're doing it a couple days later than we wanted to. But I definitely wanted to have some sort of reaction to this story on the feed because it's a massive story.

The greatest football coach of all time, the most accomplished football coach of all time, unequivocally, going to college football and bypassing another NFL chance, it's shocking in some ways, but maybe less shocking than it seems at first glance. So we wanted to hit this conversation in this topic from two different angles. The first thing you'll hear is a discussion between me and my friend Seth Wickersham from ESPN. Seth wrote a book on the Belichick Brady Patriots. He understands that building and the way that it operates in Belichick. psyche, I guess, in a way that very few people do. He wrote a piece for ESPN.com last week reacting to this news. So talk to Seth about that story, but also just his general take on where Belichick currently

is and what that means for how this is going to unfold at North Carolina. But I also wanted to include a college perspective on this because I don't watch a ton of college football. I am not fluent in the college football world. We have a lot of people at the athletic who are. So the host of our until Saturday college football podcast, David Ubin, came on to share his thoughts about how this might go at North Carolina, his biggest questions, talking about just the circumstances at Carolina, the boosters, just everything else going on there. So many things that I would just never understand or think to ask about. So really, really appreciated David's perspective on this entire discussion.

Let's get to both of those conversations with Seth Wicker-sham and David Ubin right now. Joining us now is a senior writer from ESPN, also the author of Better to Be Feared, a wonderful book about the New England Patriots Dynasty and the author of the upcoming book, American Kings, a biography of the quarterback. It's my friend Seth Wickersham. Seth, how you doing, man? I'm great, man. How are you? Doing very well. I sincerely appreciate you joining us to have this conversation. Obviously, it's been a world win week in the universe of Bill Belichick and those who know him well. You're somebody who has spent a ton of time covering him, learning about him, reporting about him and the piece that you wrote for ESPN.com, I think, had a lot of worthwhile

nuggets that I want to dig into. Here's where I want to start with the Bill Belichick to North Carolina News. What do you think ultimately was the tipping point moment in this happening, whether it was his read on the NFL cycle, whether it was how he saw this opportunity, what was the light bulb moment where you think him and those around him decided this is what is best for us right now? Yeah, I think that it was kind of a combination of two things. First of all, like, 2024 just hasn't been a great year in a lot of ways for Belichick. Obviously, he gets fired by Robert Kraft, whose life and legacy he changed. There are six openings besides the Patriots.

He only gets one interview. And is Don Van Nata and Jeremy Fowler and I reported in April, he didn't make the top three in anyone for the, you know, in anyone's rankings for the Atlanta Falcons gig. The Dynasty docu series comes out, which basically erases him, you know, from, in large part from his contributions to the Patriots dynastic run. So all of that is prelude to September. So NFL season starts. And he and his former Patriot assistant coaches had these weekly zooms where they would talk about every team, every game,

you know, schematic trends, salary cap, injury things, anything that they noticed in kind of the only way that they can as Patriots. And the subtext of all was, what jobs are going to be open, what jobs, what might be interested in Bill, and what jobs would he be interested in. And as the season went on, it didn't look like a lot of the appealing jobs were the right fit for him. And it wasn't even clear whether they were going to be interested in him. One of the kind of interesting things that I got into in the piece just a little bit is that the Brian Florey's discrimination lawsuit is still ongoing. And it's,

second year now. And that has completely killed back channel communication. So there is no more like, hey, you know, you talk to my guy and all this back channel stuff. Hey, we've got our target on you. Owners do not want to get caught on red handed with that. And so Belichick really didn't know what the landscape is, was for the NFL, other than like the jobs that were most appealing. Probably he wasn't going to get. At the same time, he was, his son. is at University of Washington as a defensive coordinator, and he has been going to college games. You know, he's very active going to college games. And I think that maybe we've learned there was a piece of him that always wanted to coach in college. And because the college game is

becoming more professionalized seemingly by the month, it seemed like a landscape that he could thrive in and that he felt he could thrive in. And so North Carolina comes along. Obviously, you wonder like why North Carolina. It turns out he has a little bit of a connection there where his dad was a coach there in the 50s. And I think that the chance to spend the rest of his coaching days at a place that he wants to be at with challenges that will keep him fresh and surrounded by the people that he really enjoys working with are the things that made the difference. That's a long answer, but I think that's it. My main question about his read on the NFL cycle was how much of you,

this is stuff he actually knows and how much of this is him just reading the temperature of the room. And so for you, it's more just reading the tea leaves and saying, listen, I just don't think this is going to work out. But the fact that that's how he's making this decision, what is the downside of just seeing out this cycle and potentially being wrong? Because I understand the bear's side of this. You mentioned that him and his group thought the bears might be the best job, which is heartening for me to hear, even though I don't know if I believe it. But the Jacksonville job, the Jacksonville job seems like the type of opportunity where it's not an actively bad job and because of just how that has gone recently for them, them turning over not entire, maybe not the entire organization,

but them being willing to kind of make a deal with Belichick that other teams aren't because they want a little bit of stability and a little bit of, to something like a known quantity. That feels like just from the outside looking in, that wouldn't be off the table. So what is the downside to waiting to see that process through? is it just a matter of this North Carolina opportunity being a unique one that he was worried would not come around again? Absolutely. So, and that's a terrific question. I think that, I think that from the moment that he realized that he wasn't going to be coaching in 2024. And, you know, he started getting into media gigs and started planning out his year. It was all with the certainty that he was coaching in 2025. He was going to coach somewhere. And I think that he didn't feel good enough about the potential opportunities in the NFL, that it made sense to pass up this North Carolina opportunity.

And, you know, he's going to be 73 in April. And so that one is he'd be hitting the job market again at age, you know, essentially age 74 for the 2006, God help us football season. And so I know that we, I had a quote in my story yesterday where it was someone very familiar with his thinking that said, this is an FU to the NFL, that he's going to college. And people are like, well, the NFL already told him FU first. And I'm not sure that he wouldn't have gotten that Jacksonville gig. I'm really not convinced that if he had waited, that he wouldn't have been the top priority for that team.

It makes perfect sense. You know, there are a team that's kind of ready to win. they've got some pieces in place they need a jolt in the city um they've never had anybody who you know has the mastery of football that he has and i don't know if you remember but when mike shanahan was fired by denver and he spent a year out of the game teams started firing their coaches early to get their first crack at him and i thought there might be a similar thing with belichick but that really hasn't happened i mean look at what's available so the bears they think they're going to go offense. You look at the jets, non-starter, between Belichick and the owner,

going back 25 years. The Giants, now the Giants, of course, seemed like a natural fit, right? Go back to where he was in the 80s. I don't think he really wanted to go there. I don't think he felt like that the roster was ready to win. I think that he has a lot of respect for Brian Daibald, and I think that he thinks that Dayball should continue in that job. And then, I think that, and I was told this, that I think the press the past couple years has just taken a toll on him. Like if he had taken the New York Giants gig and it's a year rebuild, that would have meant that his past three years coaching in the NFL. So 22, 23, and then what would be 25 would be dominated by intense coverage of whether or not he had lost his basketball. And I think he was sick of it.

And in college, you know, he gets to go to North Carolina. which is obviously nobody ever had that on their bingo card, but he's welcomed there. And I think that like just to feel like a team won the lottery by bringing you in, you know, I think that matters quite a bit. It's such a fascinating set of considerations because I think there was so much talk over the last couple years about, well, he wants the Shula thing, right? He wants to make sure he gets the record. And obviously that was probably overstated.

And now there's the, well, he wants full control of the program. And we can talk about that in a second because I think some of the nuances in what wrote are very interesting. But there's also, I think he just wants to enjoy this. So I think for there's so many people who I think have conceived of this as like come hell or high water, he's going to be in the NFL because the height of the game matters and the record matters more than any of the other considerations. But it does feel like he just didn't want to put up with some of the bullshit that was going to potentially be necessary on multiple levels here. And even if that's surprising because you think about him as like this ultra ambitious person, maybe it's not

surprising for somebody in whose 70s who is softened a bit in what he wants out of this job? 100%. And I think that last year, so he's let go by the Patriots and he's scrambling. And the Falcons bring him in. He meets with Arthur Blank twice. And then he meets with the existing infrastructure. And we wrote about this in April, but he was making very clear, I will work with people who are there. I don't need full control. And I would like to get into the element of total control because it's an interesting kind of football phenomenon over the past 40 or so years and how it's changed. But he was willing to do that. But in the meantime, he's kind of listening to Terry Fontno, the GM of the Falcons, who hasn't accomplished anything close to what Billi Blackhechak has accomplished

in Bill Belichick's off years, for that matter, you know, talking about their, their, their drafting systems and listening to Chris Olsen who handles their caps. This is how we do contracts. And those were so different than how he did things and his idea of how a program should be run that I think that he was a little bit less willing and more reticent maybe to enter into a situation like that where the philosophies wouldn't be aligned. Like I don't think he wants to spend his 73rd year on earth in front of an owner arguing with the GM who hasn't won anything about, you know, the best way to do contracts.

I think that, like, the job is hard enough. And he wanted to have people around him who understood the importance of debate, but we're all coming from the same philosophical religion, if that makes sense, football religion. And I think that, like, the opportunity to run a program in college without a lot of interference, without having to explain things to an owner all the time, I think was just appealing to him. Yeah, I was going to ask you, one of the main questions I wanted to ask you is he can say until he's blue in the face, I don't need total control. We have no evidence that that's true. At the end of the day, that seems to be a huge priority for him.

And what we're talking about here, I completely understand if you're 73 years old and you're the greatest coach of all time, prioritizing comfort and efficiency over optimization. But at the same time, if you're an NFL team, I can also understand trying to prioritize optimization. There are so many things that you alluded to in the story where it's like he's disgusted with the way the league is or he's rolling his eyes at all of this stuff. Why? Is your way better? Is your way of running the building proven to be a better way right now than what some of these other teams are doing based on how the last few years went? I understand in Bill Belichick's position, seeing this in the way that he does, kind of looking down from it on high. but I also understand teams wanting to get to a place where compromise between his way and the way that we want to do it is probably the best path toward optimization in 2024.

I think you're right, but except for one thing. And this is what made him so unique and what's made him so different than other very influential coaches, like Bill Walsh, like Holmgren, like Harsels, and Mike, and like Mike Shanahan. And that's that like his system is not a playbook. His system is literally a methodology of funneling information to him where he can make decisions in real time. And I think that's one of the reasons why his assistants have struggled on their own because that's really a system for one. And I think even like when Mike Shanahan was in Washington, phenomenally successful coach, he wasn't as attuned to the nuances of consequences. contracts and salary cap as Bill Belichick is. And so I think that like Kyle Shanahan or Sean McVey or whatever it is can go to a team.

And even though those are coach-centric teams, they can collaborate with the people around them and understand the value that each person brings, whereas like, Belichick is so thorough and he thought things through so much that if he goes to the Atlanta Falcons and they said, which they did, well, we don't do off-season incentives in our contracts. And Belichick says, well, how do you build an off-season program then? Like the Patriots contracts were almost always team-based incentives, not individual ones. So Randy Moss didn't get anything more for scoring 20 touchdowns. They got more if they led to league in scoring and off-season incentives because that's where so much team building is done. And so I think that like that's what separates him as a coach

what made him particularly unappealing in these particular places, especially when you're talking about going to places that don't have the volume of success anywhere close to it that he's had. If he, like, had gone to Seattle and he's working with John Schneider, who's had some success and built a team and understands that, I think it would have been different. But I think that, like, you know, again, you know, going to Jacksonville, where, you know, even I think that he would have got an offer from there,

but is that the right place for him when you've got all these different people who were weighing in on decisions? That was a problem in Atlanta. And I think that as he looked at the landscape, it was just something he didn't want to deal with as much. I can understand that. I think if the last few years in New England had gone differently, then I would be more open to this argument. I think there are two fronts on which I would have a lot of skepticism about this entire operation that they seem to have going. Even in the lead of your story, reading about those Zoom meetings, it feels like that. like there's a level of defiance with this group overall that I'm not sure is very healthy.

It seems like they're circling the wagons and becoming more insular in a way that if they were to return to the NFL, I'm not sure would benefit them. And there is kind of like a contempt that has run through this in a way that I don't necessarily think is a good thing. I was going to ask you this, and I'm curious, what do you think his media tour in 2024 has done for him? What do you think the tone of the way that he has talked about things has projected about Bill Belichick currently, the man and the coach he currently is. I don't think, first of all, you're dead on about the expats. Let's just call them that. You know, they're all unemployed. You know, they're all, they're all on, they're all getting paid by teams that fired them. And there is no doubt that there is a sense that

these other teams are poorly run. There's a lack of accountability. They have no idea what they're doing. And yet, you know, they're gathering at these zooms. And like, you know, they're all, nobody's calling them right now. And so it's a weird, it's a weird situation that they're all in. They're all kind of waiting for what happens with Bill where they can, you know, maybe follow him to a team.

And, you know, they're all part of the same religion and family again. his media stuff, I think that he knew he had to change something with that. I think that like especially his last couple of years in New England where he was very defensive and things weren't going very well. And even though he was still a fantastic defensive coach, they were horrible on offense. And a lot of the, you know, a lot of the problems that they had on offense is directly tied to the players Belichick picked and the coaches and the lack of continuity that was in place there. Mac Jones was a terrific rookie quarterback under Josh McDaniels.

He regressed after that. And I don't think it's all Mac Jones's fault. So I think that he realized that he needed to do something to show a little bit more leg of his personality in a way that felt authentic. And so he hit the media circuit. I don't know what you thought he would do. But, I mean, he was way out there way more than I thought he would be. He had more jobs than anyone I know in media. Absolutely.

And to me, I don't know if it made him more or less hireable. But I'd be curious for your perspective on this. But when I would watch him talking about games and breaking down situations, it felt sad to me and almost a little embarrassing that he'd be asked to talk about the end of the Bears Lions game and the clock managed. debacle there. And this is stuff that he's had cold for two decades. And he's on air having to explain in kind of polite terms just how bad these coaches screw up these situations. And it just showed, you know, he's having to explain what was going on with Matt Eber foods at the end of that

game. Bill Belichick, the guy who in the Super Bowl against the Seahawks, with the Seahawks one yard away from a touchdown and the clock under 30 seconds stands there on the sideline doesn't take timeout watches the Seahawks realizes that they're discombobulated decides he's definitely not going to call a timeout because otherwise that would help them get combobulated watches what personnel package they send in signals his own answer to that personnel package which is the first time all year they had run that it's called goal line three goal line defense with three cornerbacks and no safeties. And then they execute the defense of that pick play like they had practiced twice.

I mean, that is an absolute ninja and mastery of situational football. And he's sitting here on television, unemployed by teams, getting one interview, and having to explain why the Bears only ran one play in the last 50 seconds or whatever it was at that game with one time out. To me, it was just like an indictment of the entire league. I'd be curious what you think. I think that's a fair way to represent it. I was more thinking about it from the sense of the type of person he was portraying if you collectively take all of those appearances.

And to me, the tone of them. There are two main takeaways that I had. One, the man, I can't understand how he had the time to have as in psychopedic of a knowledge and the thoroughness that he approached all of this with. And that, just how he must have combed over every single detail as he got. ready to do these things. And it was very clear the work that he was putting in. But on the flip side of it, at the same time, I feel like there was a real bitterness that ran through a lot of this. I think there are a lot of moments where he was ready to talk about how stupid everyone was.

And he was ready to talk about why everyone else is wrong and they're not as smart as Bill Belichick. And so if you're an owner or if you're a team president, if you're a minority owner, if you're somebody that's going to be involved in this decision ultimately for an organization and you're looking at the total package of what Bill Belichick is presenting to you in 2024 in those media opportunities, you're offsetting the thoroughness with the bitterness. And you have to make a decision is getting in bed with this guy and the way that he does things worth it because the results are going to be good enough? Or is he going to be such a pain in the ass to deal with that I have no interest in going down this road? And because of the last few years and how it ended

in New England and because of how it was without Tom Brady, and I know that that's a two too broad of a brush to paint it with. But again, if you're the person in that chair making that decision, I don't think it's that hard to land in a place where you decide this isn't worth it. Even if the upside is astronomical, even if the history is undeniable, is this combination of traits at this stage based on how it ended in New England worth going down the path. And I get why some teams have decided that it's not. Yeah, I loved salty Belichick, though, on TV.

I loved it. You know, like when we had the Monday night game against the Falcons and he was on the Manning cast and he's just ripping, you know, the every which way he's fun. It's fun. But at the same time, if you have to work with that person every day and I think that when you have this monolith of an organization where you sit on the top of the mountain and all the information flows up to you, you can act however you want as long as you're winning. That's easy to do. But that's just not how organizations are run. You're going to have to interact with more people than you. you did previously. And if your interactions with those people are going to be dismissive and sour

and all of the things that I think people probably projected they would be, I get the hesitance about trying to enter into a partnership like this. Yeah. So there was a coach in the NFL who doesn't know Bill well, but he admires him a lot. And the other day, he called another team. and he was like, you know, why, you know, because he knew that obviously news had broken that Bill was going to North Carolina. And he was talking to this other team. And he's like, would you guys hire this guy? Like, I can't believe he's not hired. This is ridiculous.

And the GM on the other line was like, well, you know, the last couple years in New England, you know, if you don't want to hire Bill, there's ample material out there that's perfectly reasonable. But what are you trading? You know, and this is something I've never written about, but I was told, I think it was a year ago, there was an owner's only meeting where the league showed some data to the owners of how much money they are paying coaches that are unemployed. So the point was like, you guys are paying these coaches

a ton of money and you're firing them fast. And, you know, this is how much money all of you owe these collective coaches to not coach. Like, can we do better here? And, you know, half of the owners are like, the answer is to not pay coaches as much. And the other half are like, thank God these guys keep, you know, cycling through this turnover because, you know, like,

that helps us win. Like, you know, I'm sure that like for all those years in New England, And when Kraft and Belichick were just at the top, they loved all the turnover that the dolphins and the Jads were having because they're like, this makes it easier for us. And so if you watch the football life on Belichick, it came out in 2011 or something around that time, it was during the 2009 season.

And that was a tough season for the Patriots. And if you watched how they were after losses, I mean, those losses took on an. atmospheric level. I mean, it was it was painful. You felt it as a viewer. And I do think that yeah, Bill's not changing. I mean, he adapts, but he's not going to fundamentally change who he is, and that's who he is. And Robert Kraft is also for two decades. Well, I'd say at least 13 years or so, been pretty clear with his colleagues about how impossible Belichick can be at times. But of course, he was making a lot of money and winning a lot of Super Bowls out of that too.

keep this discussion rolling with Seth. Before that, let's take one quick break. I have a lot of respect for the coaching acumen of Bill Belichick as recently as last season. The Patriots defense last season was a phenomenal unit. He is at the center of that. If you put Bill Belichick into a situation where the roster has talent, I have no doubt about what Bill Belichick can still do on the defensive side of the ball. I have questions about the offensive infrastructure and the biggest question that you have to have, Bill Belichick, the GM sabotage Bill Belichick, the coach for the last five to seven years of his tenure in New England. So if I were a team, I think it would be a reasonable request to say, listen, Bill, you guys did a

fantastic job as a coaching staff over the last few years. The personnel has been wanting. What if you worked with the personnel department we currently have in place that probably has a better recent track record than yours? I think that's a reasonable place to land. The problem is it just didn't seem like he had any interest in a situation or a partnership like that. And if he doesn't, then what are you supposed to do? Well, again, I think is it the right one? Like, I don't know if he had zero interest, but is it the right one? Does he respect the guy making the

picks? And does he respect their philosophy? He doesn't seem to respect a lot of people. Well, when you win as many Super Bowls as they did over that period, like, that's the ethos that takes place. And, you know, I think there's a, you're right. And there's no, like, I think that like, that's the issue. I think at the end of the day, I really do believe that, like, there's a flip side to that, though. What if you're an owner and you say, like, I'm making this up just because they're going to have an opening and they're your team. So what if McCasky and Kevin Warren say to Ryan Poles, we're going to sign you to an eight-year contract, all right? You're here. We're going to bring in bill, we're going to do things his way. Obviously, he has to respect your job, but we're going to

learn as much as we can. And we're going to pay you handsomely to learn as much as you can for this person for two years. Let him get the record. We move on. And then you take the best pieces of this philosophy that has dominated football for 20 years and try to apply it going forward. Like, I guess maybe we shouldn't be surprised that an owner would not do something like that. But like, to me, I thought that was a really interesting kind of play that is a way you can kind of have your cake and eat it too with Belichick. I think that there are creative solutions to some of this, but I think the creative solutions require a level of flexibility that I'm not sure applies to how he wants to approach the job. Here's the perfect example that I would throw out there. Andy Reid going from Philadelphia to Kansas City, I think you could make a really strong argument that some of the nuances and the differences in

Andy's job in KC versus what it was at the end in Philadelphia is part of the driving force for why the chiefs have had this level of success. Him deciding that he didn't need full personnel control anymore. Him being willing to be a little bit more collaborative with a John Dorsey, a Brett Vish, whoever is in that role. And the other side of it is him saying, I don't need to run so many other things that I no longer run the offense anymore. I want to be the person who does the installs.

I want to be the person at the center of all of this. I think those two decisions and him stepping back from something. things and relinquishing a little bit of control is one of the reasons that he has had such undeniable success in stop number two. If you're not willing to do a little bit of self-reflection and think, what small changes can I make where I can still be myself and do the job I want to but appease other people in the process and potentially set myself up better for success, then I think that that's where the mistakes potentially get made.

And I think Andy is, to me, is a very good example of how this can go correctly. It is, but two things. Number one, well, Bill was willing to do that. Like he was willing to do it with the Falcons. It was them that decided that they didn't want him. That's fair. Maybe they didn't believe in. Yeah.

Maybe they thought, look, this guy is so intimidating that if you hire him, you got to let, you got to do it his way. You know, I mean, I think if the Falcons, I'm sorry, if the Eagles had decided to move on from Nick Suriani, that would have been a great spot for him. Because not only, you know, he's friends with Howie Roseman, it would have been the ultimate football guy cred for Howie Roseman. You know, I think that like he could have worked within the structures regardless of who ultimately has final say.

But I do think that Andy Reid, look, the chiefs are a coach-centric organization. The 49ers are a coach-centric organization. The Seahawks under Pete Carroll, that was about as close and a good of a working relationship you can have. But it was technically still, it was Pete's final call on all this stuff. And so there's there's something that's inherent in in that type of matrix that goes beyond, you know, this guy just wants to run everything. It's that it eliminates the appeals court internally. And I think that like, you know, if, if, if Russell Wilson had a problem with Nathaniel Hackett, the first

here in Denver, I'm making this up, but he could just go to George Payton and complain about Hackett. Sean Payton is running everything in Denver now. So if Russell Wilson has a problem, there's one place to take it. And, you know, the problem gets solved and there's not all of these kind of back channel things in ways that teams can get fractured. And so I think that like, that was the system that Belichick was raised in. It was based on the Bill Walsh system, the Bill Parcell system. And it was a coach-centric system. to give them ultimate leverage in a lot of ways and to eliminate a lot of these distractions. And I think like when you've just been raised in that religion for so long, you inherently believe

that it's the best way to work, even if you're open to taking advice from other people as long as you respect them. I think the coach-centric model, I don't have any issues with that. I actually think that there are a lot of benefits to that for the exact reasons that you are saying. It's much easier for the personnel side to talk to the coaching staff when the coaches essentially, in charge of the personnel department. But beyond the personnel choices, to me, like, and we don't have to dig all the way into this, but how insular the coaching staff decisions have felt is another part of this for me.

Like, one of the reasons that Sean Peyton is having a lot of success in Denver is that Vance Joseph is a very good defensive coordinator. Vance Joseph happened to be there when he was there. So I think being willing to go outside of yourself and be a little bit more creative, flexible, open-minded with that sort of stuff, that has benefited other coaches in a way that I still don't think we have much evidence that Bill Belichick would be willing to do that in a way that could benefit him. Yeah. And it's interesting because I do think that a year ago, another question that teams had about him was like, look, no matter what you say, you bring him in, you got to kind of run things his way. Like you hire Bill, you're hiring it all. And if you only have him until he breaks the record, which is it, I think it was important to him, but it wasn't the thing. It wasn't.

the reason why he got out of bed each morning. I think he does it for much more altruistic reasons. But, you know, he doesn't have the best record of developing coaches. And you're also getting all of his guys who have been, you know, roundly criticized elsewhere. You know, you'd probably get Josh McDaniels. You'd probably get Joe Judge, Jack Easterby, Matt Patricia. You know, you're probably getting a group of these guys that have had issues beyond the New England and Belichick structure. So, you're blowing up your building for two years and then what you either hire one of these guys that hasn't done well on their own or or as well and then you know continuing the philosophy or you're hiring outside and blowing it up again so i think that that was part of the calculus for

sure it makes total sense and i think if i were an owner and i were in that position again how insular that entire process entire group of people had gotten that would give me pause so we there's a lot more stuff we can dig into here. I don't want to take up that much more of your time. I think the last thing I'll ask you is that you wrote in your piece, you know, there was something that appeal to life on campus for Belichick as part of the reason he made this decision. And the question I had for you is outside of autonomy, what are those elements to this job that you do that you think were appealing for him and ultimately some of the reasons that he took it? One of the things Belichick has always loved, first of all, he grew up on campuses. You know, his dad was a college.

coach and college scout. So he grew up in that atmosphere. He's always liked it. And there's something about those years, those formative years, I think that he has always looked back on in himself as some of the times in his life that he really kind of enjoyed the most, the purity of it, whatever it might be. In 2006, I saw him give a lecture at Southern Connecticut State. He had received like an award. And it was me and like 400 college students in this auditorium and Bear's Nigerian, of course, his longtime assistant. And I was thinking like, oh my God, like this could be an epic disaster. It's going to be a two-hour press conference. And he got on stage and he was so loose and he was so, you know, happy to be in that atmosphere and eager to talk to kids

who had nothing to do with football about life and careers. And he would always say that one of the proudest moments in his life is when he graduated from college at Wesleyan, he went, he had an opportunity to go into finance and he picked the Baltimore Colts instead for $24 a week doing whatever it is that they asked. And he loved that time. And I think that like he knows, he's talked about, you know, we want to build a pro program on a college campus and prepare the, you know, make it a pipeline to the NFL. He knows that the vast majority of those players in North Carolina are not going to be NFL players.

But I think that like the idea of trying to instill certain virtues in them through the game that they can carry on and seeing his legacy, which has really been limited to football, go beyond that is something that I think he would find really appealing. I think he does, the idea of it is something that's really appealing to him. Bill Belichick, North Carolina football head coach is something that is going to take a lot of getting used to here over the next six months or so. Seth Wickersham, sincerely appreciate the time, sir. I felt like you needed to be part of this discussion if we were going to have it. So thank you very much.

I know you've been doing the rounds here. No problem, man. I appreciate it. Thank you. Talk to you soon. All right. Before we get to our conversation with David Ubbin about the college perspective on this, let's take one more quick break.

Joining us now is the host of the Intel Saturday podcast, one of our wonderful college football writers here at The Athletic and someone I went to college with, and we have not done this since we worked at the same company. So very happy to have you. It's David Ubin. How are you doing, man? I'm pretty good. We're going to start with a soft 20 minutes on Blank Gabbard, right?

The fact, I realize now that, so Seth Wicker-Shame is on the, the first portion of this show and that it's you. This might be the first all-Mazoo journalism show that we've done. The fact that I've had this show for almost five years and it's the first time that we've done this, I deserve a medal for the restraint in not pouring this over people and making it as Missou-centric as possible all the time. We'll try. Listen, not everybody has a proper appreciation of the Sean Witherspoons and Alden Smiths

of the world. So, hey. The fact that we went to the University of Missouri during the four. or best years of their football program in its history. I think we deserve a lot of credit for that. And I haven't gotten my letter in the mail from Gary Pinkle and the athletic department staff. Well, you know, I just feel honored to be doing a podcast with the foremost authority on De Niro Alexander's knee ligaments.

So what can I say? I got the amount of time I spent learning about what was wrong with his knee and all the things that went into that. De Niro Alexander, a wonderful man, a wonderful talent. And one of the true what-if stories, I think, in college football and the NFL. from the last 10 years or so. So the fact that I had it up front row seat to that was enjoyable, but also very depressing. Nees, they're not great.

I feel like we could have, we could, we could, we could, we could, we could, we're in 2024. Let's, let's have some better knees. How about that? I would 100% agree with that. All right, let's take into what we're here to talk about. We talk with Seth about the NFL-centric view of the Belichick story. And that's one that I can understand, right?

I can talk about Bill Belichick as a football. coach and his approach and just what it's felt like in New England over the last few years. But I've been open about this. College football, as it currently exists, is a black box to me in a way it probably shouldn't. If I was better at and more thorough at my job, I would know more about the inner workings of college football in its current state. Unfortunately, I'm not very good at my job. So we need to talk to people like you to give us that perspective.

Let's just start at the simplest place we possibly could. When you first heard the rumor that Bill Belichick was in talks to be the head coach at the University of North Carolina. What was your response? I think the first thing was like, well, why is North Carolina so intent on making people think the job is better than it is? It's already a pretty good job. Because when you talk about coaching searches, and especially the way that North Carolina's went, there's a lot of cooks in the kitchen, and there's a lot of perception battles that are constantly fought. No coaching search wants to go badly because, as anyone knows, no coach has ever turned down a job offer. Every coaching search from the start of college

trouble history until now has only offered the job to one candidate, and he immediately accepted enthusiastically. So, you know, nobody ever wants to have the perception that people turn them down. And so a lot of that is like puffing up this job. Like, hey, Bill Belichick took an interview. And it's like how serious is the interest and how real is this? And turns out pretty real. So, you know, I think in retrospect, a lot more of it makes sense with the blackballing is too strong a word, but it didn't seem like he was going to get an NFL job and he seemed to understand that. And so with that said, embracing college football, which is more professional than ever before, and at a place that he does have some history with, it makes a lot more sense in retrospect than it did

the moment. I want to sit in the quality of the North Carolina job for a second because, again, that's something that's way off my radar. So when you say it's a good job and when you say there are a lot of cooks in the kitchen and how they're trying to hire somebody for it, just kind of describe to me the environment around North Carolina football and what sort of situation he's stepping into. Well, ultimately, this coaching search was not the cleanest that you've ever heard, a lot of information getting out. And some of that's board of trustees. Sometimes as people close the AD, you know, saying more than they should, agents working for their clients and all those things, and it can get messy in a hurry. This was a little messy for sure. I think to get to the

finish line, maybe a somewhat polarizing higher. But North Carolina at the end of the day has really good playoff access because they're in the ACC, where you have SMU in their first year in the league, gets the championship, goes undefeated in conference play, and is going to be competing in the playoffs. this year. You can, there's not a team in the ACC that if you told me, oh, they got on a run and won the league or got to the playoff that you couldn't believe. The ACC is pretty wide open.

And they have good institutional support. And they're at attractive place. And ultimately, as college football continues to coalesce into two leagues that matter and everyone else, you know, there's a lot of hubbub about Clemson and Florida State. And that, uh, those two programs. possibly being in the SEC, possibly being in the Big Ten moving forward. But he talked to people that would know, and North Carolina is a lot more attractive to these leagues. And if you look at the 20-year future of the sport, North Carolina is sitting in a really good position and it doesn't hurt.

Robert, I don't think a lot of people knows this. Are you aware that the SEC networks, offices, are in a state in which they do not have a team? Their offices are located in Charlotte, North Carolina, as if the Big 12 having 16. teams or whatever and the Big Ten having 18 didn't make enough sense. The SEC network being located in North Carolina where the SEC footprint does not currently extend doesn't make a lot of sense. Granted, it's close to South Carolina, but still. And so for a lot of reasons, North Carolina makes a lot of sense in the future of this sport.

The two quick questionnaires you could give me that would be most embarrassing, the grade I would get on them, given my position. professionally. One is name the kickers and punters in the NFL. I would do a horrifying job at that, considering what my job is. Number two would probably be, tell me which conference this school is currently in. I can't even describe to you how poorly I would do on that test. That's hard for people in the college football world, especially when you get to like the lower leagues where everybody's moving around constantly. I mean, we're in the middle of the season, and I'm looking at the standings, and I'm like, oh, yeah, I forgot so-and-so-up.

Like the Big Ten, I still have to catch myself and remember that Maryland is not in the ACC, and they've been in the Big Ten for like a while. Yeah, even I know that one. That one I can get. It's the West Coast teams. The fact that SMU is in the ACCC, that just explodes my brain. Like, I cannot even comprehend that. So I feel like, I don't know if the NFL folks would recognize this, but SMU being in the

ACC is one of the funniest things that's ever happened because, The whole thing with conference movement is that it is spurred by television money. And SMU is not collecting any television money in the ACC for its first seven years of membership. And they got all of their rich oil people together who wrote a check for like $200 million that got SMU into the ACC. And they said, we're going to make up for that television revenue, but we just want a seat at the table. We're going to pay for our own seat at the table. And that's what SMU did. And then in their first year in the ACCC, they didn't live.

lose a game in conference play in the regular season. So not bad timing. I think a lot of people would look at the NFL as like the quintessentially American sport or the quintessentially American organization just because of its ubiquity, its arrogance, the unending desire for more money and just the greed that kind of hangs over the league. But to me, college football is way more American than the NFL because it's driven by all these shadowy figures with all of this money that pull strings in ways that, none of us really properly understand. And to me, that feels more American than whatever the setup is in the NFL, despite the greed

that constantly drives it, if that makes sense. Well, I like it because, so, like, the AD gets to announce the hire. He gets his name in the press release, and he is involved in the coaching search. But no AD makes a hire that the money people don't sign off on. And the money people love to have good ideas. And the money people sometimes, the ideas that they think are good are actually quite bad ideas. So you get some hilarious instead of one. Yes, you get some hilarious outcomes sometimes.

Like Bobby Petrino, one of the most famously fired coaches in history, coming back to Arkansas to be an offensive coordinator and be an assistant coach. It's quite a thing. Like there have been so many of this. And this year we're seeing a lot of people chasing that former glory. Rich Rodriguez going from Jacksonville State back to West Virginia after 15 years, basically saying, I shouldn't have gone in Michigan, my bad. Let's hit this back.

Scott Frost going to his alma. failing very miserably at Nebraska. Now he's going to be back at UCF. We just got done with Mack Brown going to UNC to chase one of the best runs that they've had in their football program. Had some success there. So there is this idea that people always want to capture

the thing that made them the most happy, the time in their football program that they enjoyed the most. And, you know, sometimes people are in denial about people changing. And a lot of that goes back to what you said, these shadowy figures, the boosters, that like to keep a low profile, but have a ton of influence that they've paid for in these programs.

And that, I feel like, is what the NFL is missing because you can't really pay for influence in the NFL, but you can in college, and people love to do it. Let's talk about just the initial conversations around Belichick's desires, the 400-page manifesto, the fact that he wanted Steve to be the coach in waiting, untangle some of the truth and fiction from what that process looked like,

and what the conversation and dialogue between Belichick and North Carolina actually was based on how you understand it. Well, I think he says the manifesto doesn't exist, the 400-page Bible. We'll see. There was probably something, there's probably a kernel of truth there that maybe in the game of telephone got exaggerated over time. There probably was a large plan. Maybe it was 387 pages instead of 400.

I don't know. And maybe it wasn't handed over, but maybe it was referenced in a meeting. And then, you know, there's, like I said, there's probably a kernel of truth. That didn't come from nowhere. But ultimately, what this is, and I think the comparisons to Deon Sanders at Colorado, are inexact and poor in a lot of ways. Interesting, okay. But the biggest one to me is that he wants total control,

and North Carolina is in a spot where they want to give him total control, and that's what he's going to have. He is going to have the influence over every part of that football program in a way that a lot of coaches don't. Like Nick Saban earned that. Dabo Swinney kind of earned that. Kirby's smart. I'm not even sure he has the amount of control over his program and all the little parts

that Bill Belichick and Dion Sanders will have. What does that those guys have that other guys don't and the things that Dion doesn't have? We'll see what that looks like for Bill Belichick. I think he's going to have carte blanche to do whatever he wants to do in terms of what is my budget for recruiting. What am I being asked to do? Are people over my head? Dionne Sanders doesn't do in-home recruiting.

He doesn't do off-campus recruiting visits. There's not another coach in the country that could get away with that without the AD kicking their door and it being like, get out of your office, go on the road and recruit. But Theon doesn't do that. Now you could say why. Some would say, oh, well, he wants to get people on campus, get them to a place they haven't been before to have access to him.

And once he gets them there, he can talk to them into keeping them there. Others would say, hey, Robert, do you want to leave your office and go fly to Mississippi or whatever and go hang out in like a teenager's home because it's not the best part of the job. I truly don't know what I would say to a teenager right now, so absolutely not. I have no interest in that.

Yes, and so there's all these things. So he can do things his way. Dion, for instance, has his own marketing company that handles all of the media obligations. The school is pretty secondary. I've been to Boulder, what, seven or eight times since Deon's been out there. They operate in a way that nobody else operates.

and he can kind of do what he wants with his media access, and I think there's a part of that with Belichick that's probably attractive. He's not going to have his AD Bubba Cunningham telling him what to do in the way that a lot of coaches do. They need him more than he needs them. And whether or not that's actually true, the perception is that it's true, and North Carolina is going to give up a lot of that control

to let him do whatever he wants to do. This idea of college football being more professionalized. I think that's been the one sentence, sales pitch for why this could potentially work. I want to talk about the nuances of that. How much of that aligns with the way that the NFL actually works is the idea that, well, now we have money and a general manager, so it's the same. That seems a little bit simplistic for somebody, even from the outside looking in. So let's talk about some of the key differences and why that mindset doesn't necessarily apply for somebody like Belichick to success

at college football. I think from the Belichick perspective, it's more about, so like recruiting, Robert, I don't want to talk to teenagers on the phone for five hours a day. It sounds like the worst thing in the world. Can they even talk on the phone?

I was going to say, the phone conversations, I can't believe those are happening. Yeah, I don't want to do all that. But for a long time, college football has been a relational building. You win in recruiting by building those relationships

and establishing that trust. In some ways that is true now, can't just be a total stranger. But if you have a well-funded an IL collective and you have money, some of that stuff goes away and that, that, you know, coaches like to say transformational or relational, it's a lot more transactional than it is. A kid can love your school and he can love your coaching staff. But if he's making $80,000 and the collective at some other school says, hey, here's 350,

guess what? That love only goes so far and he might not be making NFL money. And you can't turn that down. That's money that you're not going to get. and you can walk out of college with seven figures in your bank account, and maybe you don't have an NFL future, but that practice squad check is not what you're going to be living on, and it doesn't really matter. You can set yourself up in a lot of ways, and that is very meaningful to a lot of kids.

And so, you know, I think that's a big part of it. Now, where it gets a little sticky, and this, I think, will change in the long-term future of the college game, but not in the short-term future, is the perpetual free agency. anyone can transfer you got to re-recruit your roster. So there's an element that that might undercut him in that, hey, I'm just guessing, I don't imagine North Carolina's going to be the most fun program to be a part of in the future.

And so, like, is, like, in the NIL era, Bama used to pay their players less, not because they, like, wanted to, but because they could. Because people would say, I'm going to go play for Nick Sabin, and whatever I sacrifice, the $600,000, the $200,000,

whatever I'm sacrificing in NIL, money. I'm going to make on the back end because he's going to make me an NFL player. How is there a Belichick discount at UNC that says, hey, I'm miserable. This sucks, but I'm playing for Bill Belichick. He wants me in his program. I'm being prepared for the NFL. And maybe I'm not the happiest, and maybe I'm not the best pay, but I'm setting myself up for the future. What does that look like? You have to have some proof of concept. And I think that's the question that a lot of people are tackling is like, it's not 2006 anymore. And And you look at Bill Belichick and how he handled the drafts and talent evaluation,

you're going to have to have some success. And this NFL factory that you're building in Chapel Hill, it sounds going on paper, and it might be the case, but you're going to have to have a little bit of proof moving forward because the way that it looked at the end, the talent evaluation maybe was not what it was in the heyday of the Patriots dynasty, which is why he didn't have an NFL job, quite frankly. Nobody wanted to give him that control. and the GM aspect of his job that he wanted to do. I think a lot of people don't think he's very good at it.

There's a lot of stuff I want to hit that in what you just said. The first thing is this transactional versus relational thing. I can't remember who I was reading, whether it was Chris Vanini or somebody else in the athletic, talking to some. Maybe it was Seth's piece, actually. There was somebody he quoted and said, college is a transactional business, not a relationship business. That's why Belichick can succeed.

I understand that on the player acquisition side of it, where it's just a dollars and cents thing. But you still have to interact with the players. Like that part of it does seem relational to an extent. And I think that his ability to connect with 18-year-old kids and kind of get them on the same page, I don't know. I have questions about that. I guess we've seen guys who are these hard-ass types succeed in college football, whether it's Nick Sabin, whether it's Jim Harbaugh, Michigan. So maybe I'm overrating how important that is.

But just that idea of transactional versus relational, I think there are layers to that. And I think there are different applications of that thinking, some of which I don't have doubts about. some of which I do. The biggest thing I would say to that is you can delegate that. You can build your staff up with guys that the kids want to be around. And like, I'm sure Bibelichick does not. The only thing, I trust Billichick to adjust enough to know how to teach complex concepts to 18-year-old kids. How can they remember them?

Can they execute them on game day? He's not dealing with Tom Brady. He's not dealing with these guys that are like really cerebral players. Like you're, some of that isn't scouting and figuring out. the kind of guys that you want that have really football high football IQs. The things that Travis Hunter understands and can do that made him a Heisen winner,

not a lot of guys are going to be able to do that. Not a lot of guys are going to do that. So when this happens, you do this. That sounds easy on paper. When everything's live, can you actually make those decisions when the crowd is on top of you and you're in a big moment? That's a different thing.

These are not professionals in that same way. But on the player relational part of it, I think you, like you'll hear a lot of these CEO coaches, you know, Mike Gundy, Brian Kelly jumps out, they're not spending a lot of time around their roster. They might not be on a first name basis with a lot of their roster, but they have staffs

and they delegate that too. And that's where you can build some of those relationships. Maybe it's not you specifically, but you hire staffers that that's kind of their job is whatever relational piece there has to be on top of the money, which is I think the most important thing,

that they can help sort of fill in some of those gaps. So that makes sense to me. But Brian Kelly and Mike Gundy are creatures of the college football world. I think they have a better sense for how to build those staffs than somebody like Bill Belichick might as he comes in as an outsider to this place. So I guess that's my question or one of my next questions. How much fate do you have in him building the right staff, whether it's the relational aspects of it and delegating that sort of stuff? And the other question that I have in college football might not matter as much. The decisions that he has made on the offensive side of the ball for the past, since Josh McDaniels left essentially, were abhorrent.

it was one of the biggest reasons that those teams were struggling to succeed. So on top of the delegation and the relationship building aspects of the staff, how much fate do we have in his ability to build an offensive staff with the right people for the college game? That didn't sound to me like a ringing endorsement

of Matt Patricia O.C., Robert. That sounds like you have some questions about that. Is that what's happening? Do we know, do we have any sense? He hasn't said a lot. He hasn't said a lot. All right. Mike Lombardi's coming in. I think it's very clear that Steve Belichick

will be their D.C. and maybe coach in waiting if they get that far, getting that. Listen, the history of college football has not been kind to the coach and waiting practice. More often than not, it has blown up and that guy is waiting a long time to become the coach. It sounds like to me...

Conan Jay Leno's situation more often than not. Yes. It sounds to me a lot like getting the band back together with a lot of guys who don't know a lot about the college game. Now, the question is that I can't answer that transfers and runs. recruits and guys on the first couple teams that they have will have to answer is, do you buy into it? I think there's some guys who will buy into like, hey, everything Joe Judge is telling me,

I'm going to ignore everything that happened with the Giants. He's got the Bill Belichick seal of approval. I'm in on this. Like, okay, like, maybe, and maybe they work, and maybe you got to win some games, and I don't know. But that part of it is you're going to have to have a lot of guys that buy into what you are selling. and I think they'll be, if you get the band back together, full of guys who have not had the same success that Bill Belichick has had,

there'll be a lot of reasons to not buy into it. They're going to face a lot of negative recruiting, I think, when guys are saying, well, I want to go play for Bill Belichick, and coaches will say, like, well, how much you're going to be playing for Bill Belichick, you're going to be playing a lot more for Matt Patricia or whoever, you know, whichever guy.

Because it seems like he has this brain trust of guys that he wants to bring in with him, and you look at them, college football is a very different game, schematically, culturally on the day-to-day. Don't forget the 20-hours thing. That's a real thing, too.

You can only have access to your guys for 20 hours. You can't trap them in the facility all day. That's what people build, you know, the barbershops and water slides and waterfalls and all that stuff in the facilities. It's to get guys to voluntarily stay in the facility, but you only have access to them for 20 hours a week unless you want to, you know, broach the NCAA rule book,

which Jim Harba has some experience with. But Belichick has never broken any rule. so that would shock me. No, no, no, no. Yeah, that'll be fine. It'll be fine. And I'm sure he has a deep understanding of the NCAA rulebook and its intricacies. So, you know, there'll be some reasons

to not buy in, but will it work? Will people believe? There'll be something that will. And will their faith be rewarded? It's sort of the big question of the UNC experiment here. And I do think, you know, Dion used to always get offended when people would call it an experiment. He's like, we've done this before.

We've done this at different places. And it's like, well, you haven't done it. at this level. It's still kind of an experiment. This is definitely an experiment because, you know, it is going all in on this model and throwing away a lot of the things that made college football, college football, and a lot of the things that made teams really, really good. And I have a lot of questions about it, but it's going to be fascinating for sure, and people will be paying attention. This idea of trying to buy into the Belichick Pixie Dusty, he'll turn me into an NFL player, what have the early returns on that bin just with like current recruiting classes? I'm sure

that we've had high-level recruits that have had to respond to this in some way. way. What has that looked like over the last couple weeks? Well, he kept his quarterback commit. They got a four-star, like top-150 recruit Bryce Baker. He's sticking around. He was committed. Anytime there's a changeover, it gets a little awkward. Sometimes the staff doesn't want them. Sometimes they don't love the new staff. Sometimes they don't give the new staff a chance. It seemed like it worked on Bryce Baker. I wonder if he got a face time from a Tommy Brady sort of situation. You know, that worked on Bryce Underwood at Michigan. They're $10 million dollar

quarterback that they're bringing into to Ann Arbor. So, you know, who was that FaceTime? Was it Brady? Yeah, was Brady. Brady, that was the Michigan man Brady FaceTiming. Brady FaceTiming quarterbacks is like low-key, a huge storyline in college football this year. Do you think he gets a kickback on the FaceTime? He's looking,

he's somebody that's trying to make some money right now. He just sold $9 million worth of watches. I think that he's trying to get some net worth back. So do you think he's getting like, what's Brady getting per pop on FaceTime and quarterbacks, do you think? Well, the question is if it's a real FaceTime or if he just cameoed and it's like the, you know, like the tape that you put when you're

trying to sneak out of the house. There are different tiers to the Brady FaceTime. You can get the pre-packaged one or you can get one personalized. You just have to decide where you want to be shopping. Insert quarterback platitude here. I loved how you kept your platform against Maryland. I loved your arm angle was very vulnerable against whoever, you know, Minnesota or whatever. I think we might see some of that.

But I think that, that, I think honestly, like, that probably has an influence. Like, hey, here's Tom Brady staring you in the face on FaceTime saying, no, your coach is a genius, he's the best, all this stuff, whatever. I don't know. You know, I don't know how much that happened or how many people are endorsing him or whatever. But I could see how it would be, like, surreal if you're a 17-year-old kid. You're like, this is the best coach, you know, in the history of football that, like, wants me on his team, you know, how do you say no to that? and then your perception, is it the same as reality? Is it different than reality?

I don't really know. This is going to be really interesting. I think there's real upside to this. I think it's definitely risky, but it's definitely interesting. Maybe not in the same way that Deion is because Deion is, you know, kindly put a more compelling personality than Mr. Bill Belichick, at least his public persona. I have enjoyed him on the Manning cast.

I enjoy him talking about football and his perceptions of the game. But I don't think we're going to get. the same media circus that we got because Dion courts it and builds it. And Belichick, I think, would rather just try to win some football games, basically. I have two more questions for you. The first one, I think you've been pulling at this a little bit. What is the biggest question you have about this that we have not touched on or I wouldn't even think to ask?

Nothing jumps out. I think just, I wonder how much of the energy level. Is there? You're still 72. Yeah. And, you know, this is not. an easy gig. And I think on top of that, how much interest does he have in doing the things that suck about being a college football head coach? And can you succeed without doing them? I don't know.

I always tell people like, anytime you talk to a first year head coach, somehow a lot of them still don't realize how little of their time is spent coaching football. There's the recruiting aspect of it, which is obviously very important. This is new to him, the fundraising aspect, which is in his contract that he has to go to these events and, you know, drink a cocktail and, you know, pat people on the back and, like, you're, like,

being a college football head coach is a lot more akin to being a Fortune 500 CEO than being a football coach. And I think there's ADs who still don't realize that and make horrible hiring decisions. And then there's head coaches just get tired of it.

Like Chip Kelly leaving UCLA to go coach one of the best rosters in football at Ohio State. He did that because he didn't want to recruit. He didn't want to do all this other stuff that sucks. Chip Kelly's made enough money. Yes.

I just want to coach football. I like being with guys and teaching and scheming up ball plays. And like, that is so little of the job of being a head coach. And does he have interest in doing those things? And if he doesn't, is that a death knell for the program? Can you still succeed?

I think the answer might be yes. I don't know. We've just never really seen this before. And the guys who have not had interest in doing that, you know, I covered one here in Jeremy Pruitt, and I think he's a good example because the problem was he wanted to treat everybody like Sabin

and do all the things that Sabin did and didn't really care about fundraising, didn't really care about building relationships on campus. I want to recruit and I want to coach Ball. And then when his chips were down, he had no defenders on campus. And then he gets filled by an internal investigation that would not have happened if he was nine and three.

And I think that that's the issue is that you do a lot of those things, you know, the Mac Brown, the Mike Gundy's of the world, these guys that are really good local politicians, because when your chips are down, you want people to have your back, and you keep your job, that's how you keep your job

for a long time. Like, you're a politician, you're a fundraiser, you're a surrogate father, you are like a male authority figure, you delegate, you're a boss, and then like, eighth on that list is you're a football coach, and I, we'll see if he wants to do some of those other things. And the amount of buddy Garrity types that are not going to be in Bell Belichick's life is just imagining those interactions is just endlessly pleasing to me.

It's fantastic. It's fantastic. I'll put you on the spot here. It's a horrible question to ask you, but I'm going to ask you anyway. Do you think this works? Well, I think the question is what does that mean works? And this is where, not to belabor the Dion point, but it's the other than Dion, it's the most unorthodox higher that we've seen in major college football. Dion, yes, you've made so much money. And then on top of that, you get to a bowl game. They're on the doorstep of the playoff this year. North Carolina is not in as bad as shape. And so if you make a ton of money,

if you raise UNC's profile, you don't win games. Is that a win? I mean, maybe. I mean, it depends. Right now, with college football where it is and RevShare coming to the sport, you've got $20 million that you've got to come up with out of thin air in your budget next year.

you know, having a guy that's going to raise the Q score of a university can help. And so, you know, I think if he's there for the full, yeah, at least three years, maybe five years, as the contract says, but three is only guaranteed. His buyout is hilariously low, like, starting in June. Like, so, like, if he sticks around for three years, I would guess, I think they probably make a playoff. Now, it's not that hard to make the playoff in the ACC. I don't think he's going to be, you know, I think this idea from NFL folks, that like, well, all these college coaches are just amateurs.

We saw Nick Saban come up to the dolphins and like suck. And it's like, it's because they're just not the same sport. They're two completely different ecosystems that require completely different skill sets. And there's a reason why a lot of NFL coaches have come down and been terrible college coaches. And a lot of college coaches have gone up and been terrible pro coaches. It's different skill sets. So this idea that he's going to walk down and just like dominate people. I think on game day, game management, I think he's going to outcoach a lot of people.

but there are other things to the job building culture, building a roster that I think there's some fair questions about that have a real impact on the field. So I think yes, I think that I'll say this in the, we'll define how it works, whenever this ends, a year from now, five years from now, 35 years from now, he might be immortal, we don't know. I think at the end of it, will UNC say we regretted doing that? I will say probably not. I'll say 80% no.

Yeah, that was going to be my next question. In your mind, however we define success, this is a worthwhile bet for the University of North Carolina. I think so. There's enough upside that I can see it. I can see it. And I don't think, like, I hate to keep going back to it, but Dion, there was potential that it was going to be a total disaster

because he could build the kinds of roster at Jackson State that were so much better than everyone else that he was ever going to play against. He was never going to be able to do that at Colorado. and the unorthodox recruiting that he does and roster building, was it going to work? There was some real potential that you were going to leave a smoking crater at Colorado.

We'll see what that looks like at the end. I don't see that same potential here with Bill Belichick. I think his methods would be unorthodox, and I think there's a chance that they're not very good. I don't think that there's going to be like a smoking crater on the back end of this. I don't think there's a real possibility for that. So I think they'll be okay,

and I think there's upside that maybe you're in the final four and maybe you win some games in the playoff. I think there's a chance that have. happens too. David Ebbin, sincerely appreciate the insight on this. It's a fascinating conversation and one that I'm very glad we got to have. Tell people where they can find until Saturday what your guys' release schedule is. Like, if they want a college football podcast in their lives and they're not currently listening, where can they find you guys? It's that time of year. I think Robert, I think we've talked to you into watching some college football this weekend. I might this

weekend. I actually like... The playoff. The playoff is here. The 12-team playoff. We've never seen it before. It has enhanced the regular season. It's made this sport a lot more fun. And we are talking about it four times a week on until Saturday, on Apple, Spotify, the athletic app, all of the podcast purveyors that you choose. We are there. We're also on YouTube, but until Saturday. We went to New York City, Robert, and quiz New Yorkers on their college football knowledge. They failed miserably. And if you, we also did a video, are you familiar with the Yale practice? I think you went to Yale practice once, didn't you, Robert?

I feel like I went there with you one time. No, at Texas A&M? Yes. No, I've never been there. I've never been to college station before. So for the NFL fans who are not aware of Yale practice, basically at midnight, the night before the game, any game, the bars clear out,

and they get 30 to 50,000 fans in the stadium to practice all of the very complicated cheers that A&M does that they call yells. And before the Texas game, myself and Chris Vinini, my podcast co-host, went to Yale Practice and took people inside what Yale practice is like. And it is an insane world. So you should check that out. Please go listen to it until Saturday.

I know you guys will not be disappointed. David, sincerely appreciate the times. They're always great to catch up with you. We'll do again very soon. Sounds good. Appreciate it. All right, guys. That's all we got for today.

Thank you so much to Seth and to David. I really enjoyed those discussions. I think they're the types of discussions we don't always have on this show. and so it was really good to dig into this from those two perspectives. I want to apologize again for this coming out a little bit later than we probably wanted it to come out. We're now like a week removed from the Belichick news, but because of the week that it's been, I sincerely appreciate your guys's flexibility, your patience, all of that. This is coming out on Thursday.

We will have our week 16 preview your guys's way on Friday. So it's a jam-packed week on the athletic football show, but really, really glad that we could bring all of this your guys's way. So we'll be back on Friday with me and Derek breaking down in week 16. Until then, appreciate you guys listening. We'll talk to you soon.