The Josh Innes Show - Will Bill Belichick Resurrect His Career In College?

Episode Date: December 12, 2024

The greatest NFL coach of all time is now coaching the UNC Tar Heels. This is such a bizarre situation. Imagine being the best to ever do it and you get passed over for every NFL gig. To a degree, I understand why he wants to do it. Why would you want to end your career as an NFL loser? On the other hand, what if he flops in college? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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And this is just the most bizarre universe that anybody could fathom living in. Like, I don't know that you'll see a scenario where someone who is the greatest to ever do it in their respective sports, someone who's got six Super Bowls, like eight total Super Bowl rings or championship rings for this example, I don't know that you will see a scenario like this where the GOAT is completely banished from the league in which he was the GOAT and is forced to go down to a next level or a lower level and then pretend like it's a level that he wants to

be at. It's bizarre. And obviously, he's not the first coach to go from the pros to college, college to pros like Bill Walsh. Did Bill Walsh end his coaching career at Stanford? I want to say he did. After he left the NFL, Bill Walsh went back down to college and I think was the coach at Stanford or somewhere on the West Coast. And you could argue at the time that Bill Walsh could have been considered the goat. He was among the goats. He was a Mount Rushmore level coach. So that's an example, but it's weird because we know more about the way the world works now. Like we have access to so much that we didn't have access to, you know, in the early 90s, late 80s with social media, 24 hour news.

Like we have access and we have all the rumors, all the innuendo. So it's different. Like we know so many stories or at least we think we know so much of the details about Belichick's last year or two

in New England. And we think we know all the details about Belichick's last year or two in New England. And we think we know all the details about Belichick not getting jobs last year, notably the Atlanta Falcons job, which every story that you read says that Bill thought he was getting the Falcons job and then may have been kind of railroaded by his former friend and owner, Robert Kraft, telling the folks in Atlanta, telling Arthur Blank that, hey, you may not want to mess with this guy. So it's a weird world. Like we're sitting here just weeks away from 2025 and we're talking about the greatest coach, the greatest, most successful NFL coach in history, certainly in the Super Bowl era. If you want to talk Lombardi and all that kind of stuff, feel free.

But the greatest coach in the history of the NFL, which is the most popular and most important sports league in the country, this guy cannot get a sniff of an NFL job. There were seven gigs open last year. There will be more gigs open this year. And somehow the guy that blazed the trail, the guy that won six Super Bowls, the guy that is the most successful of all time, people think the game has passed him by. And maybe it has. But it's just fascinating when you see that. Like, I'm not Bill Belichick, obviously, but like I had a fairly successful radio career. Again, not trying to call myself Belichick of,

of radio by any means, because I'm not, uh, I'm far more of a flash in the pan than Bill Belichick was, but like, I had a pretty good run and like, I can't get calls back from people either. So like when I hear stories like that and it's like oh by the way Bill Belichick uh the greatest coach ever like is getting passed over for jobs in favor of Raheem Morris and Bobby Canales and these guys that are getting these jobs at these other places that Belichick couldn't really even get a sniff of and it's like wow this is a strange, bizarre universe that we live in.

Now, maybe the reasons why they didn't hire him are fair. A lot of people don't want to hire a guy that's in his early 70s. It's believed that Belichick only wants to continue coaching in the NFL so he can become the winningest coach in the history of the NFL, and some think he'd only stay around for two years and then leave leave and teams don't want to go through another process like that again that's fair too and let's be fair once Brady left the Patriots it was a disaster in New England and it got worse and worse and worse and it ended terribly and it's now still going terribly thanks in large part to what was left there by Belichick

so again it ended very badly. It's not like they won a Super Bowl, he leaves and nobody wants to hire him. It's Brady leaves, Brady goes on to win a Super Bowl without you and your program, your franchise gets worse and worse and worse and worse. It's just wild that you think about that, that the GOAT is not going to college because he wants to coach

college. He can tell you that. And he can say that it's great. And dad was a college coach and I've always wanted to do it. And I'm not saying that there aren't parts of that that are true, that there aren't elements of that that can be true. But when I look at the idea that this guy is like, what, 15, 16 wins away, 13, 14, somewhere like that wins away from all-time GOAT status in terms of overall wins in the NFL. Guy's got six Super Bowl wins, eight total, nine total Super Bowl wins, whatever it is. I don't believe that this guy just decided, you know what? I want to give college a try. I want to go recruit kids. I want to go fight with kids who want to enter the portal. Like, no, there is a 0% possibility that this was the first choice or anything close to that.

This was, I either keep doing TV with Peyton Manning and, and, and, uh, keep doing interviews with, uh, with the McAfee show, or I get back out there and try to end my career on some sort of high note, which that I can understand. Nobody wants to end on the bottom. Nobody wants to be where Belichick was for 20 plus years, and really even longer than that because he was the hottest coordinator for a long time. Nobody wants to go and win six Super Bowls as a head coach, eight as a head coach and an assistant, and then have it end with you getting fired from the job at the very place that you helped turn into a dynasty because you suck.

Nobody wants to end it that way. So I'm guessing in the mind of Belichick is, you go, you build North Carolina into something, and then you ride off into the sunset and you can at least say, hey, I was successful on the way out. Part of that is why I still want to get back on the radio. Part of the reason why I want to get on the radio is I know I've had success.

I don't want the last thing people remember of me is, oh, he was in St. Louis and they dumped him. That's not the world I want to be in. I don't want to live that. That's not the life I want to have. And I think that's anybody that's a competitor. Nobody wants to end things at the lowest point. Now, the reality is most people are going to end things at their lowest point because most people don't make

the decision to get out on their own. The decision is made for them. Bill Belichick's decision to get out of the NFL was not made by Bill Belichick. It was made by Robert Kraft, and then it was made by the other 31 owners who decided they did not have interest in keeping Belichick or signing Belichick or hiring him. So he didn't really make this decision himself. So now we're off to North Carolina. We're off to do something we've never done before. Like, it's fascinating. I'm not saying it's not, but it's also kind of sad. Like this is not a, Oh wow. This is such a cool moment type of thing until he makes it that now,

if he goes there and they went 11 games and he's somehow the king of the portal and all that more power to him, but that's not what this looks like right now. Let me play a few commercials and we'll continue. All right. If you're ready to win some real cash during the basketball playoffs, you got to check out Pick 6 from DraftKings. When it comes to basketball payouts, DraftKings Pick 6 posterizes the competition, including prize picks. It's a very simple concept. Hit all your picks and score higher minimum payouts on pick six, plus

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We are your local Dignity Memorial provider. Find us at DignityMemorial.ca. The Dignity Memorial brand name is used to identify a network of licensed funeral cremation and cemetery providers owned and operated by affiliates of Service Corporation International. Yeah, it's so strange, too, because you look at the current era of college football, and college football feels more like pro football than it ever has because you've got the portal and you've got NIL. But keep in mind that the college equivalent of Bill Belichick is Nick Saban. Nick Saban and Belichick are tight. They know each other. They have known each other. Saban worked for Belichick. So like they have a relationship. I'd like to know what kind of conversations they had. Like, do you think he reached out and had like real deep conversations with Saban and is like, so Nick, why the hell did you get out of

this? You dominate this. And if Nick were telling you the truth, which he kind of has publicly anyway, is Saban doesn't want to have to fight with dudes in the portal. He doesn't want to have to beg dudes to play. He doesn't want to get work NIL deals. And he knows that it is virtually impossible to coach a lot of these guys now because they have more power than the coaches have. You know what happens if you don't play this young freshman that you signed a five-star? You signed a five-star kid to come in and play. If he doesn't play right away, you know what he's going to do? Portal. You know what I'm saying? Like, it's not like, look, you can argue whether it's good or bad or better or worse than it used to be. And that's totally fair. And that's a good debate to have. I think there are pros and cons of both of them.

But if you're in a situation where you're Nick Saban and you're used to being in control and you can sit a freshman for two years and he has no other choice, and then you could use him to your advantage later, when you don't have that anymore and you lose that power, I can see why Saban got right the hell out of this. Look, I'm an LSU fan. Watch what LSU deals with every year. Portal, portal. Like they just signed all these guys, five-star guys, everything, right? Apparently they signed the best cornerback in the country, a guy out of Florida, right? A high school dude out of Florida. That dude will probably be out of the program next year because he'll probably be unhappy or somebody will snoop around a little bit and give him more

money somewhere else in the NIL world. That's the kind of shit you have to deal with. And at least in the pros, there are contracts to deal with. There are no contracts and there's no collective bargaining in college. It is the wild, wild west. That's what you're dealing with right now if you are Saban and that's why he got the hell out of Dodge. Saban can still coach. Saban doesn't want to deal with the bullshit. He'd rather collect a check doing his commercials and doing game day because he doesn't want to deal with this bullshit. That's the issue. So if you're Belichick, Belichick just spent all of his life dealing with contracts and

GM shit, so he's used to it. But there's a big difference in the way the NFL does it versus what you're dealing with in college. These aren't really contracts in college. There is no collective bargaining. This is straight up. You can sign a kid. You think you got him on the dotted line and he's yours. You're like, wow, I put forth all this effort and all these resources and all this money to go out and recruit the number one quarterback. Like look at LSU as an example. They had Bryce Underwood. They're like, listen, we got him. Let's go. Then a week before he's got to sign on the dotted line, Michigan comes in with more money and he's

gone. Like that's the kind of shit you're going to have to deal with. There is no, hey, at least I've got this guy for three years. And if he leaves, there's a penalty, right? Or in the pros where you kind of basically control everything. That's not the case in college. You might think you have a guy and you've signed a five-star dude and he's locked and loaded and you think, shit, I got this quarterback for three years. Actually, you don't because he can leave anytime he wants and go anywhere he wants and play anytime he wants. And for that, I'm like, why does Belichick want to deal with this? Why would Belichick want to go deal with this in his early 70s? I get that part of it is you want to be a coach. Part of it is you are a coach. Part of it is you don't want to sit

there and be an analyst on TV. Part of it is you feel you got railroaded and blackballed by the NFL and you want to stick it up their ass. There's a lot of factors. And I understand those factors and I respect those factors. But big picture, why? In the same way I can understand why Nick Saban said, I'm out. I don't want to deal with this anymore. This is not the world I signed up for. This is a bad situation. Like Saban wanted to get out before Nick Saban lost the Nick Saban luster.

As of right now, there is no debating that the greatest college football coach who has ever walked the face of the earth is Nick Saban. And there is no situation like Belichick and Brady where one of them left and went on to have success. And then the other one was left in the lurch and failed. And then they end up looking like the lesser of the two. Nick Saban didn't have to worry about that. Actually things worked out spectacularly for Nick Saban. Although he lost in his last game, he ever coached, which most people that's going to be the case. But Nick Saban decides, I'm out. I don't want to do this shit anymore.

I'm not coaching here. I'm not taking any of the jobs. I'm having fun dicking around with Pat McAfee. I'm making tons of cash. I can go out on my boat and my lake now. Everything's fine. And then what happens after Saban leaves. They bring in Kalen DeBoer, and Kalen DeBoer was not a flop by any means, but relative to the expectations of Alabama, he is. He's 9-3. You know what? Come to

think of it, he was a flop in year one. Sorry, you inherited Nick Saban's team, you inherited Nick Saban's quarterback, a team that was in the playoff a year ago, and you went 9-3 and lost to Oklahoma and Vanderbilt. Yes, you flopped to the point now that this great powerhouse Alabama program sits around and cries about how they're not going to schedule difficult teams anymore. And they cry about how the committee was unfair to them. Like Alabama is now a cunty whiny program after Nick Saban left. So Nick Saban got the benefit of leaving, and now no one's going to ever have to wonder what it's like for Nick Saban to coach in the true NIL era because Nick Saban said, I'm out.

So you can all just assume that I'd still be great at it, but you'll never have to see me fail at it. And as much as I like Nick Saban and think he's great, I don't know that Nick Saban in his 70s is cut out to be out here dealing with this bullshit on a year in year out basis on a week in week out basis. He essentially admitted that by quitting. He was the smart one. Belichick and his ego is continuing to get in the way here. Belichick is now in a spot where you're never going to get that shot at the NFL again. And that,

and dude, I get it. It's got to fucking eat at you. It's got to eat your soul knowing that you're the most successful NFL coach in history. Yet here you are and Raheem Morris is getting the Atlanta job over you. Dude, like I'm on a much, much smaller scale than guys like Bill Belichick. But I sit here sometimes and I read the people who get jobs, like jobs that I'll reach out about and ask a question or two about whatever. And I'll see these people that get these jobs and I'll go, who get jobs, like jobs that I'll reach out about and ask a question or two about, whatever, and I'll see these people that get these jobs, and I'll go, that motherfucker's not even near

my fucking level, yet he's got that job, or she's got that job, or I'll listen to the radio and go, holy shit, this person's terrible, and I'm sitting here in my underwear podcasting every day, and I'll get pissed about it. So if a doof like me who's had nowhere near the success that Bill Belichick has had is sitting around stewing over shit like that. Imagine you're Bill Belichick known to have an ego known to be an asshole known to be surly. And you're sitting around thinking,

Oh, I got to lay up. Like when he got fired, I guarantee you, he thought every team in the NFL was going to be like, yep, I want Belichick. And as it turned out, not one of them did. And it's believed, it's widely believed, that the Falcons only gave him a second interview because Arthur Blank was trying to be courteous to him. Like, that's got to destroy you. Now, even as big of an ego as you might have and as arrogant as you may be,

imagine being Bill Belichick, the most successful coach in NFL history and there's job openings you got fired you're expecting everyone in the world to want to hire you and then they don't and they're not even interested not even really remotely interested and Raheem Morris is getting jobs and some of the other slap dicks that are getting jobs are getting jobs hell the Dallas Cowboys might rather keep Mike McCarthy than hire you. That was the other one that people thought would be the most likely spot. Like, that was kind of a last case scenario.

Like, I imagine that Belichick probably had Jerry Jones as, like, the last line of defense. It was like, all right, Jerry, no one else wants me. I'm coming in to coach the Cowboys. Let's go. This would lead me to believe that Jerry was even like, yeah, I don't think so, Bill. They'm going to pass on that bill. We're just going to stick with what we got here. And once the Cowboys thing was apparent that it wasn't going to happen, which I guess it won't, even if they fire McCarthy, which at this point, I don't think they're going to. But at that point, he's like, well, shit, I guess it's all

over. I'm just going to take my ball and go home, or in this case, go to Chapel Hill. And I don't see how this is going to be successful at all. I don't know that you change the spots on a leopard. Is that the, you can't give a leopard new spots or whatever the hell the saying is. I don't know that you do one thing the same way for 50 years of your life as a coach and then one day you're like, I'm going to go down to college and I'm going to go do some Brian Kelly videos where I do weird dances with recruits. Although I would really like to see situations where Bill Belichick is doing the Cupid shuffle in some kid in Alabama's living room, some four-star kid down in Alabama. Here's Bill Belichick doing the electric slide,

hoping he comes to Chapel Hill. That I would enjoy. That'd be a hoot. But everything about this just feels like it's going to be a colossal failure. And its ego plays a part, but to a degree, I get it. In his mind, he probably thinks he can go down there. He's going to leave the job to his kid, probably. He's going to go down there and try to be some super success. You don't want to go out a failure. No one wants to do that. Like Tom Brady didn't have to go out a failure because Tom Brady won a Super Bowl without Bill Belichick.

Bill Belichick is never going to win a Super Bowl without Tom Brady. So Belichick says, best case scenario is I put my band of merry misfits back together and we go to Chapel Hill and we see if we can fuck shit up in the college game. And I'm sure he's convinced himself that in the NIL world, it's more like the pro game. NIL world, all this. But it's really not. These dudes have to have zero commitment to you.

They can leave you in a second. So I just cannot see Belichick operating in this world, but we'll see. I saw that Brady and some of the other guys, maybe Gronk or Edelman, they were on TV and they were asked about whether or not they think Bill would be a coach in college. And they were just basically mocking the whole idea of it, saying that Belichick will be so dismissive. He'll be trying to recruit college kids. And I'll be like, well, I didn't want you anyway, so you can leave if you want. Like no one believes this is going to work. That means part of me wants me to think it's going to work. Like I'd like it to be successful. Like I'd like to see a scenario where like, where, where it's somehow he becomes the biggest shit ever. And

it's a great second, third act, but I just don't believe that's going to be the case. Anyway, we'll talk later.