Mark Blaudschun
By Mark Blaudschun
One of the more intriguing storylines of the upcoming 2025 college football season is happening at the University of North Carolina.
Bill Belichick is making his debut as a college football head coach--at the age of 73.
That's an unusual stat, even if the guy's name is Bill Smith.
But it's Bill Belichick, the National Football League icon who is in the GOAT diffusion of NFL coaches with all those Super Bowls and victories which had him chasing history, until he fell from grace with Patriot Nation and owner Robert Kraft a few years ago.
There's more.
A 24-year old girlfriend, Jordan Hudson, who is 17 years younger than Bill's daughter Debby, is basically managing Belichick's public--if not private-life for the last few years.
TMZ stuff, no?
Yeah, but that's not what I'm trying to figure out here.
True confession time.
I first met Belichick in 1979 when he was a just-turned 27-year-old defensive assistant, a coach on Ray Perkins' newly formed staff with the New York Giants and I was a newspaper reporter in New Jersey covering the Giants.
As part of media relations--ah, those were the days my friends--Perkins hosted a picnic-coaching seminar session at his house a few weeks before the start of training camp in July.
Good way to mingle, get to know each other as the position coaches talked about their specific duties.
Most of the coaches were smart enough to keep the football chatter at the basic level for even the supposed knights of the keyboard (back in the good old days) could pontificate on strategy, without much knowledge.
Belichick, whose primary responsibility was defensive backs, was ready for the media, with blackboard, film and a lecture about double coverage and assorted topics, which had most of the reporters wondering if they were going to be quizzed on the information when they came out of the room.
Bill Belichick was different then.
Now, 46 years later and an NFL football life for the archives, he still is different. But in a lot of ways, he is also smarter--winning six Super Bowls will up your quotient.
Always has been, but it has always been in familiar waters of the NFL, where there was no pretense about goals--just win games.
College football has more nuances, more rules, regulations and restrictions although that is changing as a tsunami moves to turn college football into an NFL Light production.
Belichick may be in college only one year. He is at North Carolina because no one in the NFL would give him the head coaching job he wanted.
He still wants to surpass Don Shula as the all-time total victories leader in NFL history, which means he will have to go back.
But he also knew his shelf life as a coach was expiring.
Now he is back on the fringe of a spotlight dance, which he can be part of if the Tar Heels regain their brief glory days when the football program was a Top 10 contender under the guidance of Mack Brown.
Belichick is coaching only a marginal bowl contending team at North Carolina, not a national championship or even playoff contender.
But that could change.
Belichick has made it clear that he feels Carolina is more of an NFL than college job. He talks about developing players for
the next level, knowing what has to be done to succeed at that level. He is selling North Carolina as an NFL stepping stone.
And recruits and parents are buying it for now.
It is still summer and the Tar Heels are a few weeks away from their first reality check, the season opener, a nationally televised against TCU on Labor Day night.
"The support has been overwhelming,'' said Belicick at last month's ACC Media Day gathering in Charlotte. "Tremendous. Not only supportive but engaged and very excited.''
Belichick was asked the difference between coaching men and basically 18-to-22-year-old boys. "On the college level, the players are a little younger and less skilled,'' he said. "Sometimes that's an advantage because there are fewer bad habits to break.''
It was Belichick at his best, wearing a suit and expounding on non-specific areas of his job.
Access and affability the week of the Clemson game on October 4th has yet to be determined.
And then there is the ongoing chatter--"noise'' Belichick calls it--surrounding Jennifer Hudson.
That came in the off season when there was no football routine to mute it.
Let's see what happens over the next few months.
Belichick can be a grumpy curmudgeon, doing whatever he wants in his private life.
That is his business.
But his life is now on the main dance floor in college football.
Maybe he will succeed and move back to the NFL for a last hurrah and run at the record books.
He might have to win on the college level to get back into that game.
Maybe he will settle into "college life at the NFL level."
It will all unfold over the next few fascinating months..
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