By BRUCE LOWITT
Bill Belichick resigned Tuesday as University of North Carolina head football coach after the former New England Patriots coach and six-time Super Bowl winner, who signed a $50-million five-year contract with UNC last Thursday, said he “realized what a historically bad load of crap I would have been getting myself into.”
Belichick, who spent 24 years with the Patriots and agreed to leave them after experiencing consecutive losing seasons with them for the first time in 2022-23, said he hadn’t spent as much as time as he should have studying UNC’s all-time records as an Atlantic Coast Conference member dating back to the 1953-54 seasons.
“Emotionally, those last two years (with New England) were among the worst of my life,” he said. “Losing game after game is something I’m not used to. It gives me agita. And if I’d known a week ago what I know now about the Tar Heels, hell, I wouldn’t have given them a second glance,” he said.
“I mean, this powder-blue team – who the hell wears powder-blue uniforms? Pussies, that’s who! This team has a record that would make the Jets and Giants blush. It’s never won a national championship. Never! It’s never even finished in the top ten. It hasn’t won a freaking conference championship since 1980. I mean, holy crap!”
Before getting into broadcasting this year as an NFL analyst, and making what he called “a nice piece of change” doing commercials, Belichick was making upwards of $20-million a year with the Patriots, “so this is a major pay cut.”
“Maybe I should’ve just sat out the rest of this year and waited for – speaking of the Giants – for them to call me,” he said. “I used to be their DC (defensive coordinator) and God knows I could do a better job as head coach and DC than the dumpster fire they’ve got now.”
UNC Athletic Director Bubba Cunningham, while not saying he’s happy to see Belichick leave, didn’t exactly express regrets at his departure.
“I dunno,” Cunningham said, “I said we wanted someone younger than (73-year-old previous coach) Mack Brown. Belichick’s 72. He’s 233 days younger. I mean, really? Did we hire him for bragging rights? Like, ‘Ooh, look who we have now.’ I mean, come on.
“You know what we don’t have now? Much of a team,” Cunningham said. “You know how many kids who said they were coming here have changed their mind? Too damned many. You know how many of our better players have decided to enter the transfer portal to go elsewhere? A lot.
“I asked some of our boys what they thought of when they hear the name Belichick,” Cunningham added, “and the three answers I got most – besides ‘Who’s he?’ – were ‘Spygate’ and ‘Deflategate’ and ‘old fart.’”
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