By BRUCE LOWITT
As the University of North Carolina football team, under first-year coach Bill Belichick , staggers through the worst start of a season in its 137-year history, and frustrated by the program being dropped from a planned behind-the-scenes documentary by the Hulu streaming service, boosters are weighing the choices of buying out Belichick’s contract or dropping the sport entirely.
“I know both sound like drastic moves,” booster Seth Reeves, executive director of the 21,000-member Rams Club, said, “but the dumpster fire happening on our beautiful Chapel Hill campus, and especially in Kenan Memorial Stadium, has us concerned not only for the safety of and growing depression of our players but for the reputation of the university itself.”
The Tar Heels are 2-3 overall and 0-1 in the Atlantic Coast Conference, but in the three losses, to TCU, Central Florida, and Clemson, they have been outscored 120-33. The 87-point spread in the first three games against Power Four conference teams is the worst since the birth of UNC football. After that 6-4 loss to Wake Forest on October 18, 1888, Tar Heel team captains Bob Bingham and Steve Bragaw were burned in effigy. “Kids these days don’t even know what ‘effigy’ means,” Reeves said. “Besides, I’m told suicide hotlines are lighting up around here.”
When the Hulu program was announced in August, Belichick said it would “feature the players working hard … improving and getting better through their hand work.” Instead, the Tar Heels are more likely to end up with a losing record and missing a bowl game for the first time since 2018 “unless it’s the Ty-D-Bol Toilet Bowl,” Reeves said.
Craig Erwich, president of Hulu Originals and ABC Entertainment, responsible for content and programming, said he “didn’t think it would be very entertaining watching a seventy-something grump trying to deal with teenagers like an old man yelling at the rambunctious neighborhood kids he can’t stand. I think that’s one reason NFL Films and HBO might have pulled the plug on a planned off-season version of their ‘Hard Knocks’ series featuring North Carolina.”
Belichick’s contract is worth $50-million over five years and a buyout by UNC could cost the university as much as $30-million, but dramatically less if the 73-year-old coach decides college football isn’t what he thought it would be, walks away after the season, and tries to get back into the NFL – as if any team would want him.
“That’s up to him, of course, and whether he minds the Marching Tar Heels, our 290-member football band, practicing outside his house every night from midnight to who-knows-when,” said Jim Sigman, chairman of the booster club. “We could probably handle his leaving – we’re a pretty rich crowd – and, frankly, if it came down to it, we could do without football, period. Let’s face it, North Carolina is college basketball. Thirty-three regular-season ACC titles. Eighteen ACC tournament championships. And six national championships, which is six more than the football team.”
“Who do you think of when you say North Carolina basketball players? Michael Jordan. James Worthy. Vince Carter. Coaches? Dean Smith. Frank McGuire. Roy Williams,” Sigman said. “Who do you think of when you say UNC football? Lawrence Taylor … and … um … uh … heh-heh, Mitchell Trubisky? I rest my case.”
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