Belichick: Housecleaning

By BRUCE LOWITT

After his first Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad year as University of North Carolina’s head football coach, which might have equaled his last Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad year as head coach of the New England Patriots if it had gone on much longer, 73-year-old Bill Belichick decided to really clean house and start over.

After firing his offensive and special teams coordinators on Friday, Belichick dismissed the rest of his coaching staff over the weekend, cut ties with his team’s food providers, disowned his sons, Stephen and Brian, both of whom were on his coaching staff, changed his cell phone carrier, and dumped his 24-year-old girlfriend, Jordan Hudson.

“If we’re going to become a winning operation, we’re going to have to start running it like professionals,” said Belichick, whose 4-8 Tar Heels were last in the Atlantic Coast Conference. His 2023 Patriots finished 4-13, worst in the 16-team AFC.

Seth Reeves, executive director of UNC’s 21,000-member Rams Club boosters, said that when Belichick hinted he might take a buyout in order to return to the NFL or the broadcast booth, UNC considered pursuing another “name” coach.

But with the frenzy over coaches being sought and hired by Penn State, LSU, Alabama, Virginia Tech, Arkansas, UCLA, Florida, and elsewhere, Reeves realized the likelihood of finding any coach of consequence desperate enough to take the Tar Heels job was nil.

And when Belichick found zero interest in him from NFL teams and TV networks, he decided to stay at UNC for at least one more season and “talk with NFL coaches who I expect to be fired when the season ends and would like to lock up an assistant coaching job with me. … Maybe a coordinator, or a guy with ‘interim’ in front of his name, or someone whose team has already been eliminated from the playoffs, is probably desperate enough to come work for me.”

Belichick said he ditched the team’s food purveyors because the players “loaded up on hush puppies and pulled pork and corn dogs and shit like that before games and played like they were constipated. Besides, you can’t get a decent lobster in this state. I have to have them flown in from Boston, for crissakes.”

As for the uniforms, he said the powder-blue uniforms and argyle trim are gone. “Looking fierce, that’s the plan,” he said. “Mostly black with ferocious crimson, maybe some steel gray. I dunno. Anything but that pussy blue. I mean, we look like freaking babies.”

“And speaking of, well, you know, Jordan and I are history. I don’t want to make too big a thing of it but, um, I think I can do better. Don’t you?”