Bill Belichick, the 72-year-old, 6-time Super Bowl champion head coach, appeared on Pat McAfee's show Monday to address reporting that he has been in discuss for the open North Carolina head coaching position.
First of all, Belichick confirmed he's been in discussions for the Carolina job. "I've had an opportunity to talk with Chancellor (Lee H.) Roberts and we've had good conversations, so we'll see how it goes," Belichick said.
Both Belichick and North Carolina have been careful to frame their discussions with healthy amounts of plausible deniability: each side exploring the other, and also the concept of another. Is North Carolina interviewing Belichick, or is it simply downloading information on how to NFL-ize its program as college football moves closer to an NFL model? It's doing both.
And while Belichick did not delve into specifics of the North Carolina opening -- he wanted to keep his "press conference aura," he joked -- he did delve deep into two pressing questions:
1) Why, at 72 years old, would he want to coach college football?
2) What value would 72-year-old Belichick bring to a college program?
The blunt answer to Question 1 is that no NFL team wants to hire him, as of today.
But Belichick has maintained an interest in college football, dating back to his childhood as the son of a longtime Naval Academy assistant.
"I think there are a lot of football programs that are being structured similar to NFL programs. In college you now have high school recruiting, you have the portal. In pro football you have the draft and free agency. You have (a) salary cap and negotiations with NFL agents, in college you have negotiations with whoever represents the player, whether that's a family member, a high school coach, an agent, whoever it is. You have players changing teams in college as you have players changing teams in the NFL, with a little different set of rules but the same general structure. It's a little different version of the NFL, much more than it's ever been, I'll say that.
"Based on my experience in my last few months in the people that I've talked to, a lot of colleges are looking at NFL-type models, or college coaches are looking at some version of an NFL-type model to structure personnel and coaching. Look, the job's obviously too big for one person no matter what level it's at. You need a personnel director, you need a coach, and you need some type of, let's call it salary cap management. It's certainly not a job for one person, it's going to take a lot of work no matter what level it's on," Belichick said.
So that's why Belichick might be interested in the college game. Why would any college have interest in Belichick, and especially North Carolina given that they just moved on from an aged coach (Mack Brown) who is the same age as Belichick will be (73) when next season begins?
Belichick answered with three magic words: National Football League.
"Let me put this in capital letters, if, I-F, if I was in a college program, the college program would be a pipeline to the NFL for the players that had the ability to play in the NFL. It would be a professional program -- training, nutrition, scheme, coaching, techniques, that would transfer to the NFL. It would be an NFL program at a college level, and an education that would get the players ready for after football. It would be geared toward developing the player, discipline, time management, structure and all that, life skills, regardless of whether you're in the NFL or somewhere in business.
"I feel very confident that I have the contacts in the National Football League to pave the way for those players to have the opportunity to compete in the National Football League," Belichick continued. "They would be ready for it, I don't have any doubt about that. It would be an NFL program, but not at the NFL level."
Belichick was then asked how he would recruit. He answered by executing the biggest name drop in the modern history of the game of football.
"Coach Saban had a tremendous amount of success as we all know in his career taking wide receivers and moving them to corner, who then became first, second round draft choices," Belichick said. "I think there's definitely a projection element at the high school level. Teams generally -- generally -- put their best players at the key positions, quarterback, running back, receiver. If that's where they're at, that may not necessarily be their best position moving forward."
Of course, what Belichick says without saying there is that much of what Saban learned, was learned under Belichick. Belichick likely would not spell out the connection in those words, but he wouldn't have to. If the kids he may or may not recruit at North Carolina or elsewhere did not already know that, their parents or their high school coaches will.
Bill Belichick may or may not be the North Carolina head coach, but Monday's McAfee appearance was Belichick selling himself to North Carolina as well as the rest of college football.
And it's a pitch that we've never seen before in college football, and likely never will again.