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00:00One of the most shocking hires in the recent history of college football, where coaching
00:06searches also often follow private plans being tracked and will he won't he jump from this spot
00:13to another. DRS, the new head coach of North Carolina Tar Heels football in Chapel Hill
00:21is Bill Belichick. That is not a joke. It is not an onion headline. It is a legitimate story
00:30and now an official hire. Bill Belichick will be the next head football coach at the University
00:37of North Carolina. The 72-year-old Belichick, who has won the most Super Bowls as a head coach
00:44in the history of the National Football League, six Lombardi trophies to be exact,
00:50is now going to coach in college for the first time ever. Never even worked as an assistant
00:57or anything in the collegiate ranks. Up until this past season, DRS, when he parted ways with
01:04New England at the end of 2023, he had been working in some capacity in the NFL since 1975
01:13and now for the first time ever at 72 years old, Bill Belichick is headed back to school.
01:20Wild. It is a wild turnaround for one of the best coaches we've ever seen in any professional sport
01:25in North American history. Basically, it's shunned by the NFL last year. Last year, interviewing for
01:30teams, didn't get any jobs. You figured he'd just sit out, pick whatever job he wanted to
01:34to come back to the NFL and then we got that glimpse of Bill Belichick just interviewed for
01:39North Carolina. He's just trying to practice. I'm going to get back on this level, but I just
01:44want to see what college is doing. Then eventually, I'll just go back to the pros and here we are,
01:48accepting a job with UNC. Here's the question that I'm going to have. In professional sports,
01:53you have contracts, Ben, right? And the Patriot way, we heard about it so many times. The things
01:57I get a big kick out of are the teams like the Green Bay Packers and the New England Patriots
02:01always told you, don't do anything in free agency. It's a waste of time. Just win through the draft.
02:06You get Tom Brady, you can make 15,000 errors in the draft and free agency, it doesn't matter,
02:10he covers it up. And for so many times, the Green Bay Packers just saying, we're not going to spend
02:14any money in free agency because we have Aaron Rodgers. The reason I bring that up is for the
02:18Patriots, if you draft a player, you basically have them, Ben. First round picks for five years,
02:23second round picks and on for four years at that point, where you are forced to buy in to the
02:28Patriot way, whether you like it or not. My way or the highway, you don't want to play. I'll just
02:32sit you on the bench until you eventually want to quit football. You can't do that at the college
02:36landscape. And also the Patriot way, a lot of was, yes, you're going to learn how to win
02:40and how to be a New England Patriot. But also, you know what you're going to do?
02:43Not have any fun doing it. And it's going to be a job. It's not fun out here. We're going to win.
02:47And winning is not fun. We've heard that in so many football movies in the past. So how does
02:52he translate from being a curmudgeon in the NFL, my way or the highway, go to college with 18 year
02:58olds that show up on campus day three and go, this isn't for me. I'm just going to transfer out. See
03:03you guys later. Peace on this one here. That's what I'm most interested in, because if it works,
03:07you could look at the changing of the landscape officially from professional football to college
03:12football and changing that mindset. If it doesn't work, it feels like the Sean Watson contract in
03:17the NFL. Nobody's going to go down this path ever again. And then see, look, if Bill could
03:22make it work, none of you old timers can make it work. And speaking of that contract, it is
03:28reportedly a five-year $50 million deal. USC is backing up this with the investment necessary to
03:37allow the NIL funding and the resources for Bill Belichick to have success, not three to five years
03:44down the line, but right here, right now, he replaces the oldest head coach at FBS college
03:50football, Mac Brown, who was in Chapel Hill for six years and becomes the oldest head coach in
03:57FBS college football. He is 72 right now. He will be 73 before his first season at the helm at UNC
04:07DRS. We have so much more to discuss. We are pretty much going to spend the next 25 minutes
04:12on Bill Belichick. You want some other stuff. It will come later on in our second hour, because
04:18there are so many different layers to this story. There are so many different pieces of this puzzle
04:26to dissect. One that I will start with is organizational control. It's one of the reasons
04:32that I believe, and as has been widely reported, that Bill Belichick is not a head coach in Atlanta
04:39right now, or his prospects perhaps of coaching once again in the NFL seemed as though they were
04:45slim to none, leading to sincere interest in being a head coach in North Carolina in college football,
04:54because you mentioned the NFL professional model now in CFB. That in its essence is not revolutionary.
05:03That is what is necessary now in college football, and we'll talk about the structure,
05:10Bill Belichick's succession plan in Chapel Hill, all of that and plenty more up next on The Early Line.
05:17There are so many takeaways to discuss after Bill Belichick has officially been named the new head
05:24football coach at North Carolina. From 1975 until the end of his previous NFL season in 2023,
05:33Belichick had held a coaching role of some sort in the National Football League. He has never
05:38worked a single day in collegiate football. His father, Steve, was an assistant coach at UNC
05:46from 1953 to 55. His son, Steve, is more than likely going to be his defensive coordinator
05:54and his successor in 2027, 2028, whatever it might be as the next football coach at North Carolina.
06:03DRS, as the reporting was let out in this process that seemed as though it was a joke at the start
06:10and within a week became very real and then official, it was Bill Belichick issuing out his
06:16organizational Bible, 400 pages of what he needed, what was a necessity for him to consider actually
06:24being the head football coach at North Carolina. And UNC's board of trustees and the guys responsible
06:31for making this decision gave him everything that he needed. His old pal from their days
06:37together in New England, Michael Lombardi, will act as his general manager. Steve Belichick,
06:44his son, more than likely going to help him fill out his staff as well. The younger Belichick is
06:50currently working as the defensive coordinator at Washington where he has spent this past season
06:56under Jed Fish. Donnie, you mentioned this. Are we seeing a revolution in college football
07:03to reflect that NFL professional type model? A lot of people have asked, how will Bill Belichick
07:10relate to college kids? How will he recruit? Is he going to hit the road and enter a 16-year-old's
07:16living room and say, hey, come play for me? Probably not. He is trying to set up his institution
07:22to do those things for him, to operate like a professional model, which is what he did
07:30in New England. He wasn't just a head coach responsible for the game plan and the X's and
07:36O's. He was the front office exec. He held full power with the Patriots. It's one of the reasons
07:42I don't think anybody wanted to give him that elsewhere around the national football league.
07:47It seems as though he will have that in Chapel Hill. I'm surprised he didn't just go to the SEC
07:54and go full blast Bill. The one thing we understand is college football coaches,
07:59same thing with college baseball coaches, college basketball coaches, you got to cross the line at
08:03times if you want that good player. You got to say to yourself, you know what, if I go buy the book,
08:08this kid's probably going to another institution. I'm not supposed to pick up the phone call on this
08:12day and call him. Maybe I'll get one of my assistants to do that. I'm not supposed to have
08:15an in-house visit. Let's keep this on the hush hush. Oh, I was just in town stopping by. Let me
08:19talk to your son here to see if he wants to be a part of the North Carolina football team. Because
08:22we saw it in the pros, taping every single practice you can before Super Bowls, inside the game,
08:28breaking down signals at halftime of the Philadelphia Eagles Super Bowl and saying,
08:32oh, we know every screen pass you have coming now. So Bill will walk that line, which is acceptable
08:36in college football. But the interesting thing is going to be, you're right, Ben,
08:40usually when you hire a head coach in college football, yes, it is about X's and O's,
08:44but usually those guys are rock star salesmen, which means that guy shows up into your living
08:49room and you have six offers on the table for other schools. He walks away with a signed
08:53signature, with a pen and paper that said that kid's coming to my school with the enthusiasm
08:58and also the panache to say, you know what, I relate to young kids. Yes, Bill Belichick has
09:02won multiple Super Bowls. He's coach Tom Brady. He's going to walk into any kid's living room now
09:06and have that. But is it, I'm Bill Belichick, my staff's going to bring the kids to me and then
09:12I'll eventually talk to him. We'll see how that goes, because the excitement will be there.
09:15They're going to get players. But as I talked about before, the pro game and the college game
09:19is so much different. You know, I thought Bill Belichick would have been perfect because the
09:22one thing we understand with Bill, he's a football lifer and he loves the game. I thought if he did
09:26not coach NFL football, he'd go right to the high school ranks, you know, kids 15, 16, 17,
09:32mold them for their careers, coach them well, send them off to college and away you go. Or
09:35he would have just taken over for one of the institutions like, you know, Air Force,
09:39one of the military academies, Army or Navy, because of that discipline he instilled with
09:43the Patriot way. They're not getting transfers in and out. Once you show up as a freshman,
09:46I know I got you from 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, and away you go off into your life. I want to see
09:52that transition being made because he is running this like a pro game in the college system,
09:56which once again, Ben, could revolutionize what we see. Or do you remember when they
10:00tried to hire Belichick at Carolina? Boy, that was a disaster. So DRS, what you are saying,
10:06revolutionize this system. I would agree in essence. However, that revolution is already
10:12happening. We are seeing big time college football programs invest in general manager type positions
10:18to organize and facilitate both high school recruiting, NIL funding and resources. And of
10:25course, with an eye on the transfer portal, college football has been a professional model for the
10:32last three plus years since NIL became a legal thing in the summer of 2021. Some have been more
10:40on the cutting edge. Some have embraced this change more than others, but that has already
10:46been happening and already is happening and must. And there is an idea that because of NIL,
10:53in the transfer portal era, that Bill Belichick, it doesn't really matter if he relates to college
10:58kids. Kids come in, kids come out, they will figure it out in this professional style model.
11:05That's still not in essence, college football. You still need to create that buzzword. That is
11:11culture. Bill Belichick doesn't necessarily have the panache of even say a Deion Sanders,
11:17who was revolutionary in the way that he attacked rebuilding a Colorado football program. It has
11:23worked in the year number two of that prime era in Boulder to an extent. And what will success
11:31then be DRS for Bill Belichick? Because let's talk legacy here for a second. Nobody has won
11:37more Super Bowls as a head coach than Bill. Six. Nobody has played in more Super Bowls than Bill.
11:44Nine. Only one guy has more wins as a head coach in the history of the NFL. That's Miami's Don
11:51Shula, 347. Bill, only 14 wins shy of that in his career, 333. So let's look at year number one.
12:01In the already odds expectation for the Tar Heels in Chapel Hill in 2025, seven and a half is the
12:10win total. It opened at six and a half, by the way. It is already seven and a half. The under
12:17has the juice and he is not taking over a program like Deion Sanders took over in Boulder that had
12:24just a single win the year before. You can argue Pantheon in ceiling for North Carolina, who has
12:31not won an ACC football championship since 1980, nearly four and a half decades ago. But Donnie,
12:38they've been a consistently successful football organization. They reached a ball game in all
12:44six years under Mack Brown. They've won at least eight games, six of the last 10 years. I wonder
12:51what success would be in the mind of Belichick, would be in the eyes of the college football
12:57landscape, would be for those trustees in Chapel Hill to make all of this investment worth it for
13:05North Carolina football. What say Donnie right side? Yeah. You know, what's interesting part
13:10about this too, Ben, as you look, this was a calculated decision from Bill Belichick. He chose
13:14a basketball school with unlimited funds that has never reached the pinnacle. Also getting in the
13:19time here of college football, where the story of a successful program used to be, you got into get
13:24into the championship game, which is two teams. You got to get into the college football playoff,
13:28which was four teams. Now the expansion of 12, if he can go over the next couple of years and even
13:32make one playoff run with the expansion, it will be deemed a success here. You also notice he didn't
13:37go to like a Texas and I'm saying Texas job was open. Just, you know, the blue bloods, the Texas
13:42is the Ohio States of the world. This is a perfect calculated risk. And coaches do that. Do you
13:46remember urban Meyer took the Florida job? Florida wasn't a necessarily unbelievable job where they
13:51were winning left and right at the time he took over. And nobody say, I don't want to get in
13:54spur of your shadow. Took them after Ron Zook, a little bit of a down program, then goes up north
13:58and says, you know what? Ohio State's down for you. Let me take that job worked out in spades.
14:03Then he tried to level up in the pros and go, Jackson was the perfect spot. Number one,
14:06draft pick. I'll walk right in there to a downtrodden franchise and win. And it didn't
14:10work there. That's what I'm most interested to see with Belichick because he is one of the
14:14smartest men on the planet. This was not, I talked to 50 schools in Carolina. I finally
14:19settled on, he picked Carolina out and that was the only time he interviewed this was calculated.
14:24So we'll see what he has to offer now. There is no doubt about that. Donnie and I on the
14:29other side of the break, we'll give our final assessment. Will chapel bill work in chapel Hill
14:36we'll decide up next. All right. So on this Thursday on the early line, we have pretty
14:40much broken down the big news of the day yesterday in sports, the shocking development
14:46that became an actual reality. Bill Belichick, the new head coach of North Carolina football.
14:52We've given you all the angles of why it could work. Why it might not DRS. I'll start with what
14:59I think is going to happen in chapel Hill. I'm a little bit skeptical that bill Belichick's model,
15:06way that he will run his program in chapel Hill is going to see success, but I think success
15:13is relative. Are they going to be an ACC favorite and three next season and reach the college
15:19football playoff? I would say, no, we showed you the wind total at seven and a half and the under
15:24has the juice. But I do think for some of the reasons that people are questioning,
15:29if bill Belichick can have success in the college ranks, people were questioning if
15:35this was even an actual story when it was first reported is why Belichick actually might be able
15:42to build the program the way that he wants. Yes. It is a new era in collegiate sports,
15:49but bill understands that the professional model taking advantage of NIL resources and funding
15:56capitalizing on the transfer portal to build your roster in us, your program. He gets that he was
16:03a front office executive in the national football league as well. He is not the old guard of a Nick
16:08Saban or the old guard of college basketball coaches that have bowed out in this new era.
16:14He doesn't know the old ways of college football. He has never worked in college. And there is still
16:20the idea DRS of organizational control that you do not find in the national football league. Those
16:27guys are professionals. They have families, they have kids, they go home, they punch the clock,
16:33they get out of the facility on a college campus. Although players now have much more agency than
16:40ever before. You still get to dictate their schedule. You show up for practice. These are
16:45your classes. We've got meetings. You are home. That is it. And that's where I think bill Belichick
16:53and the staff that he built out might be able to win some football games at UNC. I could see seven
17:00and five, eight and four in 2025 for the heels. Yes. And it's supposed to work because we're not
17:08taking a flyer on like, hey, this is revolutionary. Benny, basketball coach is now the head football
17:13coach, but he's really just a CEO coach because he can handle like athletes. That's not the case
17:17here. Bill Belichick, again, is maybe the smartest human being with knowledge of football that we've
17:22ever seen. It's not going to hurt North Carolina with him coming in. It's an upgrade for Bill
17:26Belichick over Mac Brown. But the question I just have once again is the results on the field I
17:31think will be there. And you're right. Is it a national championship? But a couple of years,
17:34maybe not because UNC isn't that team that does it. But I just want to see this approach where
17:38you're bringing an NFL mentality to 17 and 18 years old. Like NIL is such a wild race at this
17:45point. Now, you're basically telling kids before you even step on campus, here's two million
17:49dollars. Come here, sign on the dotted line. Then we got here and we'll see what happens.
17:53Like, are we now going to have contracts that are written up by an NFL crew? That's like,
17:57you can't do this. You can't do that. You got to stay for this long. How convoluted will it be?
18:02And also, as we said again, the free market now in college football, maybe Belichick even missed
18:06by a couple of years, because if there's no transfer portal, I actually would buy even more
18:10to him getting there, because once you're there, he controls you. Oh, you want to leave? Well,
18:14you can't go to any Division One school. You can only go Division Two at this point. You can put
18:18ridiculous clauses on where those transfer will be. You can't do that now. So I wonder if he
18:23softens up just a little bit, which he's going to have to do. But I understand that once these kids
18:28play college football and get to the professional ranks at 23 years old, you have the agent, you
18:33have the teams around you. They insulate you and say, OK, here's what your contract is.
18:3717 and 18 year olds with just the father there. Hey, I got to get a quick agent. I got to sign
18:41this. I got to get to school. I want to transfer out. Oh, no, they're going to take my money back
18:45from me now because I didn't read page 97 of my new NIL contract, which you see in the NFL,
18:51those ring binders of how much you can and can't do. That's what I'm worried about the most,
18:56not the actual production from a coach translating to the players. It's everything
19:00around it now at this point, Ben. And I think that's very fair, DRS. And again,
19:05you will hear that revolutionary professional type model making its way from the NFL to the
19:10semi-professional and now maybe fully professional college football ranks. But the teams that have
19:16success, the teams that are going to continue to have success year over year, their head coaches
19:22are not only program builders, but program continuers. The names of Dan Lanning, the names
19:28of even a Kurt Cignetti who have come in. These are guys that understand what it takes at the
19:36collegiate level to have that culture, that organizational standard year over year. We will
19:42see if Bill Belichick has the same. It will be important the staff that he puts together as we
19:48shared his former colleague in New England, longtime NFL executive Michael Lombardi is the
19:54new GM at UNC. We expect his son, Steve Belichick, to become the new defensive coordinator and
20:00eventual successor to the throne as the head coach at North Carolina. I do just want to
20:06mention this, DRS. Steve has been the defensive coordinator at Washington this season. They allow
20:12nearly 23 points per game, despite having the fifth best passing defense in the country. That
20:17points per game allowed scoring defense, 45th in the country, bottom half of teams in the Big Ten.
20:23Washington's defense last year when they were a national runner-up, 30th in terms of efficiency.
20:30It has worked back to 45th this season, but Steve Belichick, of course, will probably be there under
20:36the purview of his father. A lot to be determined, a lot to continue discussing throughout this
20:42offseason, very early still in December until we get to next August for UNC. That was huge news
20:51yesterday in college football, DRS. The biggest news of the day would have been this, if not for
20:56Bill Belichick, the Rich Rod return, country roads take him home, back to West Virginia and
21:04Morgantown. Rich Rodriguez has been named the new head coach at WVU, of course, where he spent seven
21:12seasons from 2001 to 2007 and had unparalleled success with the Mountaineers. He is back in
21:21West Virginia now as the new head coach starting in 2025 after spending a few years at Jacksonville
21:27State and leading the gamecocks to a CUSA conference championship this past weekend.
21:33Yeah, who says you can't go home, right? It does feel like it's a perfect match because I don't
21:37know where else West Virginia was going at this point, but get us to a couple ballgames, maybe
21:41challenge your times for national championship and you'll be fine. More football headlines to
21:47round out this opening hour. Come your way now. Sometimes you can go home again. The native of
21:53West Virginia, Rich Rodriguez back at WVU as their new head football coach when he was the head
22:00football coach for seven years in the early 2000s, 2001 to 2007. And just one final point on Rich
22:09Rod, he had great success with the Mountaineers after his first season, the final six, West
22:15Virginia won at least eight games each and every year, including in his final three DRS double
22:21digit wins every season, a victory in the sugar bowl over Georgia to cap off the 2005 campaign.
22:28And in his final year, number two, West Virginia entered the backyard brawl against Pitt with a
22:35win. They were probably playing in the BCS national championship game. Of course, we know what
22:42happened in that final one, the Panthers winning 13 to nine. Then he left for Michigan, legal battle
22:49ensued over his buyout, a whole big thing. But that goes to show that even when things get bitter
22:55in your life, you can head back home. If home has some meaning, and it certainly does for West
23:00Virginia and Rich Rod and Morgantown. Absolutely. You could something right. You can't go home like
23:06Ben started at the sports grid network as an intern left to do other things. He came back now as a
23:10host. So he's happy to come back. You can. And also I think he's getting welcome back with open
23:14arms. Not like, oh, we had to settle on Rich Rod. Like, I actually think this was a solid hire for
23:19West Virginia. Not like, oh, we're on our last strings. Let's go bring back like Joe Gibbs to
23:23Washington. Like they tried to revive them in the pros after so many years. Like, I think this is
23:27actually a solid move as we're not really ripping this as saying, hey, look, this is a bad move for
23:31WVU. I like it. No. Yeah, it's a really good move. DRS. He didn't have great success at Michigan.
23:37Big time premier program. Some of the bitterness at the end of his stay in Morgantown carried over.
23:42Then he went to Arizona. OK, there at times what he has done at Jacksonville State.
23:48And you see the evolution of the Rich Rod system. Great on the ground. You remember
23:52those Morgantown teams of Pat White and Steve Sloan and what you had there. It was incredible
23:58on the ground that will be back for West Virginia. We would assume some other big
24:04news in college football yesterday to Lane's quarterback, Darian Mensah, who had entered the
24:09transfer portal after leading the Green Wave to an AAC title game appearance. We'll be hoping to
24:15do the same for Duke in the ACC. Manny Diaz in his first year in Durham, nine wins, a really
24:21successful season. Darian Mensah, their new quarterback in Durham. Yeah, no loyalty, and I
24:27don't mind it here. Then we've talked about this ad nauseam. Kids that have appeal on the national
24:32level should be in the portal every single year just to check out your options. And I think he did
24:37level up. Oh, Tulane was a good program on the rise up. Stop it. He probably got more money from
24:41Duke, a great institution, and I'm sure he thinks it's a better fit and more money, as we like to
24:46say. Why not get used to it? Garrett Nussmeier back at LSU. So many moves happening right now
24:53in the early stages of a college football offseason before the college football playoff
24:58and bowl season fully gets underway. So many moves, DRS, that we're even taking it to
25:04legislatures to figure out how to get rid of flag planting after Ohio State lost as a 20-and-a-half
25:13point home favorite in the shoe in their final regular season game against Michigan to lose
25:19the game for a fourth consecutive year. And the Wolverines, of course, tried to plant the block
25:25in the middle of Ohio Stadium. Ohio lawmakers have said, never again. If you try to plant a flag
25:33specifically in Ohio Stadium, you are going to be in handcuffs. It would be deemed a felony.
25:42The softest move in the history of soft moves in the history of sports.
25:48Exactly. And also, if I am a person in legislature in Ohio, I go the opposite way and say,
25:54we're going to mandatory make it. If my Ohio State football team is this bad, I want multiple
26:00flags planted at midfield to make sure we understand the embarrassment of that and we
26:05can't have it happen again. Like, honestly, Ben, did this lawmaker actually think like,
26:08you know what, I'm going to get so much support and they're going to love this,
26:10where it's a felony. When everybody, even Ohio State, probably football players, like,
26:14no. You know how you avoid that? Just clean the clock of the team that comes in and we'll take
26:18our own flag and plant our own flag at midfield to say, this is our house. Stop the madness out
26:24here, Ben. Come on. Now, that would also be a felony, according to the bill, as it is worded
26:30right now. It does not say opposing team flags. Just anybody that tries to plant any flag that
26:38has a pole with it, you could end up in jail. So know that, Tennessee volunteers, for your
26:45college football playoff game in about just over a week. You know what the real felony is?
26:53Losing at home as a three-touchdown favorite against your most bitter rival when you just
26:57watched them win a national championship the year prior. Ryan Day should be in.
27:02Yeah, make Ryan Day plant. No, Ryan Day should plant the flag and then they'll arrest him. I
27:06don't think anybody would get mad at that right now.