Belichick's influence evident at ACC football kickoff event as UNC, NC State and Duke take the stage
CHARLOTTE, N.C. (WTVD) -- The group of roughly 60 reporters had crowded around the table Thursday long before Bill Belichick arrived to take questions in his first run through Atlantic Coast Conference preseason media days as North Carolina's football coach.
Some massed at each end, multiple rows deep. Others filled rows of chairs positioned in the middle, in front of a platform filled with video cameras on tripods to capture the words of the man who led the New England Patriots to six Super Bowl titles.
"I mean, it's Bill Belichick, like of course everybody's going to circle him up and try to ask him as many questions as possible," UNC linebacker Thaddeus Dixon said with a chuckle from his nearby table, adding: "He's got so much aura."
It was a sign of how Belichick sure draws a watch-his-every-step crowd as he gears up for his freshman season as a college coach. Yet he's also the headliner for a larger pro influence that has arrived in the ACC, with the league boasting three former NFL head coaches - the most of any conference - just as the dawn of the revenue-sharing era is making the college ranks look more like the pros than ever before.
He joins Boston College's Bill O'Brien, the former Houston Texans head coach who also worked as a Belichick assistant in the NFL. And there's former Indianapolis Colts and Carolina Panthers head coach Frank Reich, who is leading Stanford as an interim coach this season.
The 73-year-old Belichick is the NFL lifer who had said he "always wanted" to give college coaching a try yet never seemed likely to do so - until he missed out on NFL openings, took a year off, and UNC hired him in December.
Belichick said he has talked with numerous coaches who coached at both levels, mentioning Jim Harbaugh and Nick Saban among others.
"Each situation is a little bit different," Belichick said Thursday. "But it's a great game and I love being a part of it. Those people all talked about the great experiences they had. Coach O'Brien went to Penn State. It's different, but it's still football. It's fun."
New Wake Forest coach Jake Dickert said the ACC trio has brought "notoriety" to the league, along with a challenge for coaches of the ACC's other 14 football-playing members.
"Obviously, Coach Belichick is one of the best coaches in our profession," Dickert said. "But you know, this isn't professional football. You know, college football is a unique and different challenge. From the schematics to the tempo to the recruiting, there's a whole different world."
It seems like a natural pivot, too, for Belichick, considering he and general manager Michael Lombardi have leaned into messaging painting UNC as the NFL's "33rd" team. It's part of UNC's audacious bet on Belichick to reshape the program, which includes the coach being set to make $30 million guaranteed for the next three seasons in a five-year deal.
Belichick has been a college coach now for the better part of a year, but seeing him roaming the ACC media days - even stopping after his afternoon interview sessions to grab a box of popcorn that's complimentary for the media - takes some getting used to in this college world.
That's true even for league coaches like Clemson's Dabo Swinney, a two-time national title winner with the Tigers. And it might take all the way to UNC's Labor Day opener against TCU, fittingly a college version of Monday Night Football, to get used to it.
"I didn't have much of a relationship with him prior to ACC meetings in May," Swinney said. "But it was awesome. I really enjoyed it. There was more than one occasion where I went, 'Yep, that's Bill Belichick right there. Yep, right here in the ACC coaches meeting.' It's the most 2025 thing ever."
The Associated Press contributed.
