CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — When the general assembly decided to build a state university here 235 years ago, they named the town for a church built by the British.
The little chapel on the hill was actually called New Hope.
Advertisement
Though the site has been knocked down and built over in the subsequent centuries, the spirit of that name has been the fundamental underpinning of North Carolina football. Without a new hope emerging every few years, promising to wake up this perpetually sleeping giant, they’d have razed this program to the ground too.
As history has shown, neither the Church of England nor the football field has been a great place for faith in the North Carolina Piedmont.
But on Monday night, the latest iteration of New Hope could be found stalking around the 50-yard line at Kenan Stadium in a gray hoodie with the sleeves cut down.
[Join or create a Yahoo Fantasy Football league for the 2025 NFL season]
Since he took the job last December, having been thoroughly rejected by the NFL despite his six Super Bowl Rings, the football world has been wondering what 73-year-old Bill Belichick would look like coaching a college team. It subsequently became a nine-month journey of interest in his personal life, a book tour, a series of awkward interviews and a branding initiative led by his 24-year-old girlfriend.
Advertisement
What we didn’t hear much about was the football team he had to coach.
Maybe now we know why.
North Carolina’s 48-14 drubbing Monday night at the hands of TCU was evidence that $10 million for the most accomplished coach in the history of the sport may not go as far as it used to.
In the NFL, we can debate where Belichick ranks among names like Vince Lombardi, Bill Walsh and Chuck Noll. As a college coach, Belichick’s debut was more in the realm of his former Patriots assistant Charlie Weis, who once described his recruiting pitch at Kansas thusly: “Have you looked at that pile of crap out there?”
Advertisement
Belichick, of course, is too buttoned up to provide such a juicy sound bite. But his assessment of the proceedings Monday was direct and in character.
“They just outplayed us, they outcoached us and they were better than we were. That’s all there is to it,” Belichick said, speaking in front of a backdrop of balloons that seemed far too festive for the occasion. “They did a lot more things right than we did. Give them credit for being the better team.”
While it would be imprudent to declare the Belichick experiment a failure already, you get this kind of honeymoon only once.
As kickoff approached Monday, idyllic Chapel Hill looked like something it has never been: A real college football town with packed tailgates and bars, Tar Heel celebrities like Michael Jordan and Mia Hamm jetting in to be part of the atmosphere and ESPN treating the game like a national event.
Advertisement
Instead, it quickly turned into a social media pile-on.
How bad could it get for Bill Belichick and North Carolina this season?
(Jared C. Tilton via Getty Images)
After scoring easily on their first scripted drive to take a 7-0 lead, the Tar Heels played like they have the potential to end up one of the worst teams in FBS.
There’s no further analysis needed for what happened on the field. North Carolina did nothing well, wasn’t physically competitive along the line of scrimmage and was outgained 542-222. By the fourth quarter, Kenan Stadium had emptied out to such an extent that the fans who were given bracelets to be part of a light show looked more like they were participating in a brownout.
“We have to be tougher as a team,” defensive back Kaleb Cost said. “It’s definitely disappointing, but it’s back to the drawing board. We’ll go hard every day this week and make sure it never happens again. Obviously we’re angry as a team but we’re going to use that.”
Advertisement
If any enthusiasm remains for the Belichick era after this dud, it will largely be contained to two groups: Those who already paid to sell out UNC’s season ticket allotment this year and the line of college coaches like TCU’s Sonny Dykes who will be able to tell their grandkids about the time they put a licking on the GOAT.
And let’s be real: In North Carolina’s current form, Belichick is going to take a whole lot of losses.
When media members arrived at their seats in the Kenan Stadium press box, they found cards that normally have some type of depth chart as a little cheat sheet to follow the game. Instead, North Carolina’s had blank spaces underneath every position.
It seemed like a pure Belichick play: Say as little as possible, treat every personnel decision like a nuclear-grade secret. Instead, after seeing his team play, this seemed less like a rebuild and more like a reveal. Just like the card said, North Carolina’s roster has a whole lot of nothing.
Advertisement
“Too many three-and-outs, too many long plays on defense and two turnovers for touchdowns,” Belichick said. “You can’t overcome that.”
Whatever reason Belichick had for wanting this job — money, ego, putting his two sons on the coaching staff, trying to prove to NFL team owners they made a mistake thinking he was over the hill — his tenure at North Carolina immediately takes on a very different tone.
Singing the fight song and regaling the media with stories about growing up around the Naval Academy doesn’t prove that you belong on a college campus. You know what does? Getting good players to wear your uniform.
Belichick and his general manager, Michael Lombardi, obviously failed on that account. As much as North Carolina underachieved in the past several seasons under Mack Brown, he never in his entire career recruited a team as lacking in talent and skill as this one.
Advertisement
That does not mean this is doomed to be an expensive disaster North Carolina will regret for the next decade. But it’s undeniably true that coaches with far fewer credentials than Belichick have taken over worse rosters and found a way to be a lot more competitive out of the gate.
“We just keep working and keep grinding away,” Belichick said. “We’re better than what we were tonight, but we have to go out and prove it. Nobody’s going to do it for us.”
In many ways, it’s the story of North Carolina football itself. The program is always supposed to be better than what it’s been, but nobody’s been able to prove it.
Advertisement
Even the great Belichick.
At least not yet.
But this entire place exists because of a church named New Hope. That’s part of the fabric of this place, and obviously this football program.
All these years later, though, nobody’s found physical evidence of the church’s remains. New Hope is just a symbol, but one that has endured over hundreds of years and many awful North Carolina football regimes. If Monday was any indication, Belichick may be the coach that finally tests the limits of hope in Chapel Hill.