Written by MICHAEL KOH
With Hubert Davis dismissed, no seat will be hotter in Chapel Hill than Bill Belichick’s this fall.
After a debut season in which Belichick made more headlines off the field than on it, Carolina football may be in for another rough year. The Tar Heels went 4-8 against a relatively soft schedule last season, and now the level of competition will ramp up by leaps and bounds. Awaiting UNC are home dates with Notre Dame, Louisville and Miami, road trips to Virginia, Clemson and Pitt, and the second of their two-game series against TCU in Dublin. Those are all teams which will likely have significant talent advantages and will surely be favored in their matchups with UNC.
Finding even four wins on the 2026 schedule is difficult. We can probably pencil in East Tennessee State as a win. UConn on the road could be favorable, especially since the Huskies lost their head coach. Syracuse at home is reasonable, too. And who knows what Duke will look like next season after losing star quarterback Darian Mensah.
But all the talk about strength of schedule is overshadowing a bigger issue: fans have seemingly had it with Belichick. His perceived aloofness after the enthusiasm of Mack Brown has rubbed supporters the wrong way, and something tells me the program won’t sell out every seat this season as it did last season in the hype of Chapel Bill 1.0. The off-the-field distractions, too, have brought needless embarrassment to a program which wanted to graduate to the big-boy table by hiring Belichick in the first place.
UNC clearly learned its lesson from the Belichick hiring in the way it’s going about the men’s basketball coaching search. All reporting indicates there’s no interference from the Board of Trustees or anyone else, leaving athletic director Bubba Cunningham and protégé Steve Newmark to spearhead the effort. Is it a coincidence that John Preyer, who was reportedly instrumental in bringing in Belichick, is no longer with the Board?
If UNC football struggles again this fall, the administration will have a decision to make. Yes, the buyout on Belichick’s contract is steep, but in the long term, it may cost more to keep him than to fire him. A new head coach usually inspires a jump in ticket sales, and Carolina could signal it’s turning over a new leaf by cutting the old one loose and bringing in a young, exciting football mind.
The program swung for the fences when it hired Belichick, the perceived NFL G.O.A.T. And there’s no shame in cutting its losses early. But the biggest step is the first one: admitting it made the wrong choice.
Michael Koh is filling in for Art Chansky today, as Art is temporarily out on a medical leave recovering from an accident.
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Featured image via Associated Press/Phelan M. Ebenhack
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Chansky’s Notebook: Dead Man Walking? Chapelboro.com.
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