Holding Court: UNC Football Takes Big Swing With Belichick

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UNC Football, Rarely Aggressive, Takes Biggest Swing With Belichick

By David Glenn

The University of North Carolina, which has been playing football since 1888, has never paid its head football coach at the top end of the college market.

Until now.

Last month, UNC finalized a five-year, $50 million contract that immediately made legendary National Football League coach Bill Belichick one of only eight men who are guaranteed to make at least $10 million in 2025.

 

Coach, School, Conference — 2024 Compensation

1. Kirby Smart^!, Georgia, SEC — $13.3 million
2. Dabo Swinney^!, Clemson, ACC — $11.1 million
3. Steve Sarkisian!, Texas, SEC — $10.6 million
4. Lincoln Riley, Southern Cal, Big Ten — $10+ million
5. Ryan Day!, Ohio State, Big Ten — $10+ million
6. Bill Belichick, North Carolina, ACC — $10 million*
7. Kalen DeBoer, Alabama, SEC — $10 million
8. Mike Norvell, Florida State, ACC — $10 million
9. Brian Kelly, LSU, SEC — $9.9 million
10. Mark Stoops, Kentucky, SEC — $9+ million

^ — has won FBS national championship

! — team made 2024 College Football Playoff

* — 2025 compensation (others 2024)

 

The Belichick hire is not the first time UNC has taken an uber-aggressive approach with a football coaching search, but it’s certainly an extremely rare development historically.

After the 1955, 2006 and 2018 seasons, as in December of last year, the Tar Heels bucked their long-time trend of making more conservative hires (e.g., Group of Five head coaches, power conference or NFL assistant coaches, promoting from within) for their top gridiron position.

While none of the previous three splashy newcomers (Jim Tatum, Butch Davis, Mack Brown Part Two) led to a conference championship for Carolina, in each case a proven winner produced much better records than his predecessor.

When the Tar Heels posted losing records in each of their first three seasons (1953-55) as a member of the newly created Atlantic Coast Conference, UNC athletic director Chuck Erickson hired Jim Tatum, a former Carolina assistant coach who had led Maryland to four top-10 seasons, including the 1953 national championship.

Tatum, a star football and baseball player for UNC in the 1930s, reportedly took a pay cut — from $18,500 to $15,000 — when he left the Terrapins for the Tar Heels, obviously long before college athletics had become a lucrative business enterprise.

Sadly, after just three seasons leading the Tar Heels (the latter two included time in the national Top 25), Tatum died in Chapel Hill on July 23, 1959, at only 46 years old. The suspected cause was Rocky Mountain spotted fever.

More recently, UNC twice more opted for a more aggressive approach on the gridiron, with the hirings of Davis (by AD Dick Baddour) and Brown (by AD Bubba Cunningham) prior to the 2007 and 2019 seasons, respectively.

Davis ultimately led the Tar Heels to three straight 8-5 seasons (all including bowl trips), and Brown just took the Heels to six straight postseason games, including a top-25 finish in 2020 and an ACC title game appearance in 2022.

Even the excitement inspired by the Davis and Brown hirings, though, paled in comparison to that surrounding Belichick’s arrival, which ESPN immediately described as “one of the most stunning and compelling moves in college football history.”

Davis most recently had spent four seasons (2001-04) as a head coach in the NFL, with the Cleveland Browns. Prior to that, he had helped build the Miami Hurricanes into a national championship-caliber program, both as an assistant coach (1984-88) and as the Canes’ head coach (1995-2000). His final Miami team finished #2 in the national rankings, and the mega-talented squad he left behind for his successor, Larry Coker, finished 12-0 and captured the 2001 national championship.

Brown, who was a young (37), inexpensive, up-and-coming head coach the first time he was hired at Carolina, was a far more proven commodity when the Tar Heels lured him away from his ESPN broadcasting job prior to the 2019 season. During his 16-year tenure (1998-2013) at Texas, Brown had led the Longhorns to the 2005 national championship and a stunning 10 consecutive seasons (2000-09) where they finished #13 or higher in the national rankings.

Carolina paid both Davis and Brown fairly well by the standards of the time, but the Tar Heels certainly didn’t break the bank, relatively speaking.

Davis, who was almost 55 years old when the Tar Heels hired him in November 2006, made about $2 million per year during his four seasons in Chapel Hill (2007-10). That compensation level did not rank among the top 20 in college football that year, when Alabama legend Nick Saban ($6 million) and Texas’ Brown ($5.2 million) were the only two head coaches above the $5 million mark.

More recently, Brown did make about $5 million per year with the Tar Heels, but the market had changed so dramatically over the past two decades that his compensation ranked outside the top 40 in major college football, meaning in the bottom half of the 66 head coaches in the Power Four conferences (plus Notre Dame).

UNC did upgrade many other aspects of its football-related resources and commitment during Brown’s more recent tenure, but overall the Tar Heels still weren’t spending anywhere near the level seen at college football’s traditional powerhouse programs.

At $10 million per year, believe it or not, Belichick is taking a major pay cut from what he was making in the latter part of his legendary career with the New England Patriots, whom he led to six Super Bowl championships and scores of other success. That professional-level number ultimately exceeded $20 million per year.

At the same time, UNC just doubled the highest amount it has ever paid any of its football coaches, it’s paying top-10 money to its head coach for the very first time, and it’s dramatically upgraded the program’s Name-Image-Likeness budget, among many other things, in preparation for the upcoming 2025 season.

That sort of gridiron commitment, financially speaking and otherwise, is a truly unprecedented development in the history of Carolina football.

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David Glenn (DavidGlennShow.com, @DavidGlennShow) is an award-winning author, broadcaster, editor, entrepreneur, publisher, speaker, writer and university lecturer (now at UNC Wilmington) who has covered sports in North Carolina since 1987.

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