We’ve seen this before, and it’s hard to watch.
Legendary coach at one level tries to squeeze out one final chapter at another level, only to watch all of it blow up in his face just a few games into the season. It’s the type of disaster that feels almost too telegraphed. To say it’s “weird from the jump” doesn’t really do it justice. It’s more like “how did you even sign off on this in the first place?”
Oh, and there’s a 24-year-old woman involved who is somehow the ideal microcosm for how bizarre the coach’s decision-making has been in this role.
Who did I just describe there — Bill Belichick at UNC or Urban Meyer with the Jacksonville Jaguars?
The correct answer is “yes.”
As in, yes, this looks like a disaster that’ll forever be considered a strange, let’s-later-try-to-forget-this-happened, 1-year experiment that was doomed from the jump. It’s one thing to make poor personnel decisions like hiring your sons to lead the defensive staff or hiring a disgraced college strength coach and thinking that everyone in an NFL locker room would just climb on board. It’s another to be so obviously cooked just a month into Year 1.
Unlike Meyer in Jacksonville in 2021, Belichick hasn’t officially been fired from his post in Chapel Hill (Chapel “Bill” never really caught on) yet, but after the Wednesday that was, it’s safe to say that feels imminent. File this-team issued statement under “things you don’t see after just 5 games.”
Of course, that was the 9:36 p.m. ET statement that was released following a report from Ollie Connolly that buyout options have already been “discussed.”
The irony is that this came on the same day in which USA Today’s annual coach salary reports were released, wherein it stated that Belichick had a $20,833,333 buyout at season’s end if UNC were to fire him without cause. Negotiating “his own $1 million buyout if he can find a soft landing with another team or in media” would be him quitting midseason. That would be a touch different than Steve Spurrier quitting on South Carolina in the middle of the 2015 season. While it wasn’t exactly ideal timing, a 70-year-old coach who realized that he couldn’t do it anymore had a bit of grace after he gave a decade to the program and brought a golden era to Columbia.
Spurrier’s time at South Carolina was infamously preceded by the 2 years he spent exploring the NFL waters with the then-Washington Redskins, but a 12-20 mark over 2 seasons was hardly a comparable disaster to the Belichick era at UNC, where the Heels have been outscored 120-33 in 3 Power Conference games (they all felt like they could’ve been worse). If this were as simple as having a tough Year 1 on the field, there’d be a bit of grace. Obviously, though, it’s not.
The canceled Hulu documentary-style show into Belichick’s time at UNC wasn’t surprising given the Jordon Hudson-controlled image shaping that’s been reported. It wasn’t just the “we’re not talking about this” viral moment on CBS News Sunday Morning, or that there were reports that Belichick’s girlfriend was “banned” from the UNC facilities. It’s the fact that all of this is getting out.
This is exactly what it looks like when key decision makers aren’t aligned
Clearly, UNC had that before Belichick was even hired. Let’s just say we can assume that — as convincing as that 9:36 p.m. ET statement was ahead of Week 7 — he hasn’t exactly turned those internal skeptics into believers.
If you want a non-Meyer comparison for what it looks like when decision-makers aren’t aligned, go back to Bryan Harsin at Auburn. The post-Year 1 coup had disgruntled booster fingerprints all over it. We can debate how fair that was to Harsin when he denied any truth to the reported infidelity, but like with Belichick, this stuff only sees the light of day from local media (or folks like Pablo Torre) if there are decision-makers who want to move on, by any means necessary.
By the time that Meyer was canned after a 2-11 start, the list of bizarre reported issues read more like a script for an HBO series about a free-falling coach than something that actually happened. He reportedly called assistant coaches “losers” and asked them to defend their résumés. He had his owner deliver a public rebuke of social media videos that surfaced of a married Meyer touching a 24-year-old woman’s bottom while she danced on him at a bar. The Tampa Bay Times even reported that Meyer kicked ex-Jaguars kicker Josh Lambo in the leg while he was stretching before practice. Amid all of that, Meyer declared that anyone “leaking information risks losing their job.” The irony is that the person responsible for doing those things (Meyer), did indeed lose his job after the Lambo story was considered the last straw.
We’re all waiting for Belichick’s last straw at UNC. Perhaps it’ll be something a bit less scandalous than kicking a player and it’ll instead be an anticlimactic 35-0 loss next game at Cal, whose offense is led by, ironically enough, Harsin. Maybe Belichick will get fired before that cross-country flight back to Chapel Hill, and instead, he and Hudson will stay in California, as far away from their UNC mess as possible.
Who knows, though? We could be in for a final straw so scandalous that it makes the half-century age gap in the Belichick-Hudson relationship look like a mom buying a sweater at Kohl’s. At this point, anything is on the table.
Well, except for Belichick at UNC being anything but a strange, let’s-later-try-to-forget-this-happened, 1-year experiment.
Connor O'Gara is the senior national columnist for Saturday Down South. He's a member of the Football Writers Association of America. After spending his entire life living in B1G country, he moved to the South in 2015.
