Bill Belichick is now a college football coach. It's going to be harder than he thinks.

Bill Belichick is a college football coach. That is a sentence that is factually accurate, as Belichick has been hired as North Carolina’s new head man in a stunning move made official Wednesday.

Belichick, 72, who worked in the NFL in some capacity from 1975 through 2023 and won six Super Bowls as the head coach of the New England Patriots, has never coached in college football. He did spend some time around the sport this fall with his son Stephen, who was the defensive coordinator at the University of Washington, but he’ll learn a lot more about the differences between college and pro football soon enough.

And though there’s a narrative surrounding Belichick’s shocking move that implies that it’s a step back from coaching in the NFL, it’s really not true. College football isn’t the junior varsity version of the sport. It’s actually harder. 

New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick during a game against the New York Jets in Foxborough, Mass., on Jan. 7.Winslow Townson / Getty Images file

College football is more complicated than its professional counterpart in some significant ways, as coaches report to university presidents and boards of trustees in addition to athletic department officials. They are expected to wine, dine and dazzle donors. They travel all over the country to recruit teenagers and spend the rest of the time building relationships with the 18- to 22-year-olds on their rosters, worried that they might transfer out of their programs or demand more monetary compensation at any point. They’re general managers, chief marketing officers and — oh, yeah — football coaches all at the same time.

That’s the world that Belichick is wading into. 

The most important thing to him is that he’s going to coach football again. It’s clear he has wanted to get back onto the sidelines ever since his ugly breakup with the Patriots at the end of the 2023 season. But he didn’t land an NFL gig last offseason, and he apparently didn’t want to wait a few weeks to see whether there was a market for his services in the pros. This move, as unusual as it is, does get him his favorite moniker back: Coach.

The natural follow-up question is obvious: Is he ready for the rest of it? The Patriots Way isn’t going to work in Chapel Hill. Belichick will have to round out those rough edges to build relationships with recruits and college kids. He’ll deal with time constraints with college players that he never had to with pros. He’ll also use his incredible football mind to evaluate talent, develop players and scheme up ways to put them in the best possible position to succeed.

The man who will go down as the greatest coach in NFL history will try to mirror what made Nick Saban the greatest coach in college football history. And he’ll lean on his NFL experience as college football continues to move toward a professional model. 

Beginning next fall, schools can share up to $20 million in revenue directly with their own athletes each year. And, of course, name, image and likeness deals will continue to exist. Belichick’s experience with roster management and NFL free agency should help.

So will the attraction that is Belichick himself. Much like Deion Sanders singularly commanded an incredible amount of attention when he was hired by Colorado, the spotlight will now be insanely bright in Chapel Hill. Media members will flock to campus and cover every twist and turn of an unprecedented offseason. And great players will want to learn from Belichick, even if UNC hasn’t historically been very good in football.

“Let me put this in capital letters, if, ‘I. F.,’ I was in a college program, that college program would be a pipeline to the NFL for players that had ability to play in the NFL,” Belichick said this week on “The Pat McAfee Show,” before he finalized the deal with UNC. “It would be a professional program: training, nutrition, scheme, coaching, techniques that would transfer to the NFL. It will be an NFL program at a college level.

“I feel very confident that I have the contacts in the NFL to pave the way for those players that would have the opportunity to compete in the National Football League.” 

If this experiment works as intended, that’s exactly what will happen. But it’s considered a stunning move for a reason — there’s a great deal of risk to go along with the potential reward here. And it’s going to be a lot messier and significantly harder than even Belichick probably realizes.

Nicole Auerbach is the Lead College Football and Basketball Insider for NBC Sports. For the latest news in college football, as well as coverage of the 2024-25 College Football Playoff, subscribe to “Rushing the Field” with Auerbach and Joshua Perry on Apple, Spotify and YouTube.