From Legend to Laughingstock? Bill Belichick Enters Second Season at UNC With Plenty to Prove

While the rest of the college football world tries to figure out who is eligible to play and who isn’t, Bill Belichick takes the field thousands of miles from home, attempting to pull out of an unprecedented personal and professional tailspin.The legendary former New England Patriots head coach, owner of six Super Bowl rings, opens his second season at the helm of the University of North Carolina on Saturday at Dublin, Ireland. The Tar Heels clash with Texas Christian University in the marquee international opener of the major college football schedule.Much of the news about college sports of late has come from courtrooms instead of the gridiron, as lawyers and judges battle over whether players who have been in NFL training camps can return to play in college.That hot-button issue has kept some of the national spotlight off Mr. Belichick and a North Carolina football program that has been under scrutiny since his heralded arrival just over a year ago. Despite his vow to duplicate his NFL success at Chapel Hill, the Tar Heels suffered through a disappointing and often embarrassing inaugural season.On the field, the Tar Heels went 4-8, failed to make a bowl appearance, and had zero UNC players selected in the 2026 NFL Draft. The off-the-field issues were just as glaring and continue to this day.UNC opens its season without Mike Lombardi, the Tar Heels highly paid general manager of football, who is on paid administrative leave for an undisclosed reason after a human resources complaint was filed against him.The university has been tight-lipped about what prompted Mr. Lombardi to be placed on paid administrative leave on July 27, saying only that it involved allegations related to a “personnel matter.”The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has hired at least three outside lawyers to assist with its investigation into Mr. Lombardi. “If something has gone wrong, we want to know about it,” UNC’s chancellor, Lee Roberts, told reporters on July 30. “If something needs to be fixed, we will be sure to fix it. There’s a standard of excellence here that all of us are entrusted with adhering to.”Mr. Lombardi’s lawyer, Tom Mars, told WRAL on Aug. 5 that his client welcomes “the opportunity to clear his name.”Also missing at Dublin will be Mr. Belichick’s son, defensive coordinator Steve Belichick, who has taken an indefinite leave of absence for an undisclosed medical issue. His absence from the team comes months after Steve Belichick’s wife Jen had words with Bill Belichick’s girlfriend, Jordan Hudson, then told her father-in-law to “wake up” and choose between his family and Ms. Hudson.The relationship between the 74-year-old coach and Ms. Hudson, 25, hasn’t received the media scrutiny that it did last year when she was prominent on the sidelines and during interviews with national media. But reports of players accumulating parking tickets, speeding tickets, and reckless driving charges on campus, and rumors of UNC being ready to move on from the NFL legend have put his coaching legacy on the line.Like just about every college coach these days, Mr. Belichick had to rebuild his roster through the transfer portal. Billy Edwards Jr, who played just two games at Wisconsin last season, is the Tar Heels new quarterback, while Mr. Belichick calls the defensive plays.Asked if he feels pressure to produce this season, Mr. Belichick, who failed to receive enough votes to be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility, offered his customary bland answer: “Recruiting, fundraising – you name it. There are a lot of different things and I can improve in all of them,” he said.The UNC-TCU game at Dublin kicks off what should be a memorable season. Among the notable storylines is the return of the Pac-12, which was reduced to only Washington State and Oregon State the past two seasons after much of its membership jumped to the Big Ten, Big 12 and ACC. This year, the Pac-12 has added Texas State, Fresno State, San Diego State, Boise State, Colorado State, and Utah State as football members, giving the conference eight programs for 2026.Meanwhile, the Fair Catch Kick is being implemented. Beginning this season, the NCAA will allow “fair catch kicks,” a little-known wrinkle in the NFL rule book that will now be standardized as part of the college game.A fair catch happens when a kick returner, on either a punt or a kickoff, signals with a wave of their hand that he will simply catch the ball without any attempt to advance it. When the ball is caught, the play is whistled dead, and the receiving team gets possession at the spot of the catch. The “fair catch kick” rule allows the receiving team to then attempt one free kick, either with a holder or with a simple dropkick, in an attempt to kick the ball through the uprights for a three-point field goal. If the kick is missed, the defense can catch it and attempt to run it back or simply take possession at the spot the ball was kicked from.The NFL version of this rule is rarely used. Cameron Dicker’s 57-yard fair catch kick for the Los Angeles Chargers in December 2024 was the league’s first successful attempt since 1976.The usual suspects are favored to reach the College Football Playoffs and compete for a national championship won last year by Indiana. Ohio State opens as the top-ranked team in the nation followed by Oregon, Georgia, Notre Dame and Texas — where Arch Manning, the nephew of Peyton and Eli Manning, enters his second season as the Longhorns’ starting quarterback.“I got to remind myself to just continue to be myself,” Mr. Manning said after a mostly down-before-up 2025 campaign in which he finished with 14 touchdowns passes and just two interceptions over his last seven games, “and not let stuff get to my head and just continue to be me.”The season opens amid a flurry of legal drama over eligibility. Two days after the Southeastern Conference passed a rule barring players from returning to the league from the pros, a Texas judge put that rule on hold Thursday in a case involving more than 40 players.It was the latest development in what turned into a breakneck week of legal wrangling over the NCAA’s new five-year eligibility rule. The rule does not apply to college players who exhausted their fourth year of eligibility last spring; many are now suing across the country for that fifth year.Two of the plaintiffs are a former SMU receiver, Jordon Hudson of the Cowboys, and a former Miami linebacker, Wesley Bissainthe of the Chiefs. Neither played in the SEC, but the judge ordered the NCAA to open the transfer portal for a week, meaning either could play for a new school if one wanted to sign them.The order said nothing of the other Power 4 conferences, all of which have passed similar rules that went beyond the NFL to include basketball. The Atlantic Coast Conference became the last of the four to pass a rule Thursday. The Mountain West, a Group of Six conference, passed a similar prohibition hours after the ACC announcement.This lawsuit named the NCAA, the SEC and its commissioner, Greg Sankey, as defendants. At least two players who signed with NFL teams as undrafted free agents this offseason were hoping to play for No. 11 LSU.“Just to me, that’s kind of a cutoff, when a guy goes pro,” N.C. State’s football coach, Dave Doeren, said after Thursday’s practice and before the ACC adopted its policy. “And we say ‘Goodbye, good luck,’ and we move on. And there shouldn’t be the ability to come back. If it’s the Big Ten, SEC — it doesn’t matter to me: it’s an amateurism rule.”This week, the NFL said players who leave the NFL to return to college won’t be allowed to come back to the league this season.Watching attorneys and players challenge the NCAA and Power Conference has been a game of its own during the offseason. Now it’s time for the real games to begin.

From Legend to Laughingstock? Bill Belichick Enters Second Season at UNC With Plenty to Prove

From Legend to Laughingstock? Bill Belichick Enters Second Season at UNC With Plenty to Prove

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