Bill Belichick: A Super Bowl god's fall from grace

While the New England Patriots prepare for their 12th Super Bowl appearance, their former head coach Bill Belichick - widely considered to be the greatest professional football coach of all time - finds himself in an unlikely position: defending his legacy.

Although Belichick has the most Super Bowl victories in NFL history, he received a phone call on Friday notifying him he would not be inducted into this year's Pro Football Hall of Fame class.

"Six Super Bowls isn't enough?" Belichick asked with disappointment, according to ESPN which broke the news, referring to his six wins with the Patriots.

The latest setback adds to a series of misfortunes for Belichick, who ended his nearly 50-year NFL coaching career on a losing streak, and, in a rather unexpected decision, left the pinnacle of American football to coach college students.

Just a few months ago, Belichick made his college football debut to a sell-out crowd of over 50,000 people packed into University of North Carolina's football stadium.

When he walked onto the field for the first time, the roar of tens of thousands of screaming fans erupted into the night sky.

The Tar Heels suffered a stinging defeat to the Texas Christian University Horned Frogs that night, and never quite recovered. By the end of the 12-game season, the team finished with just four wins – its worst record since 2018.

The paradox between Belichick's legendary NFL career and his spectacularly poor first year in college football is complicating his legacy. After nearly 50 years coaching professional football, why Belichick accepted an offer to step down to the amateur leagues remains a big question. When he will quit is becoming an even bigger one.

"He's going to have one of the biggest challenges of his coaching career trying to get year two to be better than year one in North Carolina," said Dan Roche, an award-winning sports anchor with the BBC's US media partner, CBS News.

"If they struggle again, I think that will basically be the end of the coaching career of Bill Belichick," he continued.

For years, the trend in college football has been that coaches typically leave the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) for greater prestige and bigger salaries in the NFL.

But the college league – which generates over $1.3bn (£940.5m) in revenue – is starting to catch up.

"North Carolina decided to roll the dice and invest a lot of money in its football program," said Greg Barnes, senior reporter at Inside Carolina, a website dedicated to North Carolina University sports.

And with that came Belichick, who signed a five-year $50m (£36m) deal to join the Tar Heels.

"That kind of money is unheard of for North Carolina football," Barnes said, notwithstanding that the contract went to 73-year-old Belichick who previously had never coached a single game of college football.

Most sports experts who've followed his career suspect he's not in it for the money.

For Belichick, they say, it's part love of the game, part love for coaching, and part an affliction that has ailed many great sports figures: an inability to know when to say goodbye.

"I can't recall many head coaches who have said, 'Okay, I've done it all, and now I'm going to walk away'," Roche said. "I just think they don't have it in them."

Belichick's rise and fall in the NFL

Belichick was born into a football family.

His father, Steve Belichick, had a long college coaching career, including 30 years at the US Naval Academy and two years at North Carolina.

The younger Belichick's understanding of football was also nurtured by his mother, Jeannette, with whom he spent many weekends watching games on TV.

Belichick played football and lacrosse at Wesleyan University where he graduated in 1975 with an economics degree. Having never played in the professional league, he began his NFL career that same year as a staff assistant.

"He doesn't look like a football coach. He's not an overwhelming physical presence. He's not a screamer," said ESPN senior writer Seth Wickersham. "He's kind of a quirky, introverted thinker."

"And he revolutionised professional football," Wickersham said.

By 1985, Belichick had climbed the ranks to become the defensive coordinator of one of America's premier football teams, the New York Giants. There, he won his first two Super Bowls.

However, he truly forged his legacy during his decades-long career as the New England Patriots head coach.

He joined the team in 2000. One year later, with the help of quarterback Tom Brady, they won their first Super Bowl. Then five more after that. Altogether, the Brady-and-Belichick-led Patriots appeared in the Super Bowl nine times, the most under any single head coach in NFL history .

Mike Reiss, an ESPN staff writer who covers the Patriots, attributed Belichick's success to being "a master strategist".

"When he was at his peak powers, he almost knew the opposition more than the opposition knew themselves," Reiss said.

Belichick's critics point to a series of scandals that rocked the Patriots during his tenure, including in 2007 when he was fined $500,000 (£362,000) for ordering his staff to spy on other teams, and in 2016, when Brady was suspended for four games for deflating footballs to his advantage.

In 2020, Brady left the Patriots, reportedly in part due to Belichick's unwillingness to give Brady, then-aged 43, the longer contract Brady wanted.

Brady joined the Tampa Bay Buccaneers the same year and won his seventh Super Bowl. In Belichick's final two seasons with the Patriots, he led the team to one of its worst records since the 1990s.

Belichick and the Patriots mutually agreed to part ways in January 2024. He was unable to find another NFL team to take him after that.

"It was a stunning rebuke by the NFL," said Wickersham, author of New York Times bestseller It's Better to be Feared: The New England Patriots Dynasty and the Pursuit of Greatness.

"For the first time since 1975", Wickersham said, "Belichick was out of football".

Continued downward spiral in the NCAA

It was during one of the lowest points of Belichick's professional career that he received the call from North Carolina.

Outside of a few sceptics, college football fans were engulfed in enthusiasm.

"Congrats coach," Tom Brady posted on social media. "The Tar Heel way is about to become a thing 100."

With his name emblazoned on merchandise, home-game tickets for the entire season sold out weeks before it started.

But Belichick was unable to reverse the bad fortune that appeared to follow him from his final years in the NFL.

After their defeat in game one, the Tar Heels would go on to lose most games, including every match against their three in-state rivals, something the team hadn't done since 1989.

As the season losses piled up, so did the number of empty seats inside North Carolina's football stadium.

For some, like North Carolina Alumni Association member Deborah Melvin, it was painful to witness even from home.

"It was just disheartening," she said. "He was supposed to be Mr Super Coach."

Adding to fans' frustrations was the incessant press coverage of Belichick's romantic relationship with Jordon Hudson, a 24-year-old beauty pageant contestant and amateur cheerleader.

Wickersham called it "the most scrutinized relationship ever for an American sports coach".

Hudson made headlines. Lots of headlines. Like when she was rumoured to have been banned from North Carolina's athletic facilities and the university had to put out a statement saying she wasn't. Or the time when she appeared next to Belichick on the sidelines on game day wearing a reptile mini-skirt and knee-high boots. Or the time when she filed a trademark application for the term "gold digger".

Belichick couldn't avoid the gossip columns either, making his own headlines amid multiple appearances at Hudson's cheerleading competitions and beauty pageants.

Wickersham said he found the Belichick-Hudson saga to be "surprising", adding that it contributed to the noise surrounding Belichick who previously "was a master at limiting distractions".

"It's definitely different than the Belichick who was with New England all those years," Wickersham said.

The university declined a request from the BBC to interview Belichick.

'We had to just get into the dark room'

The Tar Heels' bad season has not been blamed on Hudson, though. It was a variety of other factors.

This was Belichick's first time coaching a college football team, a group composed of a bunch of teenagers with often much steeper learning curves compared to the pros of the NFL.

The other major challenge was recruiting. Belichick joined the Tar Heels after the deadline for high school athletes to accept their college offers. That meant he missed the chance to persuade some of America's best high school football talent to join his team this year.

"To get the system in place is more than just turning a light switch on," North Carolina football manager Mike Lombardi said after the season.

"I'm not making any excuses, but when we first got here, we didn't have time to turn the light switch on," he said. "We had to just get into the dark room."

Lombardi's remarks came during a signing ceremony on 3 December, as the team celebrated the new class of recruits joining the Tar Heels' next season.

"They will be a foundation of our program," Belichick said.

For now, quitting does not appear to be an option for the all-time great coach.

"'Why are you still doing this? You could be doing anything,'" Weiss said he once asked Belichick toward the end of his career with the Patriots. "And he replied, 'It beats working.'

"I'll never forget that, because I feel like this is what he feels like he was born to do."