1952-present
Latest News: Bill Belichick Hired at North Carolina
Champion football coach Bill Belichick will walk the side lines again in 2025—for a team very few might have guessed. On December 11, the University of North Carolina announced 72-year-old Belichick, who previously led the New England Patriots to six Super Bowls titles, had reached a five-year deal to become the school’s next football coach.
Belichick, known for his gruff demeanor and trademark hoodie, coached the Patriots for 24 seasons before he and the team amicably split earlier this year. He has never led an NCAA team but does have a connection to the Chapel Hill school. His father, Steve, was an assistant coach at UNC from 1953 through 1955.
“I am excited for the opportunity at UNC-Chapel Hill. I grew up around college football with my dad and treasured those times. I have always wanted to coach in college, and now I look forward to building the football program in Chapel Hill,” Belichick said in a statement.
The Tar Heels have reached six straight bowl games, but UNC fired head coach Mack Brown in November after the team split its regular season schedule with a 6-6 record. The team hasn’t won its conference championship since 1980.
Belichick could use the job as a stepping stone to eventually return to the NFL. With 333 career wins, he is only 14 away from setting the all-time league record.
Who Is Bill Belichick?
The son of a longtime college coach, Bill Belichick got his own start in coaching in 1975 when he took a job with the Baltimore Colts. By the 1980s, he was the defensive coordinator for the New York Giants and praised as one of the brightest minds in the game. After a rocky stint as head coach of the Cleveland Browns in the early 1990s, the New England Patriots hired Belichick in 2000. He went on to guide the franchise to six Super Bowl victories, the most by a head coach in NFL history, before the two sides agreed to split in January 2024. In December 2024, the University of North Carolina hired Belichick as its next head coach.
Quick Facts
FULL NAME: William Stephen Belichick
BORN: April 16, 1952
BIRTHPLACE: Nashville, Tennessee
SPOUSE: Debby Clarke (1977-2006)
CHILDREN: Amanda, Stephen, and Brian
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Aries
Early Life
Bill Belichick was born William Stephen Belichick on April 16, 1952, in Nashville, Tennessee. The only child of Steve and Jeannette Belichick, Bill showed an early aptitude for the game of football, a trait he no doubt inherited from his father who was a longtime assistant coach and college football scout.
Bill studied how his father dissected game film and drew up plays, and he often accompanied Steve to coaches meetings. By his early teens, Bill was a regular part of the team’s practices and was well-versed in the game’s schemes and formations.
After graduating from Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, Bill enrolled at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, where he played lacrosse and earned an undergraduate degree in economics.
Past Teams: New York Giants and Cleveland Browns
Following his graduation from Wesleyan in 1975, Bill took a job with the Baltimore Colts for $25 a week, serving as a sort of gopher for head coach Ted Marchibroda. From there, Belichick hooked on with a number of NFL teams, including the Detroit Lions and Denver Broncos, as he attempted to climb the league’s coaching ladder.
In 1979, Belichick was hired by the New York Giants to coach the team’s special teams unit. He ended up staying with the club for 12 seasons, eventually taking over as defensive coordinator under head coach Bill Parcells, who steered the franchise to a pair of Super Bowl victories.
After the Giants’ second Super Bowl win in 1991, Cleveland Browns owner Art Modell hired Belichick as his new head coach. Belichick’s time in Cleveland proved rocky. Demanding of his players and hardly a friend to the media, Belichick had difficulty winning over the team’s fans and its mercurial owner. Following the 1995 season and Modell’s announcement that he was moving the franchise to Baltimore, Belichick was fired.
Belichick quickly found work with his old mentor, Bill Parcells, who at the time was head coach of the New England Patriots. The pair worked in New England for the 1996 season. That year, the Patriots made it to the Super Bowl but lost to the Green Bay Packers. The following year, Belichick followed Parcells to the New York Jets, where Parcells had been hired as head coach.
Patriots Head Coach
In early 2000, Belichick got another shot to direct a franchise, when New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft named him head coach. While old Browns fans snickered at New England’s decision to hire him, Belichick quickly demonstrated why Kraft had wanted him. Following a difficult 2000 season, the coach rode the young arm of quarterback Tom Brady, who’d stepped in early in the year for an injured Drew Bledsoe, and guided the Patriots in 2001 to a Super Bowl XXXVI victory against the heavily favored St. Louis Rams.
Belichick and the Patriots repeated their championship run two years later, winning Super Bowl XXXVIII. The team successfully defended its title the following season, winning Super Bowl XXXIX against Terrell Owens and the Philadelphia Eagles.
Belichick has been named Coach of the Year three times, in 2003, 2007, and 2010. In 2007 and 2011, he again steered the New England Patriots to the Super Bowl, where both times they lost to Eli Manning and the New York Giants. During the 2007 season, he became the first head coach to ever preside over a 16-0 regular season team.
The 2014 season brought more impressive accomplishments for Belichick, who tied NFL coaching records by leading the franchise to its sixth Super Bowl appearance and its fourth championship.
“Spygate” and “Deflategate”
Not everything about Belichick’s coaching career has sparkled. In 2007, it came to light that the Patriots had, over several years, secretly videotaped opposing coaches in order to learn their play-calling signals. The incident, which came to be known as “Spygate,” resulted in Belichick being fined $500,000 by the league. The Patriots were fined an additional $250,000 and lost a first-round pick in the 2008 NFL draft.
More accusations of foul play came when it was revealed that New England had used underinflated footballs in the 2014 AFC title game, an episode that garnered the nickname “Deflategate,” though Belichick denied any wrongdoing.
Super Bowl Records
In 2016, Belichick led the Patriots to the AFC Championship, but the team lost to the Denver Broncos. The Patriots returned to Super Bowl LI in 2017, facing off against the Atlanta Falcons. In a thrilling game, the first Super Bowl to go into overtime in NFL history, Brady led the Patriots to 34-28 comeback victory, making Belichick the first head coach to win five Super Bowl rings and play in seven championships.
After suffering a loss to the Philadelphia Eagles in the big game the following year, New England again represented the AFC in Super Bowl LIII. Thanks to an airtight defensive scheme, the Patriots put the clamps on the high-scoring Los Angeles Rams for a 13-3 triumph, giving Belichick a remarkable sixth Super Bowl win as a head coach.
The Patriots followed by getting off to an impressive 8-0 start in 2019, before sputtering down the stretch and getting bounced in the first round of the playoffs by the Tennessee Titans.
Post-Brady Era and Departure
After nearly two decades of the Belichick-Brady partnership, the head coach found himself looking for a new quarterback when Brady announced that he had signed with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in March 2020. The Patriots signed veteran Cam Newton for the 2020 season, but the team averaged only 20 points per game and finished 7-9, missing the playoffs.
The following year, New England drafted quarterback Mac Jones from the University of Alabama as a potential long-term replacement for Brady. Jones played well as a rookie, throwing 22 touchdowns and leading the Pats to a 10-7 record. However, the team lost to division rival Buffalo in the playoffs.
Jones struggled over the next two seasons, with the Patriots going 8-9 and missing the postseason in 2022 then limping to an even worse 4-13 record the following year. The team’s poor results led to speculation that Belichick wouldn’t return as head coach in 2024. Those suspicions were ultimately confirmed when the coach announced in a joint news conference with Kraft on January 11 the two sides had “amicably” agreed to part ways.
UNC Football Coach
Despite Belichick’s championship pedigree, he didn’t join the staff of any NFL teams for the 2024 season, leaving many to ponder the coach’s next step. He appeared as a full-time guest on ManningCast, the Monday Night Football commentary program hosted by Peyton and Eli Manning.
Come December, ESPN reported that Belichick wanted to coach again, was open to NFL or NCAA programs, and had an interview with the University of North Carolina. On December 11, the school announced that Belichick had agreed to a five-year deal to coach the football team, pending approval by the Board of Trustees and Board of Governors. The Athletic reported Belichick will make $10 million per season.
“Carolina is committed to excellence and to creating an opportunity to succeed in everything we do, from the classroom to the field of competition. I know after speaking with Coach Belichick that he shares that commitment,” school chancellor Lee H. Roberts said of the hire.
Belichick is expected to take the reins starting with UNC’s first game of the 2025 season. The Tar Heels face the TCU Horned Frogs on August 30 at home.
Girlfriend, Ex-Wife, and Children
Belichick began dating former college cheerleader Jordon Hudson in early 2023. The pair, who have a 48-year age gap, reportedly met on a flight two years prior, when Hudson was a college student at Bridgewater State University.
Belichick was previously married to Debby Clarke for almost 30 years before their 2006 divorce. The pair has three children: Amanda, Stephen, and Brian.
In 2007, Belichick began dating Linda Holliday, a television sports correspondent who later became president of the Bill Belichick Foundation during their relationship. It was reported in September 2023 that the couple had split after the relationship “ran its course.”
Quotes
- I think practice preparation is always an indicator of game performance.
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