It's been a few weeks since we heard anything salacious, greedy, stupid or just plain time-wasting from Bill Belichick, which is a surprise as well as a blessing given that he is one of those sports figures who producers and station managers never tire of churning. In short, enjoy the sounds of nature in a vacuum, because fall practice starts soon and we are about to relearn what it's like to be angry at and sick of the North Carolina Tar Heels the way we were the New England Patriots.
But that's no longer the standard, because as much as he wants his new job to be about football, he knows in a corner of his mind that he is actually a science experiment on the hoof. Specifically, how Old Folks America can pretend to be interested in a team just because he's there at a time when that team is in a sport that's shrinking back into a regional entertainment. It is a question of how long bankable fame actually lasts before it turns into something pejorative, or worse. It is also a test case on how long teenagers in an open market can be moved by someone who is a hero to their parents and grandparents.
The assumption that seems to overwhelm so many is that "Belichick" is the answer to the question "Belichick?" The hot mess of the hyper-management style of Jordon Hudson is its own side issue, one which will be wielded with malice aforethought if the football doesn't pan out immediately. And because the Atlantic Coast Conference is not a power player in the new college football politburo, the chances of Belichick satisfying the bar that the money at UNC has set for him by giving him the run of the athletic department are low.
You needn't care about any of this, of course, because you A) may not be hot for college football, B) probably aren't hot for North Carolina football, and C) almost surely are not hot for Belichick's new regime, whether it includes Hudson or not. But Belichick on his own is listening to his inner muse these days, because he isn't ready to stop being a coach and isn't going to settle for not being an emperor because that's the old coaching paradigm. In other words, the business of being Belichick is fun to laugh at because Hudson tackled it with catcher's mitts, but the job of being Belichick is a test of our ability as a nation to allow someone to reinvent himself at such an advanced stage of his career.
This isn't about age, as there have been a number of successful college coaches who worked past 70, including Bobby Bowden, who won a national championship at Florida State at age 71. But Belichick enters at the most top-heavy and least settled era in the history of the sport, and does not do so at a historical or economic football power. And while him not being a raging success should not materially damage his legacy, our obsession with updating people's legacies after every game makes it an issue we will quickly come to hate. And when we hate an issue, we personalize the hatred because detached nuance in the face of an overtime loss at Cal is strictly for candypants with collapsible spines.
Frankly, the only way this really works for him is if he finds some teenaged version of Tom Brady and starts making miracles on a weekly basis, and then manages to keep said Bradyoid from entering the transfer portal after every road game. College athletics donors are not patient by nature, the fan base is largely the hyena enclosure at the Charlotte Zoo, and the college punditocracy mucks out the hyenas' stalls because it beats either actual work or covering the Hornets. In short, you bet on Belichick in these circumstances at your peril.
All that said, Belichick knew the job was dangerous PR when he took it, and the gathering shitstorm is just what we do to amuse ourselves between topographical studies of Cal Raleigh's seat cushions. In other words, strap in, kids. You've never been as sick of Bill Belichick as you are about to be.
