The former New England Patriots boss, who has 302 wins in the NFL, said the college game is evolving to look more like the pros every day.

Newly hired University of North Carolina football coach Bill Belichick insisted Thursday he’s sold on the college game and not looking for a steppingstone back to pro ball.

The University of North Carolina stunned much of the football world this week by hiring Belichick, whose all-time great NFL résumé stands in stark contrast to an empty syllabus of college experience.

“I didn’t come here to leave,” Belichick, the six-time Super Bowl-champion coach, told reporters in Chapel Hill. “I’m here to do the best I can for the University of North Carolina and the program.”

elichick’s contract is for five years, pending approval by the university’s Board of Trustees and Board of Governors.

“We’ve been playing football at Carolina since 1888, and I suspect that in those 136 years, there are few days that have been as auspicious as this one,” UNC Chancellor Lee Roberts said.

Roberts sat at a table with Belichick and athletic director Bubba Cunningham, wearing a suit jacket with its sleeves cut off, mimicking Belichick’s sideline fashion.

“I’ve said many times that we want to be the best public university in the United States, and that means excellence in everything that we do,” Roberts said. “We’re going to have an excellent college football program. We want to compete with the best, and we’ve hired the best coach.”

Belichick coached the Patriots from 2000 to 2023, and New England won Super Bowls after the 2001, 2003, 2004, 2014, 2016 and 2018 seasons. He and New England mutually parted ways in January.

Now Belichick hopes to join a select club of coaches who’ve won it all both in college and the NFL:

• Pete Carroll re-established Southern California as a college powerhouse, going 97-19 over nine seasons in Los Angeles and capturing a pair of Associated Press national championships. He went on to a successful 14-year run with the Seattle Seahawks, winning two NFC titles and one Super Bowl.
• Jimmy Johnson led the Dallas Cowboys to Super Bowl wins after the 1992 and 1993 regular seasons. Before he landed in Dallas, Johnson had spent 10 successful years running the sidelines of Oklahoma State and Miami, winning the 1987 AP title for the Hurricanes.
• Former Oklahoma coach Barry Switzer inherited Johnson’s Cowboys and led Dallas to the Super Bowl title after the 1995 regular season. His Sooners won three AP titles, in 1974, 1975 and 1985.

Belichick’s curious career choice comes just 11 months after he and the Patriots agreed to part following a remarkable 24-season run that included six Super Bowl wins with quarterback Tom Brady at the helm.

His 302 regular season wins, leading the Patriots and the Cleveland Browns, is No. 3 on the all-time list, trailing only George Halas’ 318 and Don Shula’s 328.

It had been long believed that Belichick coveted Shula’s record and would want another NFL gig to achieve it.

But time might be running out for Belichick at his age (72) to get back to the NFL and score the 26 wins needed to catch Shula.

Belichick was asked why he’s even coaching at all with nothing left to prove.

“Well, it beats working,” he joked. “When you love what you do, it’s not working. It’s really, I love what I do. I love coaching. I love the interaction with the players.”

Belichick also said the transition from pros to college isn’t the gulf it used to be now that the NCAA game includes technology, rules and even a pay structure that can be compared to those of the pros.

In his brief time away from pro football, Belichick said, a host of college coaches have been asking his advice on how to implement those pro football features into college.

“Here’s what I would say — college kind of came to me this year. I didn’t necessarily go and seek it out,” Belichick said.

“I’d say that [those conversations] started to make me a lot more aware of it, because the first thing I had to do was learn about it,” he said.

Belichick takes over a UNC program that’s solidly in the upper middle tier of college football but still far from elite.

The Tar Heels last won an Atlantic Coast Conference title in 1980 when they were led by future Hall of Fame linebacker Lawrence Taylor.

North Carolina last month parted ways with coach Mack Brown, who had been the leader among all active Bowl Subdivision coaches in career wins.

Brown, who coached Texas to the 2005 national championship, was 44-33 in his second stint at UNC, which lasted six years.

Belichick’s father, longtime Navy assistant coach Steve Belichick, had a stint at UNC from 1953 to 1955.

A childhood spent around college influenced his decision to come back to campus, Belichick said.

“This is really kind of a dream come true,” he said. “So as a kid, all I knew was college football, and so it’s great to come back home to Carolina and back in an environment that I really grew up in.”