If you’re still blinking and trying to make sense of the offseason, you’re not alone. Bill Belichick coaching college football in 2025 might just be the biggest ‘wait, what?!’ moment we’ve had since Deion Sanders brought prime-time bravado to Boulder. Tar Heel blue is about to blend with six Super Bowls’ worth of gridiron wisdom and the kind of sideline scowl that’s sent NFL Hall of Famers scrambling for decades. If you’re not fired up for opening day in Chapel Hill, you may be immune to college football magic. A lot of national analysts have already sounded the alarm. Some of them (you, Josh Pate) have gone so far as to say that Bill’s CFB career will be a failure. But why?

Seasoned insider Pat Forde gave two main reasons why Bill could likely fail in college football. “That was the most interesting coaching move I’ve maybe ever seen. Yeah. Maybe even more than Colorado hiring Deion Sanders. I mean, Bill Belichick has won six Super Bowls. You’re bringing that into college. It’s amazing,” Forde said on Gramlich and Mac Lain, capturing the astonishment echoing through press boxes from Charlotte to Cheyenne. Is this even surprising now? Every Belichick slander starts from his ever-so-praising introduction. Well, this won’t be much of a slander, though. Just some cautious alarms we should look out for.

Forde’s analysis hits on the two massive, blinking-red warning signs that could sink the Belichick experiment. The first one, he said, “If he doesn’t get frustrated with, you know, I’m no longer coaching the best players on the planet, right?” Imagine going from coaching Brady to coaching an 18-year-old who has all sorts of distractions that come with social media. But he is already looking on the bright side. During the recent ACC media days, Bill said, “On the college end, the players are younger and less skilled; sometimes that’s an advantage with fewer bad habits to break.” So, he is kind of embracing the lack of skill the players actually have. 

But the second thing is totally different. “And if he doesn’t get frustrated with, oh, and they have to go to class and they’re 18 and they’re emotionally up and down and all those sorts of things that are college dynamics, I think it’s going to work because we know he can coach, right?” Forde’s warning is a roadmap of exactly where things could unravel. A sports program runs under the umbrella of the college and the stakeholders in it. And when you’re the coach, you’d have to be part of endless bureaucracy around campus. Now, we don’t think Belichick would be going through that just because of who he is, but it’s impossible to skip the system entirely.

On top of wrangling with the unpredictable energy of 18- and 19-year-olds, Bill Belichick has another, even more delicate minefield to navigate: the glare of public scrutiny and the choppy waters of university image politics. The Jordan Hudson situation is exactly the type of off-field drama that throws even the steeliest NFL veterans off-balance. UNC’s blueblood donor base, used to seeing their program in heartwarming headlines (“student-athletes giving back!”), is now clutching pearls, worried that the Belichick era has the Tar Heel name trending for all the wrong reasons.

But UNC fans, isn’t this what you secretly signed up for? The circus, the drama, and yes, even the ‘Will the GOAT lose his patience when a linebacker misses a class or a deep ball?’ sweat. Think about it: Belichick’s entire world for decades has been grown men who eat, sleep, and breathe football, guys who’d take a bullet to memorize a playbook, not teenagers balancing Algebra II, TikTok drama, and the urge to skip morning lifts. College football is chaos at heart, and Belichick’s superpower could be undone by the unpredictability of 18-year-olds and, let’s face it, the NCAA’s delightful brand of bureaucracy.

Doubters circle Bill Belichick

Remember Josh Pate’s take we talked about? Here’s that. Josh Pate, speaking on the July 22 episode of the Gramlich & Mac Lain podcast, didn’t hold back on Belichick. He said, “I don’t think it’s going to work. Okay. I don’t have very high expectations for it.” His skepticism stands out in a media landscape otherwise smitten with Belichick’s six Super Bowl sparkle.

Pate’s point is that the NFL and college football are fundamentally, even comically, different. He quipped, “One of the laziest takes out there has been ‘Belichick will succeed at North Carolina.’ And the reason is that college football is just like the NFL. Now, college football is not just like the NFL. Like, at what point the mechanism of the fact that we pay players? Well, that’s broad strokes. That’s like saying my little niece in preschool art class and Van Gogh were both artists. Cause they painted. I could say that. It’s ignorant.” In Pate’s eyes, no amount of NFL hardware can erase the challenges unique to college ball, recruiting, NIL, and postseason access. The leap, he hints, is not just big but potentially insurmountable even for a Hall of Fame coach.

Looking at North Carolina’s track record, it’s understandable why some see an uphill battle. UNC has managed just one double-digit win season in the past twenty years, last won the ACC title in 1980, and hasn’t cracked the college football playoff conversation despite moments of promise. Pate’s verdict is blunt. 

“I think as much as people look and say Belichick’s about to teach a lesson or two to college football, I think college football’s about to teach a couple of dozen lessons to Bill Belichick and the folks at North Carolina.” Josh Pate’s pointed observation underscores the steep learning curve Bill Belichick faces in college football, a landscape far removed from the pro game. Despite Belichick’s storied NFL success, the college realm demands mastery of recruiting battles, managing young athletes, and navigating NCAA complexities, challenges well outside an NFL playbook.