Gone are Bill Belichick’s days in the navy and red. From now on, he’ll be in Carolina blue. “I didn’t come here to leave,” the veteran coach said very early on after he was officially onboarded as the Tar Heels’ HC. His move to college football after being the winningest coach in the NFL shocked the entire football community. Because he was going to a program that had been a nobody for many years. Despite the oddity of his new office, UNC GM Michael Lombardi says Belichick is far from being disappointed.

The Patriots under Belichick were an untouchable franchise. They ruled the NFL during their peak in the 2000s, becoming the face of the NFL at one point in time. A legacy like his is rarely built in football. But in 2024, Belichick left that glorious life behind to come coach UNC, a program that has historically always been in the shadows. Now, Bill Belichick is the X factor for the Tar Heels’ success. This is a new and unfamiliar territory for someone with the prowess of the legendary coach. But Michael Lombardi assures that Bill Belichick is not complaining.

Leroy Hoard, who played under Bill Belichick during the latter’s Cleveland days, presented Lombardi with a funny question. “Hey, is Bill smiling more? Is he enjoying it more?” he asked in an August 5 show on the Tobin & Leroy show. Lombardi responded without missing a beat, “I think he loves it.” “Somebody called me the other day and said, ‘Is he having as much fun as it seems like he’s having? And I said, ‘Yeah, he loves it,’” Lombardi added. One of Belichick’s close aides from his NFL days, the GM is sure that Belichick will write a new era for himself at UNC, even if this is new territory for him.

“Look, the beautiful thing about this thing here is we can run the program. I don’t have some salary cap guy coming down telling me what I need to spend, right? I don’t have some owner’s son telling me what we need to do. That’s over with, you know?” Lombardi added. The idea of having executives control the sport is something the GM has always drawn attention to. Here, Belichick is answerable to fewer people, giving him more leeway to exercise control over the football.

Belichick sent in a 400-page bible during discussions with UNC, which had a detailed plan of how he wanted to run things. “historic levels of investment,” salary bases for coaches, a recruiting staff, a GM (enter Lombardi), and “sweeping changes to the program’s operations” were among his demands for whoever hired him, reported The Sporting News. Belichick was not open to renegotiating these terms. At the end, UNC relented. It made the gamble of hosting the starriest of football coaches in modern history for a program that has always finished in the lower ranks.

When Bill Belichick’s move to college football was confirmed. Lombardi echoed the exact same words. “When I started in the league in 1984, we did not have huge front offices. Coaches came in, they were the power broker. They ran the teams. The GMs ran the teams. Today there’s layers upon layers. There’s sons of owners who run the analytical department,” he said. The levels of freedom available in college football is what enables Belichick to do what he does best. “This is just really just football. And we get to run the program, and Bill gets to put his program in, which is great,” Lombardi told Hoard.

Bill Belichick wanted a few of his own to help run the show at Chapel Hill and made way for Lombardi to become UNC’s GM. New info reveals that the GM is actually the highest-paid in college football at the moment.

New details of Michael Lombardi’s contract show how much he is set to gain

While rumors are swirling about Bill Belichick’s imminent departure from Chapel Hill, we now know Lombardi is staying. That too for a huge price. Lombardi’s contract with the Tar Heel runs for three years, until 2028. The GM’s salary is slated at $1.5 million, which is a high price for someone who has no GM experience at the college football level. But after the end of his tenure, he will be earning a minimum of $4.5 million. He last worked in CFB with UNLV as a recruiting coordinator in the 1980s. But it’s the new details about Lombardi’s bonus pay that is catching our attention.

Michael Lombardi will get a month’s pay extra if UNC makes a “non-elite” bowl game. If it is an elite one, that number is raised to one and a half month’s-worth of his salary. It gets bumped up to two months’ pay if Belichick and the Tar Heels make the playoffs or the ACC title game. If UNC and Bill Belichick pull off the unthinkable, Michael Lombardi can earn more than 2 million if UNC clinches a Natty in the next three years. When the coach asked for significant investment, this was maybe a part of where that investment could go.

UNC is raining down money on Bill Belichick, in hopes of the veteran coach pushing the Tar Heels into the national spotlight. While that is already happening in other ways at Chapel Hill, the top brass wants recognition for UNC football first, before anything else.