North Carolina Football Has Improved, But Do Fans Even Care?

Coaching in the NFL is completely different than coaching in college football, unfortunately something North Carolina and Bill Belichick have found out the hard way over the past year and a half now. 

While Belichick has shown many other ways he's been a problem over those past two seasons, other factors are at play here. 

For one, there was hope and expectation that North Carolina could at least recruit the best in college football. Bringing in arguably the greatest head coach in NFL history should have been an easy sell to some of these guys, especially with how much money North Carolina's allocating towards its football program. Unfortunately, that hasn't been the case.

As North Carolina plays the remainder of this season, there is an argument to be made that it's not a bad team. 

North Carolina looks bound to at least make a bowl game, and after competing with Notre Dame on Saturday, there's something to be happy about. 

It doesn't feel like North Carolina is as far away from competing with some of the best teams in America as it was a season ago.

However, one writer from The Athletic recently put it best, suggesting that even while North Carolina looks to be improving, it doesn't feel like anybody really cares in Chapel Hill.

“The other upside of hiring a six-time Super Bowl champion is — maybe — he builds your program into a national champion. There’s yet to be a shred of evidence that Belichick can build and guide North Carolina’s roster into the kind of behemoth that can go on the road in the ACC, play poorly and win by double digits while barely being threatened with a loss. Notre Dame did that on Saturday…

“North Carolina isn’t a meaningful participant in the national college football conversation. Its own fan base seems uninterested and is voting with its feet by finding other places to be on fall Saturdays,” David Ubben of The Athletic wrote.

North Carolina will always be a basketball school, respectfully, to Belichick and Carolina fans who happen to enjoy football more than basketball. 

However, North Carolina's basketball program is undoubtedly a top-five program in college sports. 

That doesn't mean the basketball team and football team can't have the same level of success, but even if the Tar Heels were one of the better football programs in the country, fans would likely still be much more interested in basketball.