After a lackluster debut with North Carolina and a shocking Hall of Fame snub, the legendary coach faces plummeting rankings and unprecedented last-place votes from skeptical critics.
North Carolina head coach Bill Belichick has had a challenging year for his legacy.
The Tar Heels finished 4-8 in Belichick's first season in Chapel Hill. Belichick admitted that he had a learning curve after coaching at the college level for the first time in his career as an assistant or head coach.
Following the season, Belichick was snubbed by the NFL. The Hall of Fame selection committee failed to put the six-time Super Bowl-winning head coach in the HOF as a first-ballot inductee.
Belichick will someday enter the Hall of Fame, but he'll never be recognized as a first-ballot inductee, which is a stain on the committee.
Tom Fornelli noted that the writing staff at CBS Sports ranked Belichick as the No. 63 head coach in college football for the upcoming season. Belichick was slammed after a 4-8 season in 2025, dropping nine spots from No. 54.
"This is a fascinating result to me," Fornelli wrote. "Bill Belichick not only drops nine spots in our rankings after a 4-8 debut with the Tar Heels last season, but he's the only other coach besides Stanford's Tavita Pritchard to receive last-place votes. He got three!
"That's right, the coach who won six Super Bowls finished behind a coach who has never been a head coach at any level and was only 13 years old when Belichick won his first Super Bowl with the Patriots. I genuinely don't question my fellow voters' rankings too much, but I have a very difficult time seeing the logic behind those decisions."
Belichick was known to have plenty of squabbles with the media during his time with the Patriots, so it's really no wonder that some bitter writers are willing to take shots at the head coach.
There's no defending what happened in 2025, but Belichick is hopeful that he can change his image at North Carolina with an improved roster.
“And the group last year, I mean, I wouldn’t say they were like disrespectful, that’s not the right word, but it was just different," Belichick said last week on "Pardon My Take.” It was like they were recruited by somebody else; they came here for somebody else.
"I was new, they were leaving, you know … It wasn’t a bad relationship, but it wasn’t a great one … There wasn’t the same kind of adhesion that there is to guys that you bring in, that come there because of you, because they want to be with you. And then you grow together.”
If Belichick wins games this season, he'll improve up the rankings. Still, he needs to land some elite players and improve the quarterback situation before UNC is ready to compete with Miami for the ACC and make the College Football Playoff.
