NCAAF
CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — The only question by halftime Saturday was who would enjoy Bill Belichick’s latest loss more: former Tar Heels coach Mack Brown or Patriots owner Robert Kraft?
North Carolina’s disastrous start to Belichick’s head coaching tenure continued with a 38-10 loss to Clemson, in which the Tigers scored on a double pass on the game’s first play from scrimmage and coasted to a 28-3 lead after one quarter.
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A Clemson offense that had made everything look difficult during the season’s first month made shredding UNC’s defense look easy. When quarterback Cade Klubnik wasn’t throwing to wide-open teammates downfield, he was flipping screen passes to receivers, tight ends and running backs, who waltzed through police escorts into the end zone.
The first streams of fans made their way out of Kenan Stadium and back onto UNC’s idyllic campus during the first quarter. By halftime, the stadium that began the day mostly full was almost empty.
If the Tar Heels thought asking rapper Ludacris to perform on campus at 10 a.m. — “Out of my 25 years doing this, the earliest show I’ve ever done,” he told the crowd — was embarrassing, it didn’t compare with what UNC put on the field on Saturday.
“Oh man, the energy is here. Y’all definitely gonna win today,” Ludacris said during his 45-plus minute set. Fortunately, he’s a better rapper than college football prognosticator.
The Tar Heels have played three Power 4 opponents this season, none of which have been ranked. They’ve lost by 34, 25 and 28 points.
It’s not just bad. It’s inexcusable, despite the program’s best efforts.
This week, Football Scoop published a letter from UNC general manager Mike Lombardi to program supporters. It outlined some of the roster issues and attrition the program is dealing with, preached patience and explained that the program planned to sign around 40 high school prospects this winter, almost double the size of the average recruiting class.
The letter also cited the Philadelphia 76ers’ “Trust the Process” deep rebuild strategy. And it cited the early struggles of coaches like Mack Brown in his first go-around at UNC, going 2-20 in 1988 and 1989, as well as the first seasons for Nick Saban at Alabama, Jim Harbaugh at Michigan, Lou Holtz at Notre Dame and Kirk Ferentz at Iowa.
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And, of course, Belichick’s early struggles in Cleveland and in New England in the NFL.
None of that is relevant to college football in 2025. The sport has changed. Patience went out the door with amateurism. And so did the old ways of roster building.
Get money. Get wins. If you can’t get either, get out.
The examples cited are quaint. But none of the issues with the roster are unique to North Carolina. Every program deals with it. Every first-year coach deals with it.
And any issues with retaining and attracting talent require a long look in the mirror.
Much of the appeal of hiring Belichick is hoping he brings with him a magnetism for players who want to learn under a coach with six Super Bowl rings. When is that magnet being activated?
Instead, the program lost many of its best players from a season ago, two of them after spring practice when defensive lineman Beau Atkinson left for Ohio State and linebacker Amare Campbell left for Penn State.
Why can Fran Brown — a first-time head coach with no experience as a coordinator — keep the top talent from a six-win team at Syracuse, add a few pieces and a quarterback from the portal and turn it into 10 wins in Year 1, but the greatest coach in the history of the sport needs time to establish his program?
How can Curt Cignetti take over a three-win team, import a dozen transfers from a Sun Belt champion and carry Big Ten doormat Indiana into the College Football Playoff in Year 1?
But Belichick’s team can’t stay within three touchdowns of fellow first-year coach Scott Frost, who’s been out of college football since 2022 and took over a four-win team at UCF?
Football between the lines is still football between the lines. But outside the lines, college football couldn’t be more different than it was a year, two years or five years ago.
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“Every portal window is different,” Walker Jones, the executive director of Ole Miss’ collective told me last year. “And you learn with every window.”
UNC’s early struggles point to leadership from Belichick and Lombardi that shows a poor understanding of how to build a functional plan in the sport today.
The Tar Heels were a good team and OK program in Mack Brown’s second go-around. Six consecutive bowl games is hard to do anywhere. That streak is all but over.
UNC isn’t wrestling with NCAA sanctions. It doesn’t have a lack of money to spend. It doesn’t have a limit on how many players it can take in a year to repair a depleted roster.
“We’ve only been playing together two months now,” receiver Jordan Shipp said. “Not everything’s gonna be perfect.”
That’s true. But for all the complaining about UNC’s 70 new faces, it’s worth asking why the roster was hollowed out to the point 70 new players were required.
If South Carolina can keep its best players, LaNorris Sellers and Dylan Stewart, out of the portal, there’s no reason North Carolina can’t do the same.
And if the Tar Heels staff let players walk out the door and replaced them with worse talent from the portal, that’s an indictment of the staff’s ability to evaluate talent.
“Did they understand that they’re in the ACC, not like Conference USA or the Sun Belt? Like, we got beat by North Carolina on a bunch of kids. I was like, why the f— is North Carolina beating us on kids?” A Group of 5 coach previously told The Athletic. “When I keep running up against the same P4s over and over again in recruiting, I’m like, all right, they’re gonna suck.”
There’s no fixing it in the season. This season was lost in the first five months Belichick was on the job and the roster eroded. The offensive and defensive schemes are offering little in the way of maximizing what talent the Tar Heels do have. Uncompetitive is uncompetitive.
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Pleading for patience in 2025 and rebuilding with high school players is a fast track to a buyout. Even if UNC hits on high school talent that blossoms early, there’s no guarantee it can keep them if it couldn’t keep players like Campbell and Atkinson.
Belichick was asked after the game what his message was to fans and donors who were excited at his arrival but might be tempted to check out before the season is halfway through.
“We’re gonna keep working and keep grinding,” Belichick said. “We’re gonna get on the right track here.”
He’s asking for faith from fans, but in a results business, the results have been worse than anyone imagined.
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David Ubben is a senior writer for The Athletic covering college football. Prior to joining The Athletic, he covered college sports for ESPN, Fox Sports Southwest, The Oklahoman, Sports on Earth and Dave Campbell’s Texas Football, as well as contributing to a number of other publications. Follow David on Twitter @davidubben
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