CHAPEL HILL, North Carolina — The University of North Carolina made an unprecedented investment in football with the hire of Bill Belichick and the additional financial support that has been poured into the program. It was a true experiment to see if the Tar Heels could achieve different results on the field, and possibly shake loose from the “sleeping giant” moniker that has followed the program for decades.
Belichick brought with him a spotlight that had the Tar Heels discussed nationally before they had even played a game. The Monday night stage against TCU set up for a moment that could have been transformative for the program and the school.
But instead of a transformative evening in Chapel Hill, North Carolina delivered a performance that for fans (who had mostly cleared out by the end of the 48-14 smacking) felt was all too familiar. North Carolina football history in the 21st Century has been mostly good, but rarely great and rarely terrible. In fact, with Monday night’s loss the program has a 157-157 record since 2000. But while that historical average will get you to plenty of regionally-based bowl games and deliver enough home wins to keep the fans entertained until basketball season, the outside view of North Carolina football has been shaped by how the Tar Heels have performed on big stages.
Since 2000, North Carolina is 4-12 in bowl games and has gone 1-8 in bowl games since 2014 with the only win coming against Temple in the 2019 Military Bowl. College football fans are used to seeing the iconic interlocking NC in the postseason, but also used to seeing the Tar Heels on the losing end.
It’s not just bowl games, either. Since 2000, North Carolina has also fallen to 4-12 in season openers against power conference opponents. So it doesn’t matter whether it’s a quality game at the beginning of the season or the end of the season, the 21st Century is filled with examples of North Carolina falling short.
That’s a trend that’s now carried through 6.5 head coaches (one interim season for Everett Withers), with a wide range of quality with the teams and opponents. It’s unfair to paint with a broad brush, but when we talk about soft factors like reputation, sometimes the broad brush defines the conversation.
Tomorrow’s Top 25 Today: Ohio State poised for rise to No. 1 in college football rankings, Alabama plummets
Chip Patterson
The hire of Bill Belichick and the unprecedented investment that followed was meant to reset the conversation and begin to change the reputation around North Carolina football. That’s what made the blowout loss to TCU, on a huge stage, even more disappointing for North Carolina. They got the exact same results with a 4x mark-up on price, and now will spend the rest of the season toiling in college football corner to improve their form before their next chance on the big stage.
Belichick and his staff have maintained all through the preseason that this is a team that will be better by the end of the season than they are at the beginning of the season. And the messaging within the program has been a focus not just on this year but on 2026, starting with the recruiting class that is currently ranked inside the top 20 at 247Sports. No one has declared that North Carolina is going to win an ACC Championship in 2025, but there was certainly an expectation that things would be different.
Instead, it was all too familiar. Kenan Stadium was roaring as the team took the field and exploded into a frenzy as the offense marched down the field and scored on their first drive. But the defensive breakdowns, offensive ineptitude and turnovers that followed were all typical of a program that had been falling on its face when the lights are the brightest. The hire of Belichick was supposed to clean up defensive breakdowns, and the influx of money for NIL and revenue sharing was supposed to help shape a roster that would be ready to compete against similar competition.
There is going to be some serious scar tissue from Monday night’s lopsided loss, both within the North Carolina community and for outsiders. Buying in on Tar Heel football as a potentially elite program will take so much more than “33rd Team” branding, fancy light shows or even a Super Bowl-winning head coach. The only path forward is by winning big games and stacking successful seasons.
Bill Belichick is 73-years-old, and during whatever time he has left in Chapel Hill he will hold in his hands the opportunity to escape from the gravitational pull of .500 football. North Carolina is one of the great brands in college sports and regularly rate as a television draw, so if there’s another round of conference realignment the Tar Heels would certainly be attractive as an expansion candidate. But until things change on the field, this will be a football program that is frequently appearing on big stages, getting big ratings and going home with losses.
Maybe that’s attractive to another conference or any future super league in college football, but it’s not the experience that North Carolina fans are looking for, and certainly not at the cost that’s on the current bill. Those fans made their thoughts known with their actions, clearing the stadium long before the last fancy light show of the night. They arrived looking for something different, and found more of the same.