Super Bowl-winning Bill Belichick named next football coach at UNC | College sports

Six-time Super Bowl-winning head coach Bill Belichick has agreed to a five-year deal to become the next coach at North Carolina.

The school announced the hiring Wednesday night, about a week after the 72-year-old Belichick’s name surfaced as an unlikely candidate to replace the program’s all-time winningest coach in Mack Brown.

The deal requires approval by the University of North Carolina (UNC) trustees, although the board had not announced a new meeting Wednesday night. An introductory press conference has not yet been scheduled.

“We know that college athletics is changing, and these changes require new and innovative thinking,” UNC athletics director Bubba Cunningham said in a statement. “Bill Belichick is a football legend, and hiring him to lead our program represents a new approach that will ensure Carolina football can grow, compete and win – today and in the future.”

The school announced Nov. 26 that Brown would not return for a seventh season in his second stint in Chapel Hill, a firing that took effect after the program’s all-time wins leader coached his final Nov. 30 loss to rival North Carolina. State.

Moving on from the 73-year-old Brown to hiring the 72-year-old Belichick means UNC is turning to a coach who has never worked at the college level, yet enjoyed incredible success in the NFL with quarterback Tom Brady through it most of his time. 24-year tenure with the Patriots, which ended last season.

Belichick had been linked to NFL jobs in the time since, most notably the Atlanta Falcons in January. That’s why word of Belichick’s talks with UNC — first reported by Inside Carolina and confirmed by the Associated Press last week — came as such a surprise as an unexpected and unconventional route for both sides to take.

But the two sides had been in discussions for several days, working on terms, before finally agreeing to limit what appeared to be an unlikely outcome just a week earlier.