Super Bowl-winning Bill Belichick named next head football coach at UNC

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

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

The deal requires approval from the trustees of the University of North Carolina (UNC), although that board had not announced another meeting as of Wednesday evening. An introductory press conference has yet to be scheduled.

“We know that college athletics are changing, and those 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 evolve, compete and win – today and into the future.”

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

The move from the 73-year-old Brown to the 72-year-old Belichick means UNC is turning to a coach who has never worked at the college level yet had incredible success in the NFL alongside quarterback Tom Brady for most of his career. 24-year tenure with the Patriots that ended last season.

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

But the two sides had been discussing terms for several days before finally reaching an agreement a week earlier to limit the unlikely outcome.