Bill Belichick used to live in Carrboro. He probably doesn’t remember it, though. Belichick’s father, Steve, was an assistant football coach at the University of North Carolina from 1953 until 1955. At one point, someone snapped a picture of tiny, buzz-cutted Bill sitting in the stands at Kenan Memorial Stadium. He was not wearing a hoodie.
This week, Belichick became the head coach of the Tar Heels for some reason. Which means, at age seventy-two, the legendary Patriots’ coach could be stumbling across all of the nice stuff that popped up in Carrboro during his sixty-nine-year absence. The Weaver Street Market. The Cat’s Cradle. The “It’s Carrboro” video.
I have every reason to believe Belichick will spend way too many hours in the bowels of the UNC athletics complex poring over film in order to understand the dark arts of, say, the Wake Forest slow mesh offense. But let’s assume he gets out once in a while. Is he going to adapt to North Carolina? Or is North Carolina going to have to adapt to him? Here are five things to watch for in Chapel Hill:
1. Fashion: The guy who just got fired, Mack Brown, is just one year older than Belichick but sports a completely different wardrobe. Mack wore puffy coats. He wore Jordans. By contrast, most of Bill Belichick’s clothes are in the process of being eaten by moths. People dress up to go to UNC games. Up north, you wear what you’ve got around the house. Will Bill go full Alexander Julian? Or will he rip the sleeves off of a thirty-year-old UNC crew neck he found in a bin at Rumors? (Credit where due: Belichick did show up to his introductory press conference on Thursday with his dad’s old UNC sweatshirt.)
2. Barbecue: Somebody is going to ask this man if he has opinions on North Carolina’s most frequently argued and least consequential debates: Eastern or Lexington style? Sweet or unsweet? K-Ci or JoJo? Expect every answer to every question to be some sort of grunt that sounds like “I’m not getting into that.” Bill Belichick will not settle your bar bets! This man will talk lovingly about long snappers for ten minutes but do not expect him to wax poetic about his favorite fish camps.
3. People wanting to chat him up in public: Ric Flair, during his time in North Carolina, would at least drop a polite “Wooooo” in the direction of people who recognized him out and about. Imagine Bill Belichick getting accosted by the sweet old cashier at Harris Teeter. How are your kids, Bill? How’s little Stevie doing? Is he getting along coordinating the defense? This man is going to ferry himself straight to the self checkout everywhere he goes.
4. Nostalgia vs. the youths: Grandpa, do you remember when football was football? That’s the era in which Bill Belichick won six Super Bowls with the Patriots. His coaching method involved a lot of yelling at Tom Brady, the greatest quarterback in NFL history. By contrast, the North Carolina of today is, ahem, most certainly not the North Carolina of Bill Belichick’s toddlerhood. It’s more diverse. More open. More crowded. The youths are not motivated by yelling. They can be paid! Finally! If Belichick gets this, then let him cook. Like, in the modern sense. I don’t know whether this man can grill a steak.
5. What city is North Carolina’s most Belichick city? This is a bit meta, but what city really has a lot going for it, even if it’s not wrapped in a shiny new package? Could it be Winston-Salem? Wilson? Morganton? Kannapolis? I’ll cast my vote for Hendersonville, which is full of apples, summer camps, and retirees and was (inexplicably) the home of a world-famous stingray, may she rest in peace.
Buckle up, North Carolina. You now have a coach that could lead the Tar Heels to the promised land. Or he could deflate. Either way, the Belichick experience at UNC is going to contain multitudes. Maybe even enough to fill up a big plastic beer cup from He’s Not Here.
