PHOTO: Navy coach Steve Belichick (L) and with his wife and son Bill in a football uniform.

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Visit my homepage: TomShanahan.Report

— Click here for review and purchase link: THE RIGHT THING TO DO, The True Pioneers of College Football Integration in the 1960s and here for a purchase link to RAYE OF LIGHT, Jimmy Raye, Duffy Daugherty, the Integration of College Football and the 1965-66 Michigan State Spartans.

— Watch a three-minute video to learn about our documentary at the fundraising stage, GAME CHANGERS OF THE CENTURY, and the Investment Deck.

— Documentary synopsis: Duffy documentary snynopsis.pdf – Google Drive

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“Steve Belichick was the toughest coach or instructor I ever had. His offseason program was the toughest thing I’ve ever done. He would make you run until you fell. There wasn’t an ounce of anything but the truth that came out of his mouth.“

— Phil McConkey, a 2005 quote from the former Navy and NFL receiver.

By TOM SHANAHAN

North Carolina coach Bill Belichick needs to channel the spirit of his late, great father, Steve Belichick.

Steve was a Navy assistant football coach for 34 seasons, 1956-89. With such longevity at one job spanning four decades, Steve, the namesake of Bill’s son, North Carolina’s 38-year-old defensive coordinator, wasn’t in coaching for the money. In those days, coaches made the equivalent salaries of college professors.

Steve adapted to influence his many players from different college generations. He adjusted to work under the regimes of seven head coaches.

Bill may have gained his love for X’s and O’s from his father, but he seems to have missed the lessons on how to work with others and build team chemistry. Five games into his first season of a plan to make North Carolina “the 33^rd NFL team,” the season has imploded.

Based on recent reports from WRAL-TV, Bill coaches a locker room divided between 70 transfer players he brought in and the ones he inherited. He’s also alienated parents.

It may be smoke, but the waft certainly fits one of the allegations defensive backs coach Armand Hawkins, who was officially suspended by the school Thursday night, violated NCAA special benefit rules. Among them, he distributed preferential sideline passes to players’ parents.

Is Bill that out of touch with what’s going on in his program?

Such thoughts prompted me to recall my 2005 interview with Phil McConkey on the elder Belichick. McConkey was a former Navy receiver, helicopter pilot and NFL wide receiver. In the 1978 Holiday Bowl, McConkey caught a 65-yard game-winning touchdown pass as Navy upset No. 23-ranked BYU led by quarterback Jim McMahon. In Super Bowl XXI, he caught a touchdown pass for the New York Giants in the win over the Denver Broncos.

Would people say about Bill what McConkey said about Steve: “There wasn’t an ounce of anything but the truth that came out of his mouth.”

Belichick has never presented a picture of why he is coaching in college after a long NFL career. When Bill Walsh stepped away from coaching the San Franisco 49ers (1979-88) with three Super Bowl titles and returned to Stanford (1992-94) at age 61, he explained coaching college kids was “his bliss.” How much he was being paid didn’t dominate the headlines.

When North Carolina fired Mack Brown and replaced him in December with Belichick, opinions were split. Some pundits bowed to Belichick as a “genius” with six Super Bowl titles coaching the New England Patriots. Others were skeptical a coach with no college background understood the differences that come with coaching and directing a college program.

At first, I gave Bill the benefit of the doubt. Bill seemed to have turned over a new leaf as North Carolina’s coach. He spoke in the same trademark monotone from his New England days, but he was expansive with his answers. Gone were the one- and two-word replies. If you listened through the monotone, there was insight to absorb.

Maybe he did care about this job in his twilight years.

He also met with high school recruits, something skeptics doubted he could handle stepping down from his NFL pedestal. But on the first day college coaches were permitted to visit high school campuses, he made a 7 a.m. visit to Rolesville High. He successfully managed to get 4-star defensive end Zavion Griffin-Haynes to recommit. Griffen-Haynes had decommitted after Brown was fired.

Bill tried throughout the preseason to present a new image, but short of a personality transplant, he seems incapable of sharing with the public whatever it is that he loves about coaching a football team. Is he only doing it for the money?

Bill, typical of his New England days, has been virtually silent while his North Carolina world implodes. The university released a short statement from him he was “fully committed.” The only thing missing was, “On to Cincinnati.”

He’s paid $10 million and hired two sons, Steve and Brian, as assistant coaches. The younger Steve, 38, makes $1.3 million on a limited resume.

Bill should have to give some of those millions back. That’s what Oklahoma State did with Mike Gundy entering this season — his 20^th as the Cowboys’ head coach — when the 2024 results suggested he had lost his grasp on running the program.

The first sign Bill didn’t know how to evaluate talent to form a college team compared to judging college talent that projects to the pro level was when quarterback Gio Lopez was paid $2 million to leave South Alabama for North Carolina.

With Belichick’s gaudy reputation as a six-time Super Bowl champion coach, was Lopez the best quarterback he could attract? Top 10 teams with transfer portal quarterbacks include No. 1-ranked Ohio State, Julian Sayin; No. 2 Miami, Carson Beck; No. 3 Oregon, Dante Moore; No. 4 Ole Miss, Trinidad Chambliss from Division II Ferris State; No. 6 Oklahoma, John Mateer; and No. 7 Indiana, Fernando Mendoza.

Maybe star power for a coach is overrated in recruiting. When San Diego Padres baseball Hall of Famer Tony Gwynn was named the head coach at San Diego State, his alma mater, he failed to successfully recruit talent. The Aztecs couldn’t beat New Mexico, which turned over rocks to find players.

The first Belichick red flag I noticed was shortly before the season-opening loss to TCU. I wanted to ask one of the half-dozen former Patriots players I’ve known over the years how he thought Belichick would adapt to coaching a college kids. How would he inspire players compared to an NFL locker room.

The retired Patriot, an otherwise agreeable guy, didn’t want to do go down that road. What does that say?

The one good thing I see coming out of this mess is I never accepted Belichick was the all-time greatest football coach. I feared people someday would want to rename the Super Bowl’s Vince Lombardi Trophy the Bill Belichick Trophy. Maybe people will stop calling Bill the GOAT.

Yes, Belichick won six Super Bowls. But that was in 29 seasons as a head coach. Four of the five with the Cleveland Browns — where he alienated just about everybody (but defensive coordinator Nick Saban) — were losing seasons. At New England, the four losing seasons out of 24 were all without Tom Brady as his quarterback.

Lombardi won five NFL titles in 10 years, 1961, 1962, 1965, 1966 and 1967. The first three were before the AFL-NFL merger inaugurated the title games as Super Bowl I and II. An NFL title before the Super Bowl is still the NFL title representing the sport. Lombardi remains the only coach to win three NFL titles in a row.

Lombardi never had a losing season. Not after he inherited a 1-10-1 Green Bay roster in 1958 and went 7-5 in his first season as a head coach. And that was without the benefit of free agency.

Players like Bart Starr, Jim Taylor, Paul Hornung, Forrest Gregg, Jim Ringo, Jerry Kramer and Ray Nitschke from that 1-10-1 team developed into Pro Football Hall of Famers under Lombardi.

Not after he came out of a one-year retirement to take over a 6-8 Washington franchise in 1968 and finished his first season in 1969 at 7-5-2.

Who knows? If Lombardi hadn’t died at age 57 of cancer after his lone Washington season, maybe he adds to his NFL title total of five in 10 seasons.

Lombardi also was successful as an Army assistant coach (1949-53) under Red Blaik, and he won state titles as a high school coach in New Jersey. In other words, he related to his athletes at all levels.

Bill Belichick is failing miserably at his father’s legacy, coaching and relating to college kids. Not to mention the Tar Heels’ 2-3 record without a win over a Power 4 team.

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I invite you to follow me on Twitter @shanny4055

I’ll put my facts on the true pioneers of college football integration versus Bear Bryant fairytales against anybody, anytime, anywhere. Watch here.

Click here for my story on the 1962 Rose Bowl and Segregation and Alabama.

— Tom Shanahan is an award-winning sportswriter with two books on college football integration, “RAYE OF LIGHT, Jimmy Raye, Duffy Daugherty, the Integration of College Football and the 1965-66 Michigan State Spartans,” and “THE RIGHT THING TO DO, The True Pioneers of College Football Integration in the 1960s.” They are the most accurate accounts of college football integration in the 1950s and 1960s. They also debunk myths about the 1970 USC-Alabama game. The false narrative co-opted the stories of the true pioneers who stood up to Jim Crow and the KKK.

— Two children’s books also explain Michigan State College Football Hall of Fame coach Duffy Daugherty’s impact on integration through the Underground Railroad and the Hawaiian Pipeline: “DUFFY’S COLLEGE FOOTBALL UNDERGROUND RAILROAD” and “HOW DUFFY PUT HAWAII ON AMERICA’S FOOTBALL MAP.”

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PURCHASE LINKS, non-fiction books

— RAYE OF LIGHT, August Publications or on Amazon.

— THE RIGHT THING TO DO, August Publications or on Amazon.

PURCHASE LINKS, children’s books

— DUFFY’S COLLEGE FOOTBALL UNDERGROUND RAILROAD, Order from Barnes and Noble here and Amazon here. 

— HOW DUFFY PUT HAWAII ON AMERICA’S FOOTBALL MAP, coming soon on Barnes and Noble and Amazon.