Not Homer nor Christopher Nolan can save North Carolina from this Belichick shipwreck
PHOTO: Bill Belichick washed ashore on the North Carolina sideline and Matt Damon as Odysseus in the Odyssey.
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Thomas Shanahan | @Thomas-Shanahan-23
Order link:
Raye of Light: Jimmy Raye, The Integration of College Football 3rd Ed – August Publications
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By TOM SHANAHAN
The football gods looked down upon Chapel Hill and finally said, “Enough!”
North Carolina coach Bill Belichick’s odyssey has no path to Ithaca royalty. Belichick and general manager Mike Lombardi have violated Zues’s Law too many times as they crossed ACC seas.
They aren’t gracious hosts who welcome guests. They’re curmudgeons. They see anyone questioning them as fools. This is especially sacrilegious for a so-called No. 2 guy disgracing the football surname of Vince Lomardi. The Super Bowl trophy was named for the real football Lombardi.
Belichick and Mike Lombardi are intruders sacking Chapel Hill coffers. North Carolina pays Belichick $10 million a year and Lombardi $1.5 million. Imagine what a proud university could do with that kind of money. Imagine what high school coaches and teachers could do with that kind of support.
When Mike Lombardi was placed on administrative leave last month, that was the poke to the eye of Polyphemus. Poseidon was angered.
The only question is whether North Carolina allows its 74-year-old coach to finish his second season. How would Homer tell the story of Belichick’s final voyage? That’s complicated. Odysseus was a man of many ways in Odyssey. Belichick is one-dimensional.
Belichick’s Trojan Horse was six Super Bowl trophies. Once the Trojan Horses shaped like trophies were safely through campus gates, the Tar Heels never looked inside. They would have learned Belichick was an aging coach who won six Super Bowls with quarterback Tom Brady and none without him. Brady claimed one additional Super Bowl title in Tampa Bay without Belichick.
Athena, though, knew Belichick’s history. She wanted nothing to do with serving as his guide. Belichick’s relationships turn sour.
Bill Parcells doesn’t like Belichick. Tom Brady left him. Robert Kraft didn’t give him job endorsements. Belichick and Lombardi barred Patriots scouts from the North Carolina campus. How often do you hear an old Patriots player praising him as a great guy?
Instead of Belichick benefitting from Athena’s mentoring, his pseudo-muse is a girlfriend nearly 50 years his junior, Jordon Hudson. She was the siren Belichick heard as he sailed from New England waters. He needed wax in his ears or to be tied to the ship’s mast.
Although the sorceress Circe didn’t turn North Carolina’s players into swine, they did go from athletes to entitled. They drove around Chapel Hill in NIL-funded fancy cars. They collected speeding and reckless driving charges and parked in handicap spots.
Agamemnon warned Belichick to arrive in Chapel Hill in disguise. The fanbase at a basketball school known for venerable Dean Smith and Roy Williams won’t accept a grumpy grouch for a coach.
At first, Belichick’s disguise worked. He knew the college football world believed he’d view visiting high school recruits as beneath him. So, on the first day that coaches were permitted to visit players on their high school campus, Belichick went to work early.
Zayvion Griffin-Haynes, a 4-star defensive end from nearby Rolesville High, had decommitted from North Carolina following the dismissal of Mack Brown. Belichick arrived by 7 a.m. to meet Griffin-Haynes. Belichick smiled as he posed for a photo, and Griffen-Haynes later signed with the Tar Heels.
But once the 2025 season began, Scylla and Charybdis awaited Belichick’s ship. The sea monsters devoured his Lombardi-assembled roster.
When TCU whipped North Carolina 48-14 in a season-opening game that ESPN built into a Super Bowl festivity, Horned Frogs coach Sonny Dykes dismissively told ESPN reporter Holly Rowe in a post-game interview that TCU has a good football team, too.
Calypso couldn’t think of a coach responding sardonically to beating a Vince Lombardi-coached team. She was cautious about him. She released Belichick on his journey.
When Belichick coached in the NFL, Calypso dismissed those in the media and fans labeling Belichick as the greatest coach of all time. They were living in the moment. No one with a sense of history prior to 2000 thinks Belichick’s record measures up to Vince Lomardi, who never had a losing season in nine years.
Vince Lombardi as the Green Bay Packers head coach won five NFL titles in seven seasons – 1961, 1962, 1965, 1966 and 1967 — with the last two referred to as the Super Bowl. He took over a 1-10-1 Packers team and led them to a 7-5 record his first season, 1959. Lombardi took over the 5-9 Washington franchise and finished 7-5-2 his first season, 1969.
Belichick began his career with losing seasons in Cleveland (when Brady was in high school) and finished with losing seasons in New England (after Brady left for Tampa Bay).
Calypso also noted Vince Lombardi wasn’t gifted by dumb play calling in the final moments to provide two Super Bowl wins. The Patriots won Super Bowl XLIX thanks to Seattle Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll and offensive coordinator Darrell Bevell and Super Bowl LI thanks to Atlanta Falcons offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan.
One player who safely escaped Belichick’s shipwreck was quarterback Gio Lopez. He transferred to Wake Forest, where he says he feels truly wanted instead of just a guy with a number on his jersey.
Another player transferring out was Tyler Thompson, a defensive end from nearby Panther Creek High who left for Louisville.
When Thompson turned down Michigan and Jim Harbaugh in 2023 for North Carolina and Mack Brown, Thompson said of his Michigan recruiting trip there was “something strange about them.” After one season with Belichick, he was prescient again.
Christopher Nolan couldn’t come up with a moral ending that returns Belichick to Ithaca. There are no suiters on campus. There is no Matt Damon to string the bow.
Penelope and Telemachus must continue their wait for another royal football coach to arrive.
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I’ll put my facts on the true pioneers of college football integration versus Bear Bryant fairytales against anybody, anytime, anywhere. Watch here.
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— 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,
Raye of Light: Jimmy Raye, The Integration of College Football 3rd Ed – 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. Order here:
How Duffy Put Hawaii On America’s Football Map by Tom Shanahan, Paperback | Barnes & Noble®
Amazon.com: How Duffy Put Hawaii On America’s Football Map eBook : Shanahan, Tom: Kindle Store
