The man who is the current United States Secretary of State reportedly helped start the process of Bill Belichick’s move to North Carolina.
According to a detailed ESPN story of Belichick’s move to the Tar Heels, the six-time Super Bowl winner is friends with Marco Rubio and told the then-Florida senator that he would be interested in coaching at North Carolina. Rubio then reached out to North Carolina Senator Thom Thillis.
“Rubio follows the sports world pretty closely, and he called me and said, ‘There’s a chance Belichick would come to Chapel Hill,'” Tillis told ESPN. “He said, ‘He wants a school with a great academic reputation, and he wants to try to build a program to bring them a national championship. I said, ‘Well, let me go [make some calls].'”
Tillis hung up the phone and immediately called Phil Berger, the North Carolina Senate president pro tempore, who had strong connections with power players at UNC. Berger initially laughed at the suggestion until Tillis assured him that, yes, Belichick truly wanted the job.
That became the spark that lit the fuse, and before long, the Belichick chase was a raging inferno among key stakeholders, including [UNC board chair John] Preyer. As one source put it, “the push to land Belichick all started with the politicians.”
North Carolina hired Belichick in December to replace Mack Brown after Brown was fired in November. Brown’s future had been a source of speculation for much of the 2024 season — he even told the team he’d quit if they didn’t believe in him after a loss to James Madison — as North Carolina scuffled to an uneven season.
Brown was one of just three active coaches in college football who had won a national title and was in his second stint at North Carolina after coming out of retirement to replace Larry Fedora. Now he’s being succeeded by just the second coach to take a college football job after winning a Super Bowl.
Belichick has also made sure to quash speculation about a return to the NFL ever since he took the Carolina job. Though his buyout makes a move back to the NFL very easy after the 2025 season, he said at his introductory press conference that he didn’t come to North Carolina to leave and has assembled a staff with extensive experience.
But even though Belichick has had so much success in the NFL, it’s no guarantee that he’ll turn North Carolina into a perennial contender as well. Though the college game may be as similar to the NFL as it’s ever been, there are still key differences. And how Belichick navigates those differences will determine how successful North Carolina is going forward. We just won’t get to see how it happens via “Hard Knocks.”