By AARON BEARD AP Sports Writer
Former New England Patriots coach and six-time Super Bowl champion Bill Belichick said Monday he had “a couple of good conversations” with North Carolina Chancellor Lee Roberts amid his discussions about the Tar Heels’ head-coaching job.
Speaking on ESPN’s “The Pat McAfee Show,” Belichick said he had spent the 11 months since his departure from the Patriots taking a “longer look” at college football throughout the season as opposed to during the spring lead-up to the draft as a pro coach.
“So it’s been, it’s been a good year for me. I’ve learned a lot,” Belichick said. “So I’ve had the opportunity to talk to Chancellor Roberts and we’ve had a couple of good conversations. So we’ll see how it goes.”
Belichick opted not to go into more detail when asked by McAfee. Instead, Belichick offered a quip about his reputation for giving terse responses during news conferences with the Patriots.
“Yeah, let’s just leave it at that, Pat,” Belichick said with a grin. “I mean, I don’t want to give out too much information. I want to get my press conference aura back.”
Inside Carolina first reported that Belichick had interviewed with UNC last week, a report later confirmed by The Associated Press, as the Tar Heels seek a replacement for Mack Brown. The school fired its all-time winningest coach and College Football Hall of Famer, announcing Nov. 26 he wouldn’t return for a seventh season in his second stint with the school.
Brown coached his finale in the Nov. 30 loss to rival N.C. State.
Moving on from the 73-year-old Brown to hire the 72-year-old Belichick would mean UNC is turning to a coach who has never worked at the college level, yet had incredible NFL success alongside quarterback Tom Brady throughout most of his 24-year tenure with the Patriots that ended last season.
In the time since, he had been linked to NFL jobs, notably the Atlanta Falcons in January.
While Belichick didn’t dive into details of his UNC discussions, he did offer insights into the parallels he sees between running an NFL team at a college level where players are now able to cash in on their athletic fame with endorsements and with the arrival of revenue sharing looming.
“If I was in a college program, the college program would be a pipeline to the NFL for the players that had the ability to play in the NFL,” Belichick said. “It would be a professional program: training, nutrition, scheme, coaching, techniques that would transfer to the NFL.
“It would be an NFL program at a college level.”
There’s also at least a small family tie to the UNC program for Belichick; his late father, Steve, was an assistant coach for the Tar Heels from 1953-55.