After four games, Bill Belichick is losing the gravitas bestowed upon him by the UNC hierarchy last December, when the Board of Trustees, new chancellor and veteran athletic director (who preferred hiring a younger head coach) gave him the keys to the Carolina football bus and prayed he wouldn’t drive it off a cliff.

Belichick, who is 73 with a 24-year-old girlfriend appearing on the sideline before games, is gradually becoming the laughingstock of college football. And the 34-9 beatdown by UCF Saturday in Orlando isn’t helping his flagging football reputation.

It hasn’t exactly become a young man’s game, but the best coaches are closer to 50 years old with college experience and a much smaller learning curve around the transfer portal, revenue sharing and a revamped NIL system. The six-time Super Bowl champion — who got his nickname from hiding under a hood on cold New England Sundays — is 2-2 in his new job after a second embarrassing loss to a Big 12 team.

Practice has been Belichick’s foundation, and now his Tar Heels will have plenty of it with just one game in the next 26 days (two off Saturdays and angry Clemson scheduled to visit Kenan Stadium on October 4). With their worst record in the 17-year tenure of Dabo Swinney, who has been to the CFP six times and won two national championships plus nine ACC titles, do you think the 1-3 Tigers will be planning to make red meat out of those in Carolina blue?

Bill Belichick and UCF head coach Scott Frost have a lot in common as you have probably read over the last week. So far this season, they look worlds apart.

When the Hoodie was a short-lived coach of the New York Jets, he drafted Frost out of Nebraska after quarterbacking the 13-0 Cornhuskers to the 1997 co-national championship with Michigan. Belichick thought his athletic skills were more suited to defense and Frost played safety for the Jets, Browns, Packers, 49ers and Buccaneers over his six-year pro career.

Central Florida head coach Scott Frost, left, and North Carolina head coach Bill Belichick shake hands before an NCAA college football game, Saturday, Sept. 20, 2025, in Orlando, Fla. (Photo via AP Photo/John Raoux.)

Frost, 50, went into coaching and was an assistant at four schools over nine years and in 2016 was hired as head coach at UCF (University of Central Florida), where he led the 2017 Knights to the same 13-0 record he had as a player. Central Florida was in the American Athletic Conference back then and did not earn a bid to the four-team college playoff won by Alabama over Georgia. Frost and his program proclaimed themselves as a co-national champion. He was rewarded by being offered the head coaching job at his alma mater, and that lasted five losing seasons in Lincoln.

Gus Malzahn — Cam Newton’s offensive coordinator when Auburn won the 2011 BCS championship and then the Tigers’ head coach for eight seasons — resurfaced at UCF and barely had a winning record in four seasons (28-24) before he took the OC’s job at Florida State. The Noles had been dismal trying to score during the 2024 season when they went 2-10. Now, FSU is currently 3-0 and ranked seventh in the country.

Frost jumped at the chance to return to Central Florida after serving as an NFL analyst for one season with the LA Rams. When looking ahead at UCF’s 2025 schedule, Frost saw that the Knights were playing North Carolina but probably never dreamed the Tar Heels would be led by his old coach and mentor.

Like Belichick, Frost went right to work on the transfer portal after a bunch of players left with Malzhan for FSU and other schools. But he had the advantage of having been in college football and knew the ins and outs of recruiting. As the new season got started and scouting reports came out for both teams, UCF and UNC had each signed about 70 new players from the portal or the latest recruiting class.

Belichick went after quarterbacks and wound up with Gio Lopez from South Alabama, who had another tough game as the going gets tougher. He won the job during summer training camp and has started all four games for the Tar Heels with mixed results. Midway through the first half, Lopez had completed all seven of his passes; unfortunately, two of them were caught by UCF defenders. He actually threw a pick 6 earlier in the game, luckily nullified by a UCF penalty.

UNC quarterback Gio Lopez is sacked by Central Florida defensive end Sincere Edwards, right, during the first half of an NCAA football game, Saturday, Sep. 20, in Orlando, Fla. (Photo via AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack.)

Belichick started Lopez in the second half before he was injured on a running play and left the field with assistance, not returning. He was replaced by Max Johnson, the Cinderella fifth-year senior quarterback and double transfer who is a more skilled passer but has not played much this season.

Johnson completed 11 of 19 passes, including one for Carolina’s only touchdown of the day to Kobe Paysour. Carolina finished the game with only 217 total yards, lowest of the season for the Heels.

The biggest difference in Saturday’s slaughter was Knights quarterback Tayven Jackson, who transferred after redshirting at Tennessee and spending the next two seasons at Indiana where he put up some good stats as a sophomore, with 422 yards of total offense and accounting for seven TDs. His older brother was a basketball star at IU and now plays for the Golden State Warriors.

To move to 3-0 on the season, the 6-foot-3 Jackson ran and passed for 289 yards and two touchdowns against the Tar Heels. His running TD was on a fake into the line and a bootleg right, waltzing untouched into the end zone. The play reminded UNC old-timers of Paul Miller’s trickery against Duke in 1970, when he had to hold the ball up to show the officials who thought he had given it to Don McCauley up the middle.

The result maintains Carolina’s dubious distinction of never having won a football game over a school that was a member of the Big 12 Conference, where UCF joined in 2023. This performance, and that against TCU in the 48-14 opening night loss, reflects how far the new regime must go to compete with the Big 12 — not to mention the SEC or the Big Ten.

While Belichick gave the Knights all the credit for “playing better than we did today,” it did little to uphold the expectations and excitement that his $50 million hire has brought to UNC and the ACC. While plenty of alumni and fans will argue the football rebuild will take time, how much time can Carolina afford while getting throttled by Power 4 opponents before it tarnishes the grand vision UNC leaders are pitching to become a serious football program?

In four games, the Tar Heels and the defense of Steve Belichick have allowed 91 points and 1,378 total yards. Besides jokes about the senior Belichick’s girlfriend, nepotism snickers have also started to get louder — given that Brian Belichick is coaching safeties and the son of general manager Mike Lombardi (who earns $1.5 million) is UNC’s quarterbacks coach.

Over six controversial seasons, Mack Brown had plenty of ups and downs in his second stint leading the Carolina football program, including a dud in 2024. But at least he turned things around from the last two horrible losing records of Larry Fedora’s tenure by building better teams, recruiting better players at a faster rate, and requiring far less investment.

 

Featured image via AP Photo/John Raoux.

Art Chansky is a veteran journalist who has written ten books, including best-sellers “Game Changers,” “Blue Bloods,” and “The Dean’s List.” He has contributed to WCHL for decades, having made his first appearance as a student in 1971. His “Sports Notebook” commentary airs daily on the 97.9 The Hill WCHL and his “Art’s Angle” opinion column runs weekly on Chapelboro.

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