Belichick to UNC: What he's up against and how it might work - ESPN

North Carolina has sent shock waves across both the NFL and college football landscapes as it has finalized a deal with six-time Super Bowl champion Bill Belichick to replace Mack Brown as its next football coach.

Needless to say, we have questions.

Just last year, when a surge of assistants — and multiple head coaches — left the collegiate ranks for the NFL, some thought that would become an ongoing trend as college football shifts further away from amateurism and more toward a professional model. Belichick, at age 72, has done the opposite, and he joins his former assistant — first-year Boston College coach Bill O'Brien — as head coaches in the ACC.

Though Belichick has no experience coaching college football, his hire brings a level of panache that even a national championship coach such as Brown could not bring. Super Bowl championships will do that for a coach. A program that has been mostly average over the past four decades, UNC football has played second fiddle to its hoops team. Perhaps the name recognition alone will begin to change hearts and minds about how serious UNC is about altering the football narrative, and the wins and losses on the field.

So how exactly will this work? What are his biggest challenges? Why UNC? Our reporters weigh in. — Andrea Adelson

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Biggest challenges | Recruiting impact
Why UNC? | Playoff chances

He is as much Professor Belichick as Coach Belichick. He loves to teach, taking after his late mother, Jeannette, who spoke seven languages and taught at Hiram College. So those who have played and coached under Belichick have often described the experience as getting a doctorate in football, and that extended to media members in news conferences at