Is the Bill Belichick era at North Carolina already coming to a close? - ESPN

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — There's a tradition at the University of North Carolina that, at the start of each new school year, students drink from the school's famed Old Well, then make a promise to deliver a 4.0 GPA. This year, Tar Heels football coach Bill Belichick joined students for the event.

«The 4.0 doesn't always come,» student body president Devin Duncan said, «but being out there is nice.»

This, perhaps, best symbolizes where the North Carolina football program is at the threshold of a new season, Belichick's second in Chapel Hill. His tenure began with immense hope for a wildly successful future, fell far short in a tumultuous first year, and now, as the Tar Heels prepare to take the field in Ireland against TCU (noon ET on Saturday, ESPN), there's little more to rely on than Belichick's word that this season will be different.

«We made a lot of progress, and we continue to do that,» Belichick said at the start of fall camp. «The program is headed in a positive direction.»

What Belichick has delivered so far, however, has been a miserable 4-8 record in his first season and a culture inside the football building that various current and former athletics department staff members called «a circus,» «a mess» and «a disaster.»

Just moments before that first news conference of fall camp began, the school announced an official investigation into Michael Lombardi, Belichick's longtime consigliere and handpicked GM and, according to one UNC staffer, «the most hated man in the building,» following a complaint filed by a former employee with the school's human resources department.

Belichick and all other UNC staff members were barred from discussing the investigation, the school said in a release.

A week after the Lombardi