North Carolina Tar Heels hire Bill Belichick - Coaches weigh in - ESPN

Bill Belichick's hiring at North Carolina has reverberated throughout college football, including among the coaches who will now call him a colleague.

Belichick, a six-time Super Bowl champion coach with the New England Patriots, had spent his entire coaching career in the NFL, beginning in 1975 with the Baltimore Colts. His main connection to college football came through his father, Steve, a longtime college coach who worked mostly at Navy but also spent three years as a North Carolina assistant shortly after Bill was born. Bill evaluated college players for decades and visited Nick Saban and other coaching friends over the years, but his feet were firmly planted in the NFL until Wednesday.

Chapel Bill is taking over at UNC, bringing an unmatched pro football coaching résumé to the college game. He's not the first notable NFL coach to take over a college program. Bill Walsh, who won three Super Bowls with Joe Montana and the San Francisco 49ers in the 1980s, left broadcasting to take over Stanford's program in 1992. But Walsh had coached at Stanford before, while Belichick, 72, is a newcomer to the college ranks.

He arrives at a time when the lines between college and pro football are blurring because players are being paid through name, image and likeness deals, and most have agents. College programs are structuring themselves like NFL teams do, especially with general managers and personnel staff. Belichick wasn't just looking for any college job. He needed assurances and power to operate UNC football in a certain way.

How do coaches think he'll fare with the Tar Heels? What support will he need to truly elevate a UNC program that hasn't won a conference title since 1980 and has just two AP top-10 finishes since