UNC Football: Maybe the Sleeping Giant Isn’t Sleeping
Fans and media keep pointing at Bill Belichick’s $10 million salary and asking the perfectly reasonable question: What exactly is UNC getting for all that money? Fair question. The winning percentage certainly doesn’t justify it. But here’s the part that makes college football absolutely fascinating: $10 million doesn’t even put Belichick in the top 10 of college football coaching salaries.
Let that sink in. We have somehow created a sport where universities can hand a coach nine or ten million dollars a year, give him a contract with a buyout large enough to require its own economic impact study, and then turn around and tell us they have no idea how college football is going to survive financially. But the players? Those greedy college kids wanting NIL money? Apparently, that’s the problem. We have coaches making millions, athletic departments spending millions, administrators negotiating buyouts that can approach $60 million and facilities that look like luxury resorts. Then someone gets on television with a straight face and tells us college football is in an existential financial crisis because a 19-year-old wide receiver wants to get paid. Sure. And I’m the next head coach at Alabama.
Look at Oxford on Saturday night if you want to know how much college football passion is left in America. College football is like fossil fuel. We keep hearing it is running out. We keep being told the old model is dead. We keep hearing fans are tired of it. Then Saturday night arrives, tens of thousands of people show up, television cameras turn on, everyone loses their minds and somebody sells another truckload of overpriced stadium beer. Maybe the passion isn't the problem. Maybe the people running the sport keep confusing their inability to figure out how to manage the money with a lack of interest from the people who actually pay for the whole thing.
So what did UNC really buy with Bill Belichick? Maybe it bought something more important than a win total: a seat at the table. UNC has announced to the college football world that it is serious enough about football to spend real money on it. That matters when the Belichick era eventually ends and UNC starts looking for the next guy. And make no mistake, the next guy is coming with a presentation. There will be slides about recruiting, NIL, facilities, culture and the transfer portal. There will probably be a picture of himself standing next to a bunch of five-star recruits. Somewhere around slide 47, he will tell UNC administrators that he is the guy who can finally wake the Sleeping Giant. And someone in the room will nod slowly as if they have just discovered fire.
The next coach will believe he is Jack climbing the beanstalk, except instead of a golden goose at the top, there will be a massive contract waiting for him if everything goes right and a massive buyout waiting for everyone if it doesn't. The problem is, I've been around, as the Ole Ball Coach used to say, half a hundred years. I've heard the Sleeping Giant speech before. I've seen the Sleeping Giant. That thing isn't sleeping. It is in a deep coma. Every once in a while it opens one eye, looks around Chapel Hill, realizes basketball season is starting and goes right back to sleep.
And here's the really pathetic part: I know exactly what is going to happen to me. The next coach will arrive, say all the right things, beat somebody we aren't supposed to beat, sign a recruit who has three stars today and somehow becomes the next great thing by February, talk about competing for championships and mention the College Football Playoff. And I'll believe him. Because that's what being a fan is. Hope is the flu. It comes around every year. You think you've developed immunity. You think you're finally too old and too cynical to fall for it again. Then a new coach smiles at a press conference and says, "We're going to build something special," and there I am, buying back into the whole thing.
So maybe I've got the wrong expectations. Maybe I don't need a College Football Playoff. Maybe I don't need a national championship. Maybe I don't even need the Sleeping Giant to wake up. Right now, I'll take Duke and NC State. Beat those two, and I'll worry about the beanstalk later.
