North Carolina coach Bill Belichick, who didn’t spend much time talking to the media a year ago when promoting his book, submitted this week to a pair of lengthy podcast interviews. His sudden willingness to be so chatty raises an obvious question: Why now?
Consider the recent public criticisms from former North Carolina quarterback Gio Lopez.
Lopez, who transferred to Wake Forest one year after transferring to North Carolina, didn’t hold back about his concerns about playing for Belichick.
“Back at the other school, it felt like there’s no air,” Lopez said. “Here, it’s fun again. They’re moving us in the right direction, energized, and guys are enjoying football. It’s like fresh air. I’d never had to respond to tough situations like that on that loud of a scale. . . .
“It was more like work. After that first game, it felt like getting through the day. You don’t want to live like that, where you’re up at night thinking about the next day.”
That wasn’t from some random player. It came from the quarterback who started 11 games for Belichick in his first year at UNC.
Lopez’s comments came to light two weeks ago. It’s reasonable to think those remarks hit hard in Chapel Hill, prompting Belichick or someone close to him to urge the curmudgeon to make himself seem more likable (or less unlikable) by submitting to interviews with Pardon My Take and Sean Hannity.
Both shows gave Belichick very favorable treatment. Hannity (who claims he’s a huge football fan but who asked multiple questions that revealed a fundamental lack of awareness as to certain obvious facts any huge football fan would know) repeatedly fawned over Belichick.
At one point, for instance, Hannity said to Belichick, “You could have stayed in the NFL as long as you want to, I think. That’s my opinion. I think you know that, too. I’m sure you had offers.”
Belichick, who didn’t correct Hannity, has had no offers to coach another NFL team, in three hiring cycles. In all, Belichick has had one interview.
Without question, Belichick is one of the greatest coaches in the history of sports. His omission from the 2026 class of the Pro Football Hall of Fame strips the institution of any remaining credibility it had.
Still, Belichick is hardly flawless. His first year in college football was a disaster, in part because Belichick and his consigliere, G.M. Mike Lombardi, set the bar way too high by dubbing the program the NFL’s 33rd franchise. And Belichick apparently didn’t modulate his approach to factor in the mindset of young players in the NIL era. As evidenced by Lopez’s willingness to say what he said.
Belichick was asked about Lopez’s comments in neither of the podcast appearances, both of which lasted more than an hour and a half.
Blind hero worship doesn’t properly capture Belichick’s current reality. During the PMT appearance, Belichick had his Super Bowl trophies in the background and a box of Super Bowl rings to his right. The entire goal seemed to be reminding current college football players (and, perhaps more importantly, their parents) that the current coach of the Tar Heels has more than a few pelts on the wall.
Will that be enough to get them to buy in to Belichick’s approach? The real question is whether he plans to change his approach, or whether his recent media tour is simply about putting out the brushfire so that he can get back to doing things the way he has always done them: My way, or go away.
Last year, when North Carolina coach Bill Belichick was selling a book, he conducted a very truncated media tour. This week alone, without anything specific to sell, Belichick has made a pair of lengthy podcast appearances.
It started with Pardon My Take, and it continued with Fox News Media’s Hang Out with Sean Hannity.
The PMT spot — which was very entertaining — focused only on football and none of the various non-football questions that could have been posed to Belichick. In contrast, Hannity raised the disastrous CBS interview from 2025. Which was a Sunday morning softball session that Belichick and his girlfriend, Jordon Hudson, treated like chin music.
“By the way, like CBS, I was stunned at how horribly you were treated,” Hannity said. “I couldn’t believe it.”
“I couldn’t believe it, either,” Belichick said.
“I was stunned,” Hannity replied. “I hope you sue them.”
Based on his history, Belichick easily could have said, “I’m on to Cincinnati” (or whatever) as a way to avoid revisiting an old topic. He didn’t. He embraced the subject.
“As we’ve seen recently, there have been more editing problems, and they go back over a couple of years,” Belichick said, via Brandon Contes of Awful Announcing. “Multiple examples of editing and interview process and all that. You know, I thought that the interview I had with them was done very deceptively. I’ve asked for the transcript from them, and they won’t give it to me. They’ve done that with others. I’m not really sure what that policy is. . . .
“So I’m kind of confused about their — some of the things that they say they are, but I don’t really see them living up to the trust that they talk about.”
The worst moment in the CBS interview (beyond Belichick’s decision to wear an old football jersey with a hole in the neck) came when Tony Dokoupil asked Belichick how he met Hudson. She interrupted the interview and said, “We’re not talking about this.”
It became, at the time, one of the biggest stories in all of sports. And while Belichick has since complained about the way the interview was conducted and edited, it’s entirely possible that the full, unedited session would not make Belichick and/or Hudson look any better.
Quite possibly, it would make them look worse.
Given that Belichick is still willing to air his grievances about it, why shouldn’t CBS release the full interview? Start to finish. Let the viewers see it and hear it.
And if it takes a lawsuit to get the entire interview, here’s hoping Belichick files one. Our guess is that, in the end, the chances of Belichick suing CBS are roughly the same as Hudson following through on her vow to sue Pablo Torre.
Meanwhile, Belichick’s publisher should be keeping an eye on his willingness to do media appearances now, and it should be asking itself whether he fully complied with his contractual obligation (if any) to make a minimum number of media appearances a year ago to promote his book.
It’s possible that, of all potential lawsuits that could be filed by Hudson, Belichick, and/or Belichick’s publisher, a breach of contract suit from Simon & Schuster against Belichick would end up being the most viable.
Even if it definitely would not be the most entertaining.
North Carolina coach Bill Belichick could use some good P.R. There’s no better way to get it than to appear on a wildly popular podcast and, in so doing, attempt to come off as almost human.
He largely accomplished that in his visit with Pardon My Take, even if — as Carmine Lupertazzi once said — a Don never wears shorts.
During the extended interview, the issue of Belichick’s “no days off” motto came up. After all these years, Belichick explained that it doesn’t reflect a maniacal mandate to working every single day but a commitment to working hard on work days.
“Most people don’t really understand what that means — or what it meant to us, I should say — what it meant to us,” Belichick said. “What it meant to us was, when you come to work, you go to work. You don’t come to work and dillydally around and like, ‘I was here, I broke a sweat, I showed up,’ and go home. That’s a day off.
“When we said, ‘no days off,’ we meant, ‘You come to work, you’re ready to work, you’re prepared, you put in a good day’s work,’ OK? Maybe tomorrow’s an off day. . . . That’s fine. I’m not saying like, ‘Don’t take a day off.’ We’re saying, ‘Don’t come to the stadium and take a day off.’ And so the ‘no days off’ was when you come in here, man, we expect your best and we expect you to work at it. When we’re done, we’re done, and, you know, you’re with your family or you’re, you know, whatever you’re doing. Sure, there’s days off. But don’t take them here.”
It wasn’t viewed that way. As Belichick said, it became part of the “hype train of the Patriots.”
“I’m sure it’s sold towels and some, you know, beer mugs or whatever,” Belichick said. “And it was used in a different context.”
It’s a reasonable explanation. And, if it had been provided at the time, Belichick would have been perceived as less of a curmudgeon who lacks perspective or life balance and more as a guy spreading the very positive message of being fully engaged in your work, on your work days.
That said, the rule only applied to the players. For the coaching staff and the front office, there weren’t many days off.
Under coach Bill Belichick, the North Carolina Tar Heels are struggling to win on the field. Off the field, the players have caused ongoing concern regarding the manner in which they drive, and park, their NIL-financed vehicles.
A new report from WRAL looks at the various issues related to speeding, reckless driving, and parking in places where they shouldn’t be parking (such as spots reserved for people with disabilities).
Pushing the matter internally is professor Mark Peifer, who has been peppering North Carolina Athletic Director Bubba Cunningham with complaints about the situation.
“Is there no one who can rein in these players, probably only a subset of the football team, who are tarnishing the reputation of our school and of all Carolina athletes?” Peifer wrote in a recent email to Cunningham, per the WRAL report.
Cunningham told Peifer in an April 2026 email, “I don’t know how many more times I can apologize. Disappointing to say the least.”
One player, per the report, has been cited four times for speeding and two times for reckless driving since arriving at the Chapel Hill campus in January 2026. Another player has received three citations since February; on one occasion, he was allegedly driving in excess of 100 miles per hour.
Belichick was asked about the situation by WRAL in November 2025.
“Our conduct outside of the building, outside of the program, is important to us, and we stress that,” Belichick said at the time. “We’ve addressed multiple things, not just that. There are other things that go on, besides driving, that we’ve talked about absolutely.”
Talking apparently hasn’t solved the problem. And Peifer now believes Cunningham has no power to fix it.
“I thought [Cunningham] actually was probably right up there with the chancellor and running the university, but I found out when I wrote to him that he doesn’t have any control over the football program anymore,” Peifer told WRAL. “He clearly was frustrated and ultimately angry about this behavior and didn’t seem to be able to change it.”
Behavior won’t change without consequences. And while Belichick has a well-earned reputation when it comes to imposing consequences for behaviors that directly impact the goal of winning games, the fact that this specific problem persists shows that Belichick can’t, or won’t, demand compliance.
And, yes, issues like this aren’t uncommon from the football players on college campuses. For Belichick, who is facing increased pressure after a grossly subpar debut season, the issue gives local media outlets (like WRAL) an obvious way to point to flaws in the program unrelated to not winning enough games.
North Carolina, under Bill Belichick, fancies itself the NFL’s 33rd team. The better description is the NCAA’s equivalent of Belichick’s Patriots.
Without, to date, the winning.
Former UNC quarterback Gio Lopez, who played for Belichick in his first year as a college coach, has transferred to Wake Forest. To hear it from Lopez, it sounds less like a transfer and more like an escape.
“Back at the other school, it felt like there’s no air,” Lopez recently said, via Logan Lazarczyk of SI.com. “Here, it’s fun again. They’re moving us in the right direction, energized, and guys are enjoying football. It’s like fresh air. I’d never had to respond to tough situations like that on that loud of a scale.”
What was the biggest difference about playing football under Belichick?
“It was more like work,” Lopez said. “After that first game, it felt like getting through the day. You don’t want to live like that, where you’re up at night thinking about the next day.”
Gio Lopez’s father, Barney Lopez, has offered more specific commentary regarding the manner in which the team was run. And regarding the feedback Gio received in real time.
“You were ridiculed if you didn’t do it exactly the way he was told,” Barney Lopez said. “You could be at the dang line, see the play is about to be blown up, but if you try to call it off or audible, you were ridiculed.”
The end result was that Gio Lopez no longer enjoyed playing.
“Gio has always loved the game of football, and he was losing the love for it when he was over there [at North Carolina],” Barney Lopez said.
Gio Lopez started 11 games in 2025, his first and only season at North Carolina. It will be interesting to see what Belichick and/or G.M. Mike Lombardi will have to say about Lopez’s comments.
Our guess is that Belichick would grumble something unintelligible before saying he’s only focused on the guys who are on the team. Lombardi possibly would find a way to throw shade at Lopez indirectly, saying something about how NFL-style football isn’t for everyone and some guys respond the right way to coaching from the greatest coach of all time and others respond a different way.
And then Lombardi would probably try to find a way to blame it all on the media.
Here’s the key. Belichick’s methods work if he wins. Because winning validates a coach’s approach. Players who complain about how a coach goes about coaching a team into becoming a winning program come off as whiners, whatever the techniques.
When a team underachieves, the feedback from the players helps explain why things went sideways.
Ultimately, it comes down to whether Belichick and Lombardi will be able to recruit enough good players to Chapel Hill. Without good players, no college program has a chance to compete at a high level.
But an important question will remain, regardless of the quality of the roster. Do Belichick’s methods work on college-aged players? Could the Patriot Way at the NCAA level make a potentially good team worse, or better?
College football players have more power and freedom than ever. They no longer have to tolerate an emotionless taskmaster. And, for those who eventually make it to the NFL, they can worry about it feeling like a job later. Kids who are 18, 19, and 20 prefer to behave accordingly, at least some of the time.
For now, all we know is what has transpired. Belichick’s first season at North Carolina fell far short of expectations. Even with 2025 lowering the bar for 2026, Belichick will have plenty of work to do in order to stick around for a third year.
Last year, North Carolina G.M. Mike Lombardi crowed that the Tar Heels were the NFL’s 33rd franchise. The other 32 had no interest in any of their draft-eligible players.
None of the players from the first year of the Bill Belichick tenure at Chapel Hill were among the 257 draft picks from the 2026 selection process.
None. As in not one. And they arrived in time to take advantage of the transfer portal to find one-year players who would then exit for the NFL. Given that it was too late to put together a strong class of incoming freshmen, they were even more likely to seek and find established players.
That was the basic problem with the program in 2025. They didn’t have enough good players. And it was Lombardi’s job to find them.
Between finding them and coaching them up, Belichick and company didn’t do enough to get any of them drafted.
When Berj Najarian left Boston College in December 2025, the question became whether he’d reunite with Bill Belichick at North Carolina.
That’s not going to be happening.
Via Pete Thamel of ESPN, Najarian has taken a job at Michigan. He becomes the assistant general manager/strategy, with the job of assisting new coach Kyle Whittingham as to contracts, negotiations, and “strategy for the new college sports landscape.”
Najarian served as Belichick’s right-hand man for 24 years in New England. When Belichick took the job at Carolina, Najarian was already working for Bill O’Brien at Boston College.
The connection to Belichick nevertheless endured. An April 2025 email from Belichick regarding publicity for his book (which Jordon Hudson posted on social media during the kerfuffle following his disastrous CBS interview), showed “Berj” as a recipient. That raised an interesting question regarding whether and to what extent Najarian (unless Belichick would be sending the email to some other “Berj”) was collaborating with the head coach of a conference rival to his current employer.
So why wouldn’t Najarian rejoin Belichick? As noted in December, the elephant in the room may have been North Carolina G.M. Mike Lombardi.
Last year, Pablo Torre reported that Najarian was one of multiple key Patriots employees who complained about Mike Lombardi during his stint with the Patriots, resulting in Lombardi being ousted. (Lombardi has claimed he left voluntarily.)
Or maybe it’s as simple as Najarian seeing a more viable future in Ann Arbor, where things are just getting started, than in Chapel Hill, where another lackluster season could mean things will be coming to an end for Belichick and company.
Bill Belichick’s second offseason as head football coach at North Carolina has yet to include the storm of distractions that emerged a year ago. But the experience is not distraction-free.
Via the Daily Mail, a painter has sued Belichick for injuries suffered while painting at Belichick’s home in July 2024.
Andrew Jackson contends that Belichick’s $5 million property on Nantucket had improperly maintained plastic sheeting or coverings to protect the floor and furniture, which created a “dangerous and unsafe” work environment.
From the lawsuit, which reportedly seeks nearly $300,000 in compensation: “Defendant owed Plaintiff a duty to use reasonable care to maintain the premises in a reasonably safe condition, to inspect for hazards, to warn of dangers of which it knew or should have known, and to coordinate the site in a reasonably safe manner for lawful workers present there.”
Jackson claims he fell at the work site, suffering a severe ankle injury. Jackson allegedly suffered pain, disability, lost wages, and medical expenses.
He contends that he has incurred $61,000 in hospital expenses, $4,600 in doctors’ visits and $2,000 in physical-therapy bills. Jackson also alleges that he has lost $167,828.25 in wages, and that he will lose another $50,000.
The total financial losses specified by Jackson total $285,436.39.
If Jackson can prove Belichick was responsible for the injury, and if the financial harm can be established to the satisfaction of a judge and jury, Jackson would also be eligible for an award of general damages based on his pain. That would be over and above the financial consequences — and it could push the final award well north of $300,000.
Belichick presumably has insurance that will cover the case. Still, he’ll be expected to cooperate with the litigation, unless and until a settlement is reached. Depending on the limits of Belichick’s liability coverage (and someone with his assets would be crazy not to have an umbrella policy worth at least $10 million), he’ll possibly face no specific financial losses.
Unless, of course, the insurance companies try to claim that all or part of the incident isn’t covered. Which is the first question most insurance companies ask when faced with the prospect of paying out money to anyone.
LONDON — Neff Giwa sometimes asks himself: “Is this really happening to me?”
Incredibly, yes.
The 20-year-old Irishman who has never played American football committed on Sunday to play at South Carolina as an offensive lineman.
Giwa, who is also Nigerian, has come a long way — from Tipperary — in a short amount of time. Just a few months after showing an interest in the sport, he was touring U.S. college campuses, meeting coaches and collecting offers.
It’s a lot to handle, even for someone who is 6 feet, 7 1/2 inches tall, weighs 295 pounds and has 37-inch-long arms and great foot speed.
“I knew that there’d be a journey there, but I could never have anticipated this,” Giwa, in an interview with The Associated Press, said of the whirlwind around his recruitment.
Giwa, whose full first name is Oluwanifemi, selected the Gamecocks over offers from Miami, North Carolina, SMU, Tennessee and Texas.
Giwa had two visits to Columbia and spent “ a lot of time ” with coach Shane Beamer.
‘Freakish numbers’
Giwa — pronounced with a hard G — heard about Brandon Collier through a friend familiar with the American’s track record of finding, training and placing international kids at U.S. college football programs. Collier, an American who played defensive line at UMass, runs PPI Recruits out of Germany.
Collier had Giwa visit him for a workout and immediately envisioned him protecting quarterbacks.
“If you can create a tackle in a laboratory, this is what you want him to look like,” Collier told the AP.
It wasn’t just his size, though. Collier clocked Giwa at 4.88 seconds in the 40-yard dash and measured his broad jump at 9 feet, 10 inches — “pretty freakish numbers,” Collier noted.
“Then he has the toughness,” he added. “You can have all these measurements, but if you’re not tough mentally and physically then you probably won’t make it.”
Collier was bringing his latest group of recruits on campus tours earlier this month and decided to add Giwa — mostly just to introduce him to the process.
“I didn’t have expectations,” Giwa told the AP before Sunday’s announcement. “It was just to see what was out there, basically, and what to work towards.”
“Things kind of picked up.”
Here come the offers
Not long after touching down in the U.S., Collier detoured to Toronto to check out another touted prospect. Giwa joined him.
“I had them do some pass sets and some one-on-ones with some kids, he looked phenomenal,” Collier said of Giwa.
So he instructed Giwa to immediately create an X account so colleges could learn more about him. Collier then posted a couple of videos “and it went viral from there.”
“Miami, they messaged me literally 60 seconds after I posted it,” Collier said. “The head coach (Mario Cristobal) wrote me a message — ‘get him to Miami.’”
Like actually one minute?
“Literally 60 seconds, man,” Collier said. “The power of networking and social media. People know what I do.”
Giwa didn’t talk to Belichick
North Carolina would have been an intriguing choice not only to play for iconic coach Bill Belichick but also because the Tar Heels play their 2026 opener against TCU at Aviva Stadium in Dublin.
“I haven’t spoken to him personally,” Giwa said of Belichick.
Playing in his country someday would be great: “I was born in Ireland, and I was raised in Ireland. It definitely would be cool and a bit of an honor to do that.”
Lots of international talent
Marvin Nguetsop, a German defensive end who is doing a year of prep school in Connecticut, was considered the top recruit on Collier’s recent tour. He got offers from Ohio State and Michigan.
“All of the kids had offers on the tour, too,” Collier said. “Tennessee offered five or six of the kids on one day.”
Giwa is not the first of Collier’s recruits to get offers despite no football experience. Hero Kanu received an offer from Penn State without ever playing the sport. The defensive lineman ultimately chose Ohio State. He now plays at Texas.
Giwa is a small-town kid
Giwa grew up in Cashel, a town in County Tipperary with a population under 5,000.
His mother is a nurse and his father is a physiotherapist. Giwa, who has three older siblings, said they were the first Nigerian family to move into town and that local residents “definitely made us feel welcome.”
What does he tell everyone about college football and the facilities he’s visited?
“I tell them it’s a different world over there,” he said.
Rugby, soccer, hurling and Gaelic football are the local sports.
Giwa likes that American football allows him to use his size. He sees a rugby-to-football template in Jordan Mailata, a 6-foot-8 Australian who plays offensive tackle for the Philadelphia Eagles.
Name, image and likeness deals allow college athletes, even international ones if done correctly, to earn big money.
“It does make you think about possibilities and choices and how you can help others. (But) it’s more just making your family proud,” he said.
Giwa credits Collier with creating life-changing opportunities. He’s not sure what he’d be doing otherwise.
“I’d just be a regular guy,” he said with a laugh, “doing what 90% of the world is doing, just trying to make a living. That’s why I’m so grateful because I’m able to do something that I really love now.”
North Carolina coach Bill Belichick had not spoken publicly about his inexplicable Hall of Fame snub. On Tuesday, he met with reporters for the first time since the Hall of Fame voters kept Belichick out, on his first try at enshrinement.
Does Bill Belichick have any comment on being denied a bronze bust?
“No,” he said, “I’m focused on coaching this team and focused on, you know, getting Carolina football to highest level I can. That’s what I’ve always — I focus about what I can do, and things that are out of my control, I don’t worry about.”
Obviously, that’s not entirely true. When Belichick received word that he wasn’t getting in, he apparently didn’t just shrug and move on to the things he can control. Otherwise, word about his snub wouldn’t have gotten out before the new class of Hall of Famers was announced.
He has every right to be upset. He absolutely should have gotten in. Of the five-person menu that included Belichick, Robert Kraft, Ken Anderson, Roger Craig, and L.C. Greenwood, Belichick should have been one of the three choices on all 50 ballots. Hell, if each voter would have been limited to only one person, it should have been Belichick, 50 times over.
The oversight undoubtedly will be fixed in 2027. It’s the only way for the Hall of Fame to begin rebuilding its credibility. Even then, the donut hole that kept Belichick out of Canton can’t be forgotten.
