'Preposterous' that Bill Belichick won't coach UNC in Week 1: GameDay host

Certain language in Bill Belichick’s contract with North Carolina has led to some offseason speculation that the head coach could leave the program before the season even gets underway.

Don’t listen to that noise, College GameDay host Rece Davis has said.

“I will say this: from my interactions, from my talks, both on camera and off, this notion that it’s even a remote possibility that somehow he wouldn’t coach seems preposterous to me,” he said on The College GameDay Podcast.

That talk ramped up recently when reporter Pablo Torre wondered aloud if the buyout terms of Belichick’s deal with UNC could provide him a less expensive way out of the job.

Torre speculated that there is a “real chance” Belichick would not be with the program when football season started, citing the terms of the head coach’s five-year, $50 million deal.

Those terms stipulate that Belichick would owe the school $10 million if he left before June 1, and just $1 million if he were to depart after that date.

“I think there’s a chance, an absolutely real chance, that he doesn’t,” Torre said on The Domonique Foxworth Show when asked if Belichick will coach that Week 1 game.

Reacting to that, Davis added: “I’ve been wrong before. [I’m] not gonna sit here and go at another reporter and say that their sources are no good, [that] they don’t know,” but the GameDay host still stressed he doesn’t foresee a situation where Belichick isn’t on the Carolina sideline.

Belichick has also directly denied claims that he was looking for an early exit from Carolina, anticipating such talk to become a subject of offseason media interest.

“I didn’t come here to leave,”Belichick said at his introductory press conference, arousing some applause from those in the room.

Torre previously reported that North Carolina effectively banned Jordon Hudson, Belichick’s girlfriend and handler, from the football facility after a series of unwelcome headlines detailing her apparent involvement in managing the coach’s public image.

But the school refuted that report, saying that, while Hudson is not an employee of North Carolina or its athletic department, she was still welcome at the UNC football facility.

“All of this seems to be offseason fodder,” Davis said. “Because of the magnitude of who he is, more than anything else.”

(Davis)

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