Why Bill Belichick, North Carolina turned down 'Hard Knocks'

Eight-time Super Bowl champion and legendary NFL coach Bill Belichick has never coached at the collegiate level.

He was hired by North Carolina this past offseason to replace former head coach Mack Brown, and now Tar Heels football is already the must-see story of the 2025 college football season. 

That's why HBO's "Hard Knocks" producers wanted to feature UNC heading into the 2025 campaign.

The Tar Heels ultimately turned that opportunity down, though, and NC general manager Michael Lombardi recently explained why on "The Pat McAfee Show."

“It would’ve been great. The problem was we control the story we need to tell here. And the story we want to tell doesn’t end after we play TCU," Lombardi said (h/t On3). "The story we want to tell is a story about how we’re rebuilding this program. How we’re going to honor the great players who have come before us, how we’re going to restore Tar Heel football and make this stadium come alive on Saturday afternoons like a lot of others schools in the ACC. That’s the story we want to tell."