Why June 1 is a key date for Bill Belichick at North Carolina

The first day of June is not only the ceremonial start of summer, but also a very notable date in the contract Bill Belichick signed to coach the North Carolina football team.

June 1 finds a marked drop in Belichick’s buyout with UNC, falling to just $1 million from the previous $10 million amount from before that date.

That means if Belichick ever decided to walk out on the Tar Heels, he would owe the school just $1 million in damages, not ten times that amount.

Section 13 of the contract confirms that Belichick would owe the school $10 million in damages if he terminated the agreement before the first of June, and just $1 million after that date.

That fact has led to plenty of speculation that Belichick might take the opportunity to back out of the Tar Heels gig, maybe for another shot at the NFL, culminating in reporter Pablo Torre suggesting there was a “real possibility” Belichick wouldn’t be on UNC’s sideline in Week 1.

Anticipating his speculative early departure from the school as a media talking point, Belichick has tried to get out in front of that narrative since joining Carolina, flatly indicating he had no such plans.

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

Michael Lombardi, who Belichick hired as general manager of the football program, has strongly criticized reports that the coach was looking to get out of UNC.

“I’m loud because I think so many of [the rumors], especially the one that keeps going on, is being generated by someone who doesn’t like our program, who doesn’t like me, who doesn’t like Coach Belichick,” Lombardi said on The Pat McAfee Show this offseason.

He added: “They keep kicking something that doesn’t exist.”

Torre did some of that kicking, reporting that North Carolina had 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 and her reported role in “Hard Knocks” backing out of a UNC-centered docuseries.

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.

And, as of June 1, so is Belichick, crafting the North Carolina football team in his image in what will be his first season at the helm of a collegiate program.

“It’s not about where we are going to be X number of months from now,” Belichick said recently when defining what success would look like in Year 1.

“It’s trying to take advantage of every opportunity that comes along to make the most of it... We’ll see where the process takes us. But I believe in the process. I believe what we’re doing, and we have a lot of people working really hard. We’ll just keep putting those together.”

--

Read