I’ve lived in North Carolina for 20 years and have been involved in local media the entire time. I have heard a lot of things said, both publicly and privately, about what North Carolina Tar Heel football can be and what it should be. The program has failed to meet those expectations every single time, so count me amongst the many in this state that laughed out loud when we heard that Bill Belichick would be taking over in Chapel Hill.
The process to hire him was messy, with influential alumni and wealthy donors neutering athletic director Bubba Cunningham. Somehow, though, things got even weirder.
Michael Lombardi, the team’s general manager, whose previous job was described by FS1’s Danny Parkins in truly devastating terms, declared that a program that put a total of one player in the 2025 NFL Draft was poised to become the league’s 33rd team. There was the media tour where Bill not only refused to wear UNC gear, but instead wore a sweatshirt repping a different team. There was the flirtation with Hard Knocks, then backing out to do a series with Hulu instead, before that plan was dropped, too.
And of course, there was the girlfriend, Jordon Hudson. She may have been at the center of national conversations thanks to Pablo Torre and Charlotte Wilder, but locally, we were a little more enamored with the on-field product.
Bill Belichick is supposed to be the best football brain to have ever walked the Earth, but the Tar Heels looked absolutely lifeless at times. How could he field a team that looked like they were running plays they had heard described but had never actually seen? Fans were frustrated. Haters were delighted.
So what was it like to be on the ground here for the most unique season of college football this state has ever seen? I reached out to a few colleagues who experienced it in different ways.
Shelby Swanson, who covers Tar Heel athletics for the Raleigh News & Observer, told me that going from Mack Brown to Bill Belichick is a real culture shock.
“Mack Brown was super welcoming, media-friendly,” she said. “I think it’s fine for me to say that he would have reporters for an off-the-record lunch and ‘sit down and we’ll go over film and I’ll tell you, you can’t quote me on this, but this is why I’m starting this quarterback versus not.’”
Andrew Jones, who runs the 247 site focused on the North Carolina Tar Heels, was in every press conference and at every game. Before the season began, he saw the version of Bill Belichick that everyone hoped UNC was getting.
“I thought August was great with him because he was talking straight,” Jones told me. “There were no results. Nobody was defensive. There was no perceived agenda yet. I thought that he was really good doing the ‘football 101’ stuff.”
Then came September 1. That was the night that TCU came to Chapel Hill, gave up an eight-yard touchdown run and then proceeded to absolutely beat the brakes off of the Tar Heels. Belichick didn’t just look outmatched. He looked lost.
Jones said that in hindsight, it’s not hard to understand why.
“People say, ‘Oh my God, he spent 50 years watching college film.’ No, he watched college football looking at guys pertaining to the NFL, how they would fit in the NFL. He never looked at them with how they relate to college. He didn’t really watch college football for the college football. He watched it for NFL purposes.”
That was when things began to get a little less open, and Belichick started to act and sound like he did in New England. The main difference was that his wins in Chapel Hill weren’t Super Bowls. They were against teams like Charlotte and Richmond.
In my eyes, the low point came in Week 4 when the Tar Heels went down to Orlando and were steamrolled by a bad UCF team. Everything you needed to know about how the experiment was going was on full display as Tar Heel DBs stood and watched a 17-yard touchdown pass sail over their heads right before halftime.
Swanson agrees that the game was bad, but in her eyes, the low point actually came the following week when the team lost at home to Clemson.
Before the season began, most of us assumed Belichick vs. Dabo Swinney would be on in prime time. The university clearly thought that way and was planning a party, declaring it would be the first-ever “Chapel Thrill” event and featuring a concert by Ludacris two hours before kickoff.
By the time we got to game week, it was the 1-3 Tigers visiting the 2-2 Heels, without a single power-conference win between them. Kickoff was moved to noon Eastern to air on the ACC Network, and Ludacris took the stage at 9 a.m.
Welcome to Chapel Thrill, @Ludacris 🤩 pic.twitter.com/Jn2jbskdb1
— UNC Tar Heels (@GoHeels) October 4, 2025
It was another embarrassing Tar Heels loss, and that was just the start of a very bad week.
“Immediately after that, you had the WRAL report coming out about the divided locker room,” Swanson said. “Then you had, I think, in that same week, you had Armond Hawkins’s suspension over alleged impermissible benefits. There are all these reports of locker room fights, potentially fights that we’re still getting more information about. You had Belichick and Bubba Cunningham issue joint statements reaffirming their commitment. Oh, and that was also the week that I think they announced the Hulu docuseries was done.”
That report from Raleigh’s NBC affiliate, WRAL-TV, detailed not only a divided locker room but an environment that seemed wildly unprofessional. Parents told reporter Pat Welter that they were completely frozen out. The defensive coordinator, Belichick’s son Steve, reportedly would not give his players his phone number. Of GM Michael Lombardi, who is described in the story as “rude” and “nasty,” a source said simply, “Nobody likes him.”
Lombardi has been a particularly reviled character amongst local fans. Belichick and his girlfriend are still at the front and center of this story, but amongst the Tar Heel faithful, it’s hard to find anyone who believes in or advocates patience with the GM.
“If you talk to actual people – not the chronically online – they think Lombardi is the worst and actually want him and Bill to be embarrassed,” said Joe Ovies, one half of the popular local podcast Ovies & Giglio. “That’s evident in the amount of people trying to unload tickets this season for like half price and the real discussion about season ticket sales for next year tanking.”
Full disclosure: I do a podcast about the Carolina Panthers for Ovies & Giglio’s podcast network and co-host a show with Ovies called OG on Business.
Swanson had one interaction with Lombardi that she finds hard to let go.
“I think it was the Clemson game,” she said. “He’s walking in the press box because they have their GM box right there, and they’ll come in and just get a soft drink or whatever. I approached him. From what I remember, just said something along the lines of like, ‘Hey, I’m Shelby. I’m with the News and Observer. I’ve been going to your radio shows [Lombardi, not Belichick, did the weekly coach’s show]. Just wanted to say hi.’ He goes, ‘Yes, and?’ That took me aback a little bit because I’m like, ‘Yo, I’m just trying to say hi.’”
She stresses that other times she has spoken with Lombardi, he has been less standoffish and willing to engage. That interaction with him in the press box made a real impression, though.
“I have never had somebody in my life that, in my memory, that I’ve approached just to say hi and introduce myself, and they’ve responded ‘yes and.’ So I always remember that.”
Much has been written and said about Jordon Hudson on podcasts and in national publications. Locally, though, the people who cover the Tar Heels and talk to the fans don’t have much to say about Bill Belichick’s much younger girlfriend.
Her exploits may be great for jokes. Certainly, NC State and Duke fans want to talk about adult cheerleading competitions and failed bids to get on reality TV. The stories are not what you expect to hear about a college football coach’s partner, which is akin to being the First Lady in the South.
That isn’t what shows up on Ovies’s phone lines, though.
“About 95% (of the audience’s conversation) has been about Bill and how UNC fans wanted it to fail so they could go get a real coach,” he said.
Ideally, Jones wouldn’t have to write or talk about Hudson at all; however, he has come to accept that she is linked to UNC football. He compared it to Bill Clinton introducing his wife, Hillary, to voters in 1992 by saying, “you’re getting two of us,” as Hudson is as ubiquitous with Tar Heel football as Mrs. Clinton was during her husband’s eight years in the White House.
For Swanson, it’s a little different. She says that the News & Observer has tried to be respectful when it comes to issues she calls “tabloid fodder,” but she also notes that news abhors a vacuum. In the spring, when Torre’s podcast first became ground zero for all things Jordon Hudson, UNC’s football office was not putting out any alternative for the media to latch onto, be it legitimate information or PR fluff.
She also notes that one thing some fans have taken issue with is Hudson being on the field before and after games. With a little bit of digging, she learned that nothing Hudson was doing was wildly out of the ordinary for a coach’s significant other.
“The difference with this is just the age gap, but what she’s doing is completely within the role,” Swanson says.
Black Sunday has come and gone. It may have seemed a little irrelevant in a year where the college football coaching carousel started spinning pretty early and never really stopped. However, on the day most coaches on the hot seat find out their fate, Bill Belichick ended the day the same way he started it – as a 4-8 football coach running the program at the University of North Carolina.
That would be a good indication that we’re gonna do this again next year, right? And if we’re going to do this again next year, that has to mean Bill Belichick and Michael Lombardi will develop a plan to put Tar Heel football on the right track, right?
“Well, it better be,” Jones says plainly. “Or it’s going to be an even worse disaster.”
About Demetri Ravanos