Bill Belichick’s Hall of Fame Snub Is a Wake-Up Call for His North Carolina Tenure

The football world is up in arms. As well it should be.

Bill Belichick is not a first-ballot Pro Football Hall of Famer, which means, as of now, he’s not a Hall of Famer either. The resulting fallout from that large omission has led to plenty of outrage being thrown around at the process that leads to enshrinement in Canton.

But while the NFL world goes full Inspector Clouseau in trying to ferret out just why there will be no golden hoodie in 2026, of far more pressing matters is what the snub will do to the real-life Coach Belichick and the task at hand in North Carolina.

Because if this latest sign of rejection from the pro game he once lorded over doesn’t change the approach to his current job in Chapel Hill, the Tar Heels should go ahead and start their coaching search now.

Let’s make no bones about it, it’s asinine that Belichick of all people wasn’t instantly measured for his gold jacket as soon as he was eligible. Set aside the three losing seasons in his last four years in Foxborough or whatever feelings you might have around Spygate and Deflategate, the man defined the modern standard in what it meant to don a headset at pretty much every level of football.

He won 333 games (second all time in the NFL), wore eight Super Bowl rings like a boss and guided his team to the final game of the season a remarkable nine times as a head coach. Seventeen division titles, getting the benefit of trotting out Tom Brady at quarterback or not, is still hard to fathom.

It’s the type of grand brush off that makes the College Football Hall of Fame process look downright exemplary by comparison—and that group still hasn’t inducted Mike Leach even after changing criteria to get coaches like him in the door. For a game which often preaches process over end results, both levels so often can’t get out of their own way when it comes to the final act of bestowing football immortality.

There will be no mistaking that such a slight—conveniently timed to leak in the off week before Super Bowl LX featuring his old team—will be a deep-seated wound to the human being who hides underneath all those layers of gruff exterior. Belichick studies and knows the history of football better than just about anyone in the profession. He, more than most, knows he deserved it and now cannot have it.

Such rejection will sting and gnaw at him for years to come. If you’re North Carolina and hoping for some positive spin though, maybe it can light a fire under the 73-year-old for the coming 2026 season. If there’s any silver lining, the discussion in Santa Clara, Calif., next week at least won’t be about Belichick’s girlfriend as much as it could have been with this latest news.

Yet there still may be a shot or two at a guy who went 4–8 last season.

That’s the part that, more than actually worrying about something that is now in the past regarding the NFL, should help drive Belichick this coming season. If he’s thinking of taking a week off to return to Nantucket for a getaway or is pondering calling up one of his former cronies from the league instead of calling up a top recruit, maybe this latest affront will remind him where his focus needs to be every hour of every day.

It wouldn’t be a bad thing if this entire episode winds up as a kick in the rear end for Belichick to change his overall approach to everything outside the football building at Carolina. It clearly wasn’t working last season and won’t going forward if he doesn’t do what’s required of college coaches nowadays. He needs to be far more open in marketing the Heels to their fan base on and off the field. He should be even more open-minded to the things he once equated to root canals, like actually engaging with the media beyond one-liners.

That season-long documentary that was once mocked when the 2025 campaign went off the rails? It might be time to revisit such a stunt. He clearly doesn’t have much to lose if he’s trying to convince a handful of folks he’s still got the magic touch.

At this point, Belichick needs to fully embrace the life of being the coach at North Carolina instead of the one who still can’t seem to let go of his past in New England. Nothing should be off the table—as long as it’s done with the Tar Heels in mind, that is.

Bill Belichick’s legacy is still being written as he coaches the Tar Heels. | Jim Dedmon-Imagn Images

Belichick’s legacy is still being written, and this forthcoming campaign may carry extra weight in the greater consciousness of the football world even if it’s not an unspoken footnote to an eventual plaque in Canton. The former NFL coach will be sporting a gold jacket at a point in the near future, even if it’s not soon enough for the vast majority of those around the game outraged over the fact that it doesn’t mean this summer.

If Belichick, who has been there and done that better than all others over the course of his career at the next level, can’t turn it around in Chapel Hill then this snub will be the least of his worries. Because getting let go after two seasons of this grand experiment in the Triangle—a real possibility—will be a far bigger insult to his coaching acumen than any voter withholding his name from a ballot.

The football world will spill plenty of ink over this latest humiliation of a coach whose résumé says he should have never been put in such a position. Yet it’s up to Belichick himself to ensure that it won’t be the defining story of the year by making the most of his time actually doing what he loves at North Carolina.

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