Bill Belichick reflects on transition to college football, rebuilding plan for North Carolina

It's been a rocky start to Bill Belichick's still somewhat surreal move to college football, as his North Carolina Tar Heels are 2-2, with both losses coming against Power Five opponents.

As his Tar Heels warmed up Saturday morning in advance of their home game with Clemson, Belichick joined College GameDay remotely to talk about his transition to college football so far.

"The coaching part of it is pretty similar. I'd say just the volume of recruiting is a lot. In the month of June alone, we had 4,000 kids on this campus, and the number of kids that you recruit ... we had free agency in the NFL, well, that was easy because you knew which guys' contracts were going to expire.

"The transfer portal can be any of 4,000 or however many kids are playing college football. Every team has 100 players, and you don't know which ones are going to be on it and which ones aren't," Belichick said. "So just the volume of players is a lot bigger, but Mike Lombardi and his staff have done a good job of working through that and staying on top of it.

"We've had some good transfer kids in, but hopefully it will be fewer of those going forward as our recruiting classes get better. Actually, as we get a recruiting class -- we haven't had one yet."

What are your thoughts on the entire College Football experience..

"It's been awesome and I love watching these players develop..

It's gonna be a little bit of a process but we're getting better each week" ~ @Belichick_B #PMSLive pic.twitter.com/TR7X9m0RbR
— Pat McAfee (@PatMcAfeeShow) October 4, 2025

That's not entirely true -- North Carolina signed 29 prospects in the 2025 recruiting class, ranking 36th in the 247 Composite rankings. However, it certainly takes time for those players to develop and contribute, which was probably Belichick's point. Meanwhile, the Tar Heels had the 9th-ranked transfer class with 41 newcomers brought in from the portal -- tied for the third-most in college football.

North Carolina presently ranks 17th in the 2026 recruiting rankings, per 247, with 37 commits.

"We've got a big recruiting class coming in. We missed a couple recruiting classes from the last two years -- we only got just a handful of players that are playing. So we'll get try to build through the recruiting classes and supplement that with some transfer guys, but we need a couple good recruiting classes, and I think we're on the way to getting those -- excited about it," Belichick said.

Some North Carolina fans might have thought bringing in one of the NFL's all-time greatest coaches would translate to immediate results, but that has not proven to be the case.

The Tar Heels were humbled in Belichick's much-anticipated debut in a 48-14 home loss to TCU. After taking care of business against the likes of Charlotte (20-3) and Richmond (41-6), North Carolina suffered another blowout loss when it traveled to face UCF of the Big 12, losing 34-9.

The Tar Heels had a bye last week, which Belichick said was spent going back to a focus on fundamentals.

"We just need to play with more consistency, do the fundamental things better -- block, tackle, throw, catch, you know, cover, so forth," Belichick said, drawing laughs from the GameDay crew.

Overall, though, he reiterated that he's enjoyed the experience and seems committed to the process of rebuilding the program.

"It's been awesome. I love working with the kids. I love watching them develop both as kids and people, and players. They've gotten a lot better, they've worked really hard and excited to do that with more young guys coming here," he said. "The support from the school has been great, Chancellor [Lee] Roberts and his staff. It's going to be a little bit of a process, but we're grinding away. We're definitely getting a lot better each week, and I'm sure we'll get better each year here."