Bill Belichick fits right in at ACC media day — and even cracks a few jokes

New York Times

3 days ago

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Before first-year North Carolina head coach Bill Belichick addressed the mob of reporters waiting for him at the ACC's media days, Clemson coach Dabo Swinney broke some news.
He had already seen Belichick smile several times on Thursday.
'Has he given y'all more than, 'We're onto camp?'' Swinney asked. 'I anticipate that.'
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Swinney, perhaps surprisingly, was mistaken. In 13 minutes on stage and 30 minutes in a side room, the famously terse NFL legend seemed like any other college coach in front of microphones. The six-time Super Bowl-winning head coach made a recruiting pitch and even drew three laughs in a five-minute span.
The first came when he was reminded about his threats to pluck players from Foxborough (Mass.) High School to replace ones who were struggling with his New England Patriots.
'Yeah, can't use that one anymore,' Belichick cracked.
When Belichick was asked about implementing pro-style systems without overwhelming 20-year-olds, he said, 'That's exactly what we're trying to do.' When the laughter stopped, he discussed the need to keep some NFL schemes and terminology while tweaking them to the college game, which features wider hash marks and different overtime rules.
Belichick was not asked about his girlfriend, Jordon Hudson, and the relationship that became one of the major stories of his first offseason with the Tar Heels. He said little about his personnel but expressed no concerns about a roster that includes 70 new players. The only questions he deflected were big-picture thoughts related to the game; those answers, he said, were better suited for collegiate veterans like Iowa's Kirk Ferentz, who worked with Belichick in the 1990s with the Cleveland Browns.
But most of the time, Belichick did not seem like a rookie head coach in the ACC. When he was asked about visiting prospects' living rooms on the recruiting trail, he pointed out that in-home visits would be an NCAA violation for most of the year.
'Yeah, they come to us, and so we recruit from on-campus,' Belichick said. 'Honestly, it's been great. … Talking to them about what's real in terms of campus life, academics, football, what the expectations are, really that's what we want to do in recruiting.
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'Just be authentic. This is who we are. We're not really going to change too much. If this works for you, this is a great place. If it doesn't, then honestly, you're better off going somewhere else. We're not trying to overhype or oversell something we can't deliver. We're trying to sell who we are. I think a lot of people want that. But for the ones that don't, it's better for both of us that they go somewhere else.'