Bill Belichick’s deliberately hollow media tour

If you want Bill Belichick to talk about football these days, you need to be one of two things. Either you need to be more interested in his past success than his current position, or you need to be someone who doesn’t know enough about football to put him on the spot.

The North Carolina football coach needs a win. That used to be really easy for him. All anyone had to do was point Belichick in the direction of a football field. Lately, though, football keeps betraying him. 

The tales of the 2025 Tar Heels’ ineptitude were bad enough, but rock bottom didn’t come until 2026. That is when we learned that Belichick, the best coach in NFL history, was not deemed worthy of induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility.

Everything is political, and this vote was no different. Whether it was cheating allegations or just the fact that the guy has always been kind of an asshole to the media, Belichick was being sent a message: this time, you don’t get what you want.

So now, Belichick is making the rounds with friendly media. It’s easy to see the goal of this current media tour. Belichick wants everyone to remember what he accomplished with the New England Patriots. 

The motivation isn’t so different from when he was making the media rounds last year. Back then, he was a legend gracing college football with his presence. He carried himself like Hooper in Jaws. He knew how to do his job, and all the rubes were gonna see just how dumb they were by comparison. His staff and his girlfriend copied the bravado.

Belichick wanted everyone to know that the Patriots had made a mistake pushing him out the door and that the NFL’s other 31 teams had made a mistake in not giving him another shot. The media tour had nothing to do with what was ahead for North Carolina. It was about Belichick!

This year, though?

Bill Belichick isn’t the genius that happened to fall into UNC’s lap. He’s a four-win coach in college football’s worst power conference. In a year where more than a third of the ACC’s football teams were in contention for the conference title game, the Tar Heels were a single loss away from being at its rock bottom.

He needs a redemption tour, and he can’t get that from local media in North Carolina. I live in Raleigh. I have seen conversations on sports talk radio and local podcasts shift from “is Bill taking this job to set his son Stephen up as the coach in waiting” to “get every single one of these clowns the hell away from Chapel Hill!”

Belichick has made his stance on North Carolina (the state, not just the school) clear, though. This is all beneath him. In fact, even during the football season, he found time to get back to New England.

Whose help he’s enlisting shouldn’t surprise anyone. Bill Belichick wants you to know he was done an injustice. He belongs in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He can make that case to Adam Gold on 99.9 The Fan in Raleigh, but respectfully (Adam is a former colleague and current friend), who cares? Barstool’s Pardon My Take not only carries more weight, but it’s also more willing to play the game in a way that most benefits Belichick.

Much has been made of producer Hank Lockwood thanking the coach for “making me and a generation of kids feel like winners.” We don’t have to pretend it wasn’t weird. It was extremely weird, and Belichick’s response about winning meaning less to him than creating memories for fathers and sons was goofy and transparent pandering.

But look, I don’t put that all on Pardon My Take. Boston sports radio may have its problems with Belichick not being asked any tough questions, but I accept Big Cat’s explanation. Nothing about the show is journalism, nor has anyone on the show ever pretended they were there to do anything other than entertain.

I roll my eyes at Belichick. He knows a Barstool show is going to be more apt to celebrate his Patriots success than even be curious about what has gone wrong in Chapel Hill. Belichick is trying to reestablish his Hall of Fame bona fides. He’s looking for as little friction as possible.

It’s the same reason that he made time for Sean Hannity. The Fox News host can’t ask any intelligent questions about football. Belichick gave him an opening by talking about how aligned the staff is on the goal of running a program that prepares its players for the NFL. It was a golden opportunity for Hannity to point out that no one selected a UNC player with any of the NFL Draft’s 257 picks this year, but the Fox News host probably didn’t even know that was the case.

It was easy for Belichick to get exactly the kind of interview he wanted. He knew that Hannity would be a useful idiot. All he had to do was turn the conversation to another media outlet‘s dishonesty. It’s a subject that is catnip for Hannity.

Bill Belichick’s ego took a hit. Being totally fair to him, though, there is no legitimate reason he should not have been elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame the first year he was eligible for the honor. That’s why he’s talking to anyone at all right now. He knows he won’t do himself any favors by publicly bitching about what isn’t fair. It looks much better for other people to do it on his behalf while he dismisses it as something he just can’t control.

Of course, Belichick cannot count on everyone to give him that kind of interview. Maybe he wants to avoid being painted as Jordon’s Instagram boyfriend, but I truly believe most people have moved on from that story. Is a rich old man dating someone young enough to be his granddaughter? That doesn’t seem all that wild anymore. Only Pablo Torre is interested in the relationship enough to turn it into a cottage industry.

 

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As he campaigns for Hall of Fame inclusion next year, what he really wants is to avoid hard football questions. What did Tom Brady’s success in Tampa prove or disprove about their relationship? Why did he not get another NFL job after leaving New England? Why do the Tar Heels play like they have never seen a football before? 

There are no right answers to those questions. People asking them in public is not going to help Bill Belichick re-establish himself as the authority on American tackle football. So he’s only going to go on shows he can trust to give him exactly the kind of interview he wants.

Maybe he leans into the whole “I’m not a journalist” thing and pops up on Pat McAfee’s or Urban Meyer’s shows next. Maybe he saw how easy it was to get what he wanted from Hannity and will turn to similar non-ball-knowers with big audiences, like Theo Von and Joe Rogan.

Belichick has a clear goal right now. He isn’t looking to talk to anyone who doesn’t respect it and buy in. That means he will probably keep talking this offseason and keep saying nothing of any real value to football fans.

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