Good. So college football is in the middle of a massive transition era. We're in the 12-team playoff.
We're in the transfer portal NIL era that's about to get, I think, even more solidified on April 8th when it becomes a revenue share era with a salary cap. So college ball is more similar to professional football now than it's ever been in its entire existence. What are your thoughts on the state of college football right now? I didn't know you had ties all the way back to North Carolina.
Obviously, you grew up in college football, it feels like. So whenever people hear that you're interested, why is that, Coach Belichick? Why do you think that is the case?
Well, yeah, I did grow up that way. You know, my dad was a college coach. He was in North Carolina for three years, Vanderbilt for a year, and then in the Navy for 50. So, but yeah, it seems like college football is more like pro football. I've talked to a lot of college coaches about... things like the salary cap and putting value on players and negotiating, kind of mixing all that together.
So I think there are some similarities. From what I've heard, I haven't experienced it firsthand, but it feels like that. So as you're doing your snooping around, not snooping around, sorry, downloading of information, snooping around, downloading of information about the state of college football, and then obviously your son right now being the D.C.
for Washington, had you always thought? about potentially getting back into college ball because of uh growing up with your dad or is this something that is like kind of piqued your interest recently with the state of it well yeah as you said i grew up around college football and you know some great navy teams there and you know i learned a lot and um really kind of patterned a lot of my pro teams off of the teams that i grew up around in the in the 60s as a kid growing up and they've at the naval academy um but yeah look As a pro coach, you always go back every year and go to different schools and look at their players and see their programs and learn from those coaches and their situations as well. I've had a chance this year to take a longer look at college football during the college season as opposed to in the spring from the draft perspective.
That's been interesting as well as staying up with pro football. It's been a good year for me. I've learned a lot. I've had an opportunity to chant. talked to Chancellor Roberts and, you know, we've had a couple of good conversations.
So we'll see how it goes. Okay. So we appreciate you giving us that information.
And I love the fact that you're like, the more I'm learning about it, the more I'm interested in potentially helping out. Cause I think if a Bill Belichick brain goes into college ball, that's a good thing for football. as a whole development of football i think it's good for the nfl i think it's good for everything to get you back around ball especially at the college level you said you talked to the chancellor schefter told us you talked to him for five hours yesterday is that real five hours yeah let's just leave it at that pat i mean i don't want to give up too much information i'll lose my press conference i'm going to get my press conference uh or i'll back okay so it has been reported that you met for five hours yesterday during these conversations that you're having with the chancellor not the one yesterday for five hours That didn't happen.
Okay. Is it ball? What's the difference you think between an NFL interview versus college football interview? Or are they very similar? Is it culture building?
This is how our football team's going to look? How are they similar and how do they differ over these last couple of years that you got to experience? Well, look, I think anytime as a coach, you join with an organization, whatever level it's at.
You just want to share a vision with that person. What are your goals? What are your expectations? What do you need to achieve those?
How do we achieve them? And so forth. And, you know, talking through a lot of things that I don't think it really matters where the program is. There are a lot of things that go into that team building and the structure of the program and so forth that, you know, take some time to just talk through. It's not, it's a discussion.
It's not an argument or a debate. It's just understanding what resources are. resources are available, what we need, how does that mix together, who's working for who, and so forth.
That's all pretty common. Every interview I've had has had an element of that in it. And so, you know, this will be no different.
You know, whatever the organization or team is, it's still, you know, there has to be a structure to it, and I'd say a common vision for it to work well. Okay, so let's talk about that structure. You said you talked to the chancellor at New England. That's why I always say you're the greatest GM of all time because nobody gives you credit for that but you were also titled the general manager and you said you get a lot of help from a lot of people we understand that we agree a lot of them have gone on I think Pioli, Lombardi, Casario right now there's a lot of people that have obviously been in your personnel world that have gone on to have great success but you were the general manager through that whole thing and what What has been reported is basically it was you and the owner having to be on the same page because those are the three people that have to do it. In college, it feels like the coach has all this, like from what I've seen around.
They just brought in Andrew Luck to be a general manager for Stanford, and I think he's overseeing the entire program. In college ball, is there going to be multiple departments going forward, do you think, in the conversations that you're having? Is there going to be a general manager, a head coach, and then is there AD and chancellor? Or what do you think the future of college ball looks like from a structure wise?
Not from interviews. This is just in your eyes because of overlooking dynasty in football for so long. And then now what you've learned with college football.
Well, I think that there are, I'll just say this. I think there are a lot of football programs that are being structured similar to NFL programs. So in college, you now have high school recruiting, but you have college portal.
In pro football, you have the draft and pro free agency. So you have a salary cap and negotiations with NFL agents. In college, you have negotiations with whoever represents the player, whether that's a family member, a high school coach, an agent, or some other financial advisor or whoever it is.
You have players changing teams in college as you have players that could change teams in the NFL. with a little different set of rules, but the same general structure. And you have to value your players in some way because you have a limited amount of money, whatever the revenue share is.
There's an NIL component, it sounds like. There's legislation that'll be structured around that, that maybe it's not in place right now, but it's probably headed in that direction. So I think it's a little different version of the NFL model.
Much more so than it's ever been before, let's put it that way. Coaching staffs now, there are no limitations on that like there were in college. There are some recruiting limitations, but the size of the staffs and so forth aren't the limitations.
The scholarships have been expanded. So there are a lot of changes in the college landscape. I'm not going to say I'm an expert on all of them, but I think it's a little bit of everybody's trying to find not only their way, but what's best for their...
individual situation. Okay, so whenever you think about individual situations, a lot of college coaches said, I don't want to do this anymore, and they go to the NFL. They said, I don't want to handle all the shit that's taking place, and they want to get to the NFL.
That's actually like one of the things, narratives, conversations happening behind the scenes as this transfer portal NIL thing starts happening, saying a lot of these old ball coaches think we're getting away from what college ball is. They want to leave. They want to go to the NFL.
Sounds like the way you're laying this out is, People who have NFL experience are probably going to be more interested in college jobs. That hasn't been like a theory that has been talked about a lot. But the way you lay it out, it's like you just got kind of like a different NFL.
Scholarships are the minimum salary because 105 people are going to be on there. Transfer portal is free agency period. High school is draft. Like that is, as you kind of lay these whole things together, salary cap and roster construction.
And. is just like in the NFL. It sounds like NFL people might be able to be ahead of the curve almost for college. Is that what you were thinking as well when you were looking into it? Well, again, I would say based on my experience in the last few months and other people that I've talked to, a lot of colleges are looking at NFL-type models or college coaches are looking at some version of an NFL-type model to structure personnel and coaching.
And so, look, the job's obviously too big for one person, no matter what level it's at. You need a personnel director, let's call it a general manager. You need a coach and you need some type of, let's call it salary cap management, however that's configured, whether that's a third person or it's merged between the two or, you know, however you handle that.
And so somehow you have to have those bases covered. And, you know, it's certainly not a job for one person. It's a job that's going to take.
You know, a lot of work, no matter what level it's on, because it's complex and there are a lot of people that you're trying to evaluate. You know, you're trying to evaluate the entire, let's just say if you're in college, you know, all the college players and you've got a big high school group. If you're in the NFL, it's all the free agency players, which is not the full league, but, you know, it's still a pretty big chunk of it. And all the draft eligible players, which is, you know, probably starts with over 500 players.
and gets whittled down. So it's still a lot of volume however you slice it up. And it's, again, way too big of a job for one person.
So you'd want to have a team that would be able to handle the demands of the different areas to put the best team together that you can on the field. Unlike the draft, you have a recruiting element in college where players select the school as opposed to the team selecting the players in the draft until you get the college free agency at the end of the draft. Um, so there's some differences, but I think there's some similarities too.
Yeah. I appreciate the depth of the questions that you're asking that I really do. No, it's real though.
Cause like the thought is immediately, why the fuck would Bill Belichick want to go? to college football but then you start thinking about it's like oh he might be like because you talk about having to have a lot of people you've had to hire all those people and you also have a rolodex of people that you've seen work and do all these different jobs that all these other places are going to have to find people just out of thin air or resources or references all those people already know how you operate and you already know how to kind of build that team which is a balance now the whole thing would be what you don't know about and what you haven't had to do aj has a question for you Coach, let me, can I just interject two things in here? One, sure. Let me put this in capital letters. If I, if I was in a college program, the college program would be a pipeline to the NFL for the players that had the ability to play in the NFL.
It would be a professional program, training, nutrition, scheme, coaching techniques that would transfer to the NFL. It will be an NFL program at a college level and an education that would get the players ready for their career after football, whether that was the end of their college career or at the end of their pro career. But it would be geared toward developing the player, time management, discipline, structure, and all that. That would be life skills, regardless of whether they're in the NFL or somewhere in business. I feel very confident that I have the contacts in the National Football League to pave the way for those players that would have the ability to have the opportunity to compete in the National Football League, whether they're good enough or not.
I don't know, but they would be ready for it. I don't have any doubt about that. So that would be the first comment that I would make relative to the structure of the program.
It would be an NFL program, but not at the NFL level. Yeah. which is quite a benefit to have the guy that ran the dynasty no doubt you know in the middle of this entire thing bill listen to you lay that out i just thought of every nfl guy's son okay everybody that's ever been in the nfl that has a son that's in there like bill bell Belichick's offering up a one-way trip to how we're doing life.
Yeah. Any expatriate that has a kid, obviously, over all those years, I assume they're going to be like, hey, need you to get my boy right. That's going to be that's a big part of college, though. It used to be development. Now it's like a big difference.
And if you find the right guys, you can build it. And if you've got the resources, you can do it anywhere, especially at a P4 program. But there is one thing that you haven't done yet, or we haven't seen you do at least. Go ahead, AJ. Coach, yeah, Pat's alluding to the recruiting aspect of coaching in college.
I know that's the biggest difference between coaching in the NFL and coaching in college. I know you recruit free agents and everything in the NFL, but in college you're evaluating and recruiting these high school kids. Have you given any thought to that, and how different would it be to evaluate high school kids compared to college?
Yeah, well, I think, A.J., as you know, there's a big level of development from players who are 16, 17 in that range compared to the, you know, 20, 21 year olds that come into the NFL, there's still a level of development. But I think in high school, you just have a projection. It's much more of a projection element. So, you know, generally speaking, most high schools, where's the best player, right? Quarterback or maybe running back.
You put your best guy there. That doesn't necessarily mean that that's where the player is going to play in college. But in the high school program, that's generally where the best players go.
And so there will probably be an element of projection of players like that. You know, look, Coach Saban had a tremendous amount of success, as we all know, in his career, taking wide receivers and moving them to corner, who then became first, second round draft choices in Alabama that were former receivers in high school. So.
I think there's definitely a projection element. The high school teams generally put their best players at the key positions, quarterback, running back, and receiver to score points. And then, you know, if that's where they're at, that may not necessarily be their best position going forward. So I think the projection element is a lot different.
You don't see that too much. I know we had Edelman, but for the most part, you don't see guys that play one position in college and play something else in high school. I think there's just more of that.
going the other way. And certainly the linemen, you know, a lot of those kids at 17 aren't the men that they are in the National Football League when they get to 25, 26 year old, just physically mature. So, you know, the time that I spent in Washington this year, you know, those players gained a lot of weight, not just weight, but also strength. And so when you combine the strength and the nutrition programs in a program, you know, you see a lot of quality weight gain and, you know, guys going from... from 240 to 275 or, you know, 270 to 305 and things like that, that it's just part of the natural growth for that age of the kids.
So I think, you know, the kid's frame and his athleticism, and you kind of got to picture what that's going to look like when it fills out. So, sure, that would be something that I haven't, you know, done a lot of, but that would be, I think, a big part of the projection element of recruiting, as well as, you know, whatever the school and the team has to offer. Are you going to? Hey, Coach Saban's got a sick two-step.
He can cupid shuffle with the best of them. He can dance. See, you don't even know it.
I like that. We don't need to be dancing. We don't need to be dancing.
I understand. Coach, we can't thank you enough for taking time today to chitchat about this. I know you're very busy.
And everything we read, we just think to ourselves, yeah, Bill's going to be hosting a Manicast. Yeah. Bill's going to be hosting Inside the NFL.
That make sense? Bill's going to be hosting. host a podcast.
That makes sense. Bill's going to run a college football professional program. Yeah, that makes sense.
Thanks for laying out. We'll see. I read it. I'm just telling you I read it.
Big if. Big if. But if it happens, feels like there's guaranteed success, which is wild.
Ladies and gentlemen, the GOAT, Bill Belichick. Thank you, Coach. Yeah, Bill.
Yeah, of course. Whenever you read that, you think to yourself. Why the hell would Bill Belichick, at 70-some years old, go do college football, especially when he's 15 wins away from the all-time winningest NFL coach record? You would think he'd be holding off whatever hope or whatever drive to get back in the NFL.
And then he said, I was hanging out in Washington, you know, whenever the strength program is with the nutrition staff, you can really create some good men. You know, it feels like you can really. And then he starts thinking about, I'm going to let them know, projection-wise, here's a pipeline to the NFL. also your work ethic and everything else, it's going to be accountability driven. It's going to be all that.
It's like, I think he wants to like shape a next generation. Yeah. You know, like that is probably how he's viewing it.
It's like, I'm tired of what I'm seeing in some of these places, what's going on, what they're like, what the next level is becoming at the NFL. Cause these guys are getting paid so much money early. Then potentially egos get big, you know, all of a sudden some college kid comes into an NFL teams, thinks he's already arrived. And then maybe there's, oh, they're quitting.
They're leaving. So. So they don't have to do as much. They don't have to face as much adversity.
That's not everywhere, but it is certainly happening in this modern era. Not the dude's fault either. If they see the bunch of money that you can go get, if you come from certain situations and you don't have the vision to be the NFL guy, you're just trying to get yourself and take the money, do whatever you got to do. But Bill's like, we're going to, the guys that come to North Carolina are going to be. you know we're gonna be pros be a professional yeah we are gonna we are gonna so it's like hey andrew luck i am so sorry feels like yeah bill belichick's gonna be looking for those stanford guys as well and uh i talked about ex-nflers sending their kids to bill Belichick, it's like I was thinking about myself as like a dad of a boy who's 17 years old, and Bill Belichick comes walking in.
Yeah. He's like, hey, and I played in the NFL. Yeah. Hey, you remember? Just rattle off the coaches.
That guy, like. You remember when Chuck Pagano used to say, bomb, bomb, bomb. Nowadays, your boy, he's going to come in. We're going to make him, if he doesn't make the NFL, he's going to be an incredible businessman. He's going to have an incredible work ethic.
He's going to understand how to organize things. He's going to learn how to watch film, which you're going to be able to take into your life and everything else. That's the pitch, I think, that he's going to be giving. And I think he's going to be able to get great players if he has the money resources just to be able to keep up with everybody else, which we assume will be.
Yeah, and what A.J. asked him would be the first thing I would think about. You know, obviously. where he is now in his career and his life, being on the road recruiting, because that's kind of how we saw it, how we remember it.
But it's different now. I think a report came out a few months ago about Coach Prime not even making home visits because these kids now, they are looking at it as a pipeline, as they should. You go up there and it's going to be a professional outfit and all the different things he talked about.
I didn't even think about all the coaches, all the college coaches that he's obviously went and seen their programs, a bit at Pro Day, had conversations with these guys about how they run their programs. Coming into college, the strength and conditioning program, I think it's probably. the most important part of a college program. I think anybody up here would agree that playing college football, big time college ball, like that's when you really, okay, you go from a boy to a grown ass man. I was talking to Z a couple of days ago about, you know, even like maxing out and being your strongest.
Like most guys when they're in college, 20 years old, that's probably your peak 2021 in the league. It's about being healthy, being nimble, being all those things. So everything Bill laid out, it'll let you know like, okay, yeah, it'd be a good, a good situation for him on the collegiate level.
Maybe that's what replaces the all time NFL record. Maybe he won. He wants to go, you know, a few years in college, you're winning at it.