A recent FOX NFL Sunday pregame show featured former New England Patriots Tom Brady, Rob Gronkowski, and Julian Edelman together on the panel taking questions and having fun. It was great to watch.
Former Pats coach Bill Belichick’s name naturally came up and the former New England stars were asked about rumors that Belichick was looking at taking a college coaching job at the University of North Carolina.
Laughs all around.
“No way,” said Brady.
The consensus was that Belichick is profoundly ill-suited for the college game. College coaches don’t draft players, they recruit them. Can you imagine Belichick doing a home visit and bending a knee to some skeptical parents and their pampered star son to make the case as to why their boy should go to Chapel Hill?
Ha!
Coach Bill is going on 73 years of age—almost 50 years older than his girlfriend, Jordan Hudson. Somehow that relationship doesn’t enhance his bona fides. Neither did the recent Patriot “Dynasty” television series. And neither does the fact that he had a losing record before Brady as well as after Brady.
The notion of Belichick returning to coach now draws some chuckles, despite Bill taking nine teams to the Super Bowl. His star has dimmed. The mighty can stumble.
Still, there is a hunger and a longing for that experienced and proven tough guy/authoritarian who can come in and kick ass and turn things around. Think Vince Lombardi. In 1959, the no-nonsense New York Giant offensive coordinator took over a Green Bay Packer team that had won but a single game in 1958 and immediately turned a losing franchise into a winner and then a five-time NFL champion.
Think Bobby Knight. Also known as “The General,” Knight went to Indiana University from West Point to take over a struggling Hoosier program that had suffered through three straight losing seasons. Two years later, in 1973, Knight’s Hoosiers were in the Final Four.
Think George Patton. (Also known as “The General.”)
The 1970 Patton movie remains an all-time classic. That Academy Award winner captured how the charismatic autocrat took over a downtrodden American army in North Africa and quickly turned that outfit—and later other outfits—into victorious, invincible forces.
The desire for that ass-kicking, no-nonsense, charismatic leader to step up and lead has animated countless millions of people throughout the ages. Think Alexander the Great. Julius Caesar. Napoleon. Alpha males who wanted and needed to lead.
Love him or hate him, Donald Trump is of that “alpha male” ilk.
Given how very badly things ended for Alexander, Caeser, Napoleon, Patton, and so many other historic alpha males, we hope and pray that Trump’s journey concludes well.
In the meantime, we’ll keep an eye on Bill Belichick and see where the sports currents take him.
Chapel Hill? Some other campus? It’s hard to imagine. Still, I love the imagery of Belichick making that recruiting visit to some household in the Tar Heel State and having a mother of some 17-year-old prodigy dictate terms to the coaching legend.
“Do your job, Bill!”
