After a legendary NFL run, Bill Belichick enters college football for the first time, taking over as the coach at North Carolina. That means the 72-year-old will be tasked with recruiting high school prospects for the first time.
He's not stressed about it at all, he explained to Charles Barkles and Ernie Johnson on their podcast The Steam Room.
When asked by Johnson whether the myriad recent changes to college sports like NIL, which have played a role in driving some top coaches to retirement, have given him any apprehension, Belichick quickly dismissed the idea.
"We've been in NIL," he said. "We've been in post-draft free agency, where you're trying to sign kids out of college that don't get drafted. We've been doing that for 30 years. It's no big deal."
Belichick drew a direct line from recruiting top undrafted free agents to high school recruiting. As opposed to the draft process, he would have to convince those young players that joining the Patriots was the right move for them as they launched their pro careers—not too dissimilar from going into the living rooms of 18-year-old prospects.
"That's kind of the way it was after the draft," Belichick said. "You know, the draft went seven rounds and then after the draft you had the players that weren't drafted, and we had a lot of kids come from that pool. For 17 years in a row we had undrafted players make our roster even though we were in the midst of winning championships and so forth."
Belichick and the Patriots had plenty of success selecting and developing those undrafted free agents, with big hits on players like Malcolm Butler, Steve Neal, David Andrews and BenJarvus Green-Ellis.
That developmental history, and Belichick's unrivaled experience in the pros, will be the cornerstone of how he runs his first college program.
"We're just selling our program and it's a pro program," Belichick said. "We'll develop the players professionally to play football, and if that leads them there and if they're talented enough, either way we're we're developing pros. We have my strength coach from New England, my chef from New England, coaches from pro football, and so we train and we prepare and do everything in a pro football program and that's going to translate to for the players, that they'll they'll learn that. And [if] they have enough talent to go into the NFL they'll be ready to go, and if they go in another direction, which eventually all athletes do—you can't play forever—then they'll be trained to go into life and their chosen profession, and learn the things about leadership, discipline and structure they need to be productive."
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Bill Belichick Explains One Aspect of the NFL That Prepared Him for College Recruiting.
