On the proverbial eve of the college football season, all 138 FBS teams have a fresh slate in front of them, an opportunity to write their own story. Though only a handful have a real shot at competing for a national championship, everybody else has the potential to put together a successful season and surprise some people along the way.
That reality would, in theory, apply to Bill Belichick as he enters his second year as the head coach at the University of North Carolina, as the Tar Heels get set to kick off the college football season Saturday in Ireland against TCU. But Paul Finebaum, ESPN’s preeminent voice in college football, is giving Belichick’s Tar Heels a zero-point-zero chance of succeeding in 2026.
“I’m not pulling for Bill Belichick. He’s a grouch, he’s a bully, and his career in college is about to go down in flames,” Finebaum declared on Tuesday. “He lost Michael Lombardi, his chief assistant and GM. His son [Steve] disappeared from the staff [on medical leave] a couple weeks ago as the defensive coordinator. It is mass chaos in Chapel Hill, and I don’t believe they’ll win this [season-opening] game in Ireland. And I don’t think Bill Belichick is going to survive until the end of the season.”
He, uhh … he didn’t stop there.
“He did it to himself,” Finebaum continued. “He couldn’t accept that nobody in the NFL wanted him anymore, and because he is Bill Belichick and he knows more than anybody — even though we all now know that it was Tom Brady who led him to all those Super Bowl championships, Brady proved that the second he got out of there — Bill Belichick had to find a university that would offer him a job, and he would show the world that he is the greatest coach of all time. Instead, he’s proven to be a disaster. He’s one of the worst college football coaches in a short period of time I have ever seen. And I see no way this is going to be a successful landing or ending for Belichick.”
OK. But other than that … is there any hope for Year 2 of Chapel Bill?
Let’s just say expectations remain low.
Elsewhere in the ESPN multiverse, David Hale placed all 138 FBS teams into tiers from Tier 1 (“The safest bets”) to Tier 20 (“Technically still FBS programs”). And, yes, to save you from checking, the UMass Minutemen sit comfortably in Tier 20.
As for Belichick, though, he and UNC are sharing space with Massachusetts’ other FBS team in Boston College, as both the Tar Heels and Eagles sit in Tier 15, which was cheekily titled, “If Indiana can do it.”
“There were a lot of years Indiana would’ve been in this tier — the bottom class of the Power 4. But no one is tethered to their station in life,” Hale wrote. “All it takes to reach the top is to pull your program up by its proverbial bootstraps, hire a brilliant coach, bring his best players from his last school, lure a future Heisman QB in the portal and get Mark Cuban to hand over a bunch of cash.”
Simple.
Hale also included some daunting information that awaits Belichick and Co. this season.
“Last year, North Carolina went 4-8 against the No. 80 schedule in the country. This year, ESPN has UNC’s schedule ranked 29th,” he wrote. “That’s the hardest year-over-year shift in schedule strength of any Power 4 school.”
Indeed, UNC racked up half of its win total last year against Charlotte and FCS Richmond while only beating Syracuse (3-9 final record) and Stanford (4-8) in ACC competition. The only gimme on UNC’s 2026 schedule comes in Week 2 against East Tennessee State.
Fox Sports’ R.J. Young ranked every FBS team, slotting the Tar Heels in at No. 100. (Again, to save you from looking: UMass ranked dead last at No. 138.)
“This ain’t the NFL, Bill. You can’t put out a 4-8 team and get a first-round draft pick for being sorry,” Young wrote. “And that is exactly what UNC was in 2025 — sorry. … But if you’re a UNC fan who believes Belichick will eventually result to UNC becoming king of the ACC instead of Page Six, then you must believe in the offensive genius of new Tar Heels offensive coordinator Bobby Petrino. At quarterback, Petrino’s going to have Billy Edwards, who I’d argue is a far cry from coaching Lamar Jackson at Louisville but could be good enough to turn the Tar Heels into a team we can begin to take seriously in the ACC.”
The 23-year-old Edwards was limited by a knee injury and played in just two games last year for Wisconsin. In 2024, He threw 15 touchdowns with nine interceptions for Maryland. ESPN also placed teams’ quarterback situations into tiers this offseason, placing UNC at No. 12 out of 25, which is significantly better than the overall placement.
USA Today’s Paul Myerberg has UNC as the 94th-best team in the country. (Yes, UMass is No. 138.)
The Athletic’s Chris Vannini is more positive, ranking UNC at No. 75, saying, “Maybe offensive coordinator Bobby Petrino can conjure a spark for Bill Belichick. The defense got better late in the 2025 season.” (No. 138? UMass.)
CBS Sports’ ranking is even more optimistic, placing the Tar Heels at No. 61. (UMass shockingly doesn’t own the 138th spot on this list. That title belongs to Charlotte, with the Minutemen all the way up at No. 137.)
The optimism goes even further with Athlon Sports’ Steven Lassan, who ranked UNC at No. 56.
“If coach Bill Belichick can keep the defense performing at a high level (24.5 points a game allowed in ‘25), an improved offense will help the Tar Heels push for a bowl trip,” Lassan wrote.
(No optimism for UMass, though. Numero 138 for the Minutemen.)
A team must win six games to be bowl-eligible. A prediction that calls for Belichick getting UNC to a 6-6 record after last year’s debacle would certainly lean toward the pie-in-the-sky portion of the meter. On the doomsday end of the scale would be Finebaum’s prognostication that Belichick won’t last the full season.
So while the truth, as always, will lie somewhere in the middle, it’s worth noting that even the most optimistic outlook for the UNC Tar Heels in 2026 is … a 6-6 record and perhaps a trip to the Union Home Mortgage Gasparilla Bowl or the prestigious Pop-Tarts Bowl or, if fate really wanted to throw a curveball, the Fenway Wasabi Bowl.
Again, those would represent the best possibilities for UNC’s 2026 season, while the worst-case scenarios call for a catastrophe in Chapel Hill.
Nobody can predict the future, sure. But the current and future outlook for the 74-year-old Belichick leads to one simple, unanswerable question: What is the point of all of this?
We’ll start to get at least a piece of that answer on Saturday.
