North Carolina announces 5-year deal with Bill Belichick to take over as coach of the Tar Heels

Bill Belichick had seemingly been waiting for the right opportunity to return to an NFL sideline. Instead, the six-time Super Bowl-winning head coach is headed to the college ranks to take over at North Carolina.

The school announced it had reached a five-year deal with Belichick on Wednesday night, roughly a week after Belichick’s name surfaced as an unlikely candidate to replace the program’s winningest all-time coach in Mack Brown. The deal requires approval by UNC trustees as well as the UNC public system’s governors; an introductory news conference has yet to be scheduled.

Moving on from the 73-year-old Brown to hire the 72-year-old Belichick means UNC is turning to a coach who has never worked at the college level, yet had incredible success in the NFL alongside quarterback Tom Brady throughout most of his 24-year tenure with the Patriots, which ended last season.

There’s also at least a small family tie to the UNC program for Belichick; his late father, Steve, was an assistant coach for the Tar Heels from 1953-55.

“I am excited for the opportunity at UNC-Chapel Hill,” Belichick said in a statement. “I grew up around college football with my dad and treasured those times. I have always wanted to coach in college and now I look forward to building the football program in Chapel Hill.

He's arriving on campus at a time of rapid changes in college athletics, from free player movement through the transfer portal and athletes' ability to cash in on endorsements to the looming arrival of revenue sharing. Consider the Belichick hiring a novel approach by the school to rethinking how it will approach those challenges, led by someone known for success at the highest level of the sport.

“We know that college athletics is changing, and those changes require new and innovative thinking,” UNC athletics director Bubba Cunningham said in a statement. “Bill Belichick is a football legend, and hiring him to lead our program represents a new approach that will ensure Carolina football can evolve, compete and win — today and in the future.”

Belichick holds 333 career regular-season and postseason wins in the NFL, trailing only Don Shula’s 347 for the NFL record, while his 31 playoff wins are the most in league history.

He's the second coach to win a Super Bowl and then later become a college head coach; Bill Walsh won three Super Bowls with the San Francisco 49ers and later went 17-17-1 at Stanford from 1992-94.

He had been linked to NFL jobs in the time since his departure from the Patriots, notably the Atlanta Falcons in January. That’s why word of Belichick’s conversations with UNC — first reported by Inside Carolina and confirmed by the AP last week — stirred such surprise as an unexpected and unconventional candidate.

But the two sides had been in discussions for several days working on terms before finally reaching an agreement to cap what once seemed an improbable outcome.

Belichick said Monday on ESPN’s “The Pat McAfee Show” that he’d had “a couple of good conversations” with UNC chancellor Lee Roberts and that he’d spent much of the past year taking a “longer look” at college football.

“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,” Belichick said Monday. “It would be a professional program: training, nutrition, scheme, coaching, techniques that would transfer to the NFL.

“It would 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."

Belichick began his NFL coaching career as an assistant with the Baltimore Colts in 1975 and later worked as defensive coordinator under Bill Parcells with the New York Giants, winning two Super Bowls during that stint. He also spent five seasons as head coach of the Cleveland Browns in the first half of the 1990s.

He got his second shot as a head coach in 2000 with the Patriots. And in his second year, as Brady rose to stardom, Belichick won his first Super Bowl title as a head coach.

The Belichick-Brady duo went on to win the Super Bowl for the 2003, 2004, 2014, 2016 and 2018 seasons, and Belichick was The Associated Press NFL coach of the year three times.

Now he takes over a UNC program that is facing a familiar challenge of how to build a sustained winner. The program had reached elite levels in moments rather than eras, notably with Brown building UNC into top-10 national stats (1996, 1997) to end his first tenure in Chapel Hill before taking over at Texas or the Tar Heels cracking the top 10 of the AP Top 25 poll briefly in 2015 and 2020.

The peak of Brown's second tenure came with a nine-win season and trip to the Atlantic Coast Conference championship game in 2022 behind eventual No. 3 overall NFL draft pick Drake Maye, who was coincidentally drafted by the Patriots for their first post-Belichick year.

The school announced Nov. 26 that Brown wouldn’t return for a seventh season in his second stint in Chapel Hill, a firing that became effective after the program’s all-time wins leader coached his finale in the Nov. 30 loss to rival N.C. State.

Freddie Kitchens, himself a former Browns head coach, has been working as the interim coach as the Tar Heels prepare to face UConn in the Fenway Bowl on Dec. 28.

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FILE - Then-New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick talks with reporters following an NFL football game against the Buffalo Bills, Sunday, Oct. 22, 2023, in Foxborough, Mass. (AP Photo/Michael Dwyer, File)

FILE - Then-New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick during the second half of an NFL football game against the New Orleans Saints, Sunday, Oct. 8, 2023, in Foxborough, Mass. (AP Photo/Michael Dwyer, File)

FILE - New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick twirls his whistle during an NFL football practice, Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2019, in Foxborough, Mass. (AP Photo/Steven Senne, File)

KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) — Two men were freed Wednesday after their convictions were overturned in a 2009 double homicide whose investigation was overseen by a discredited white Kansas City, Kansas, police detective.

Forty-year-old Dominique Moore said he was “thankful and blessed” after his release from a state prison in El Dorado. And cheers from a crowd of relatives greeted Cedric Warren, 34, as he walked out of jail in the county where he was convicted nearly 15 years ago in the drug house shooting that killed Charles Ford and Larry Ledoux.

The men's life sentences had carried no chance of parole for 25 years.

“I really want to cry, but I can’t. That’s how overwhelmed I am," Warren's father, Cedric Toney, said after a vehicle carrying his son pulled away from the jail. Warren himself was too overcome to talk to a throng of reporters who awaited his release.

Toney alleged misconduct from Roger Golubski, who died last week in an apparent suicide just before the start of his criminal trial over allegations that he sexually assaulted Black women.

But that had nothing to do with Wyandotte County Judge Aaron Roberts’ decision to toss Warren’s convictions on Monday and Moore’s on Wednesday. Roberts found that prosecutors failed to turn over information about the severe mental health issues of a key witness. The witness had schizophrenia, and offered a shifting account of what happened, the defense wrote in court filings.

Not aired in court was Toney's claim that before Golubski supervised the investigation that led to his son’s arrest, the former detective stalked Toney's daughter and his son’s mother. He said he suspected his son’s first stop would be their graves; both died while he was incarcerated.

The allegation of misconduct is similar to one raised in the case of Lamonte McIntyre, who served 23 years behind bars for a double homicide before he was freed. McIntyre’s mother has said Golubski pressured her for sexual favors.

Wyandotte County District Attorney Mark Dupree could have retried Warren and Moore but announced Wednesday that he wouldn't, paving the way for their release.

He said Golubski’s involvement had nothing to do with the decision and said it wasn't an exoneration. Instead, he said another trial wouldn't be “just or fair” because a wrong was done by his predecessors who withheld the key evidence.

Since taking office in 2017, Dupree said his office has increased training on fairness and is nearly done digitizing thousands of old cases. That is a key step in a $1.7 million effort to look for potential misconduct in the cases involving Golubski and others.

“It’s not about getting the conviction. It’s about getting a just outcome and doing what is right,” Dupree said.

Brittany Robinson, Warren’s cousin, said the family always maintained hope, convinced he was innocent.

“On his momma’s death bed she said, ‘Don’t quit fighting until my baby come home,'" Robinson said, calling Golubski corrupt. She added: “I feel sorry for all the families that fell victim to him. Hopefully they will get their day to celebrate just like us.”

Moore, too, said he was innocent as he drove home from prison with his attorneys, eagerly awaiting barbecue after 15 years of prison food.

“I am just thankful that the court has seen the wrong that has happened in my case," he said.

Prosecutors say that, for years, Golubski preyed on female residents in poor neighborhoods, demanding sexual favors and sometimes threatening to harm or jail their relatives if they refused.

In addition to two sets of federal charges, one lawsuit involving McIntyre and his mother has been settled, and two other lawsuits are pending.

One of Warren's attorneys, Cheryl Pilate, said she and other attorneys continue looking into cases Golubski worked.

“It is absolutely not the last one," she said of Warren and Moore's case. "Roger Golubski was a very powerful figure who was involved in more cases than I can even court.”

In this photo provided by Bob Hoffman, Dominique Moore, 40, poses with one of his attorneys, Courtney Stout, after he was released from prison when a judge overturned his conviction in a double homicide case, Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2024, in El Dorado, Kan. (Bob Hoffman via AP)

In this image taken from video, Cedric Warren, right, 34, walks out of the Wyandotte County Courthouse in Kansas City, Kan, accompanied by his father, Cedric Toney, after his conviction was overturned in a 2009 double homicide Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2024. (AP Photo/Heather Hollingsworth)

In this undated photo released by family, Cedric Warren folds his hands as a teenager. (Cedric Toney via AP)