North Carolina hired Bill Belichick at one of the most critical points of the college football calendar, and the six-time Super Bowl champion head coach has a lot to do in the immediate future. From evaluating the Tar Heels’ current roster to assessing the high school signees, figuring out what is needed in the transfer portal, becoming familiarized with the school’s budget for name, image and likeness and hiring a staff, everything on the to-do list is intertwined.
Texas A&M coach Mike Elko, who was hired away from Duke a week before the portal opened to all undergraduates interested in changing schools in 2023, said in March that he had to do all those things “at an extremely fast pace.” Willie Fritz was introduced as Houston’s new head coach the day before the portal opened.
“All those were top priorities in their own right,” said Wes Fritz, Houston’s general manager and Willie’s son. “They all were critical things that took management on a daily basis. The coaching carousel and portal both are very minute-to-minute.”
So what should Belichick prioritize as he takes over a college program for the first time? General managers at three Power 4 programs offered insight into the most urgent roster management tasks that face a new coach, from evaluating the current roster, to attacking the portal, assessing finances and hiring staff.
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1. Evaluate the current roster
Before Belichick goes shopping in the portal, he must have an idea of what he has to work with on the current roster. Which players are worth keeping? Which positions are thin? Who fits the offensive and defensive schemes he wants to run, and who doesn’t?
That process, depending on how deep the evaluation is, can take a few hours or a couple of days of watching film. Belichick has already hired a general manager: Michael Lombardi, the former Cleveland Browns GM who worked in NFL player personnel circles for four decades and was a Belichick assistant in New England. Lombardi may dictate that process, but chances are he and Belichick studied the roster ahead of time, when the hiring process was still ongoing.
“You start watching film immediately,” said Alabama general manager Courtney Morgan. “If you watch enough film, you should have a grasp of who your players are in the first few days.”
Character evaluations are also necessary. That includes tapping into the expertise of people who are still employed and were part of the previous staff.
“Talk to everyone in the building, your core groups: strength and conditioning, nutritionists, academic advisors, people who know the kids well and … know who the players are as people,” Morgan said. “Who are the culture fits, the people to hold your culture together? And who are the people that want to leave that you can let go?”
For those players a new coach wants to keep, reassurance is important. “Meet as many kids as you can,” Morgan said. “Call as many parents as you can. Ensure them the transition will be smooth.”
But if Belichick and his new staff are like almost every other new college coaching regime, they won’t want to keep every player. Cutting or running off players, once considered taboo in college football, is a fairly standard practice now, especially for new coaches, as transfer restrictions have been loosened. Before the transfer portal existed, coaches could not turn over a roster as quickly in part because there was a 25-player limit on signees (high school recruits and transfers) that a program could accept in a year. But that rule was eliminated in 2023, making a significant roster overhaul much more feasible.
Coaches had ways to get around the 25-player limit, from counting midyear enrollees back toward the previous year’s class (if there was room under the 25) to utilizing the NCAA’s “aid after departure of head coach” bylaw reserved for new coaches, which allows them to cut players and keep them on scholarship without counting against the 85-player scholarship limit.
Once the House v. NCAA settlement takes effect, the 85-scholarship constraints for programs will give way to a 105-player roster limit, including walk-ons if a school chooses not to put every player on scholarship. Most Football Bowl Subdivision teams currently comprise around 120 players, with 85 on scholarship and the rest as walk-ons. It’s unclear whether any schools will offer 105 scholarships annually — some coaches and GMs are skeptical that schools will eliminate walk-ons completely — but everyone is working to meet that roster limit before next season.
That is still more roster flexibility than Belichick had in the NFL, which carries a 53-man active roster and a 16-man practice squad. But until the settlement takes effect next summer, FBS programs are prohibited from carrying more than 85 scholarship players on their roster, even when taking midyear transfers.
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2. Get transfer portal visitors scheduled ASAP
Once the roster holes are known, it’s time to scour the portal, and that’s where Belichick will be playing catch-up.
The transfer portal has been open for four days. Some players, including graduate transfers or members of teams that made in-season head coaching changes, have been in the portal longer.
By December, college personnel staffs have spent months scouting other college rosters to identify players they want, not unlike scouting departments at the professional level in free agency. Several players who entered the transfer portal Monday have already committed to their new schools. Even new college coaches, if they came from another school, have institutional knowledge of what’s available. “You should already know who the guys are from where you were at your previous stop,” Morgan said.
Belichick may not have that luxury, but he and his staff need to evaluate the available talent and mobilize quickly. That process has apparently already begun. Penn transfer running back Malachi Hosley, a former FCS freshman All-American who ran for 1,192 yards and nine touchdowns as a sophomore, posted Wednesday that he was offered by the Tar Heels.
Morgan estimated a two-day turnaround from hiring to hosting transfer recruits, which can pose some logistical restrictions.
“The head coach has to keep the recruiting people in the short term, or else nobody’s going to book a flight (for a recruit),” said a Big 12 general manager, granted anonymity to discuss his team’s strategy. “I can understand if he wants a new GM, a new scouting director. But there’s no way you can get rid of the recruiting operations people (immediately).”
Official visits for transfers usually last a day, not unlike a free agent visit in the NFL.
The Tar Heels, like everyone else in the FBS, have until Dec. 22 to get players on campus before the start of a dead period in which no in-person on-campus or off-campus recruiting is permitted. Schools can resume hosting prospects on Jan. 6 through Feb. 3.
Fortunately for North Carolina, the portal, which already has more than 1,000 FBS players in it, will remain open until Dec. 28. Players in the College Football Playoff or late bowl games will have an additional five-day window after the conclusion of their season to enter the portal. And the portal windows are only for entry; players are free to take their time to choose their new school. So opportunities abound for player acquisition.
And for whatever needs aren’t filled by the time the spring semester begins in January, there’s another 10-day portal window in the spring, from April 16 to April 25, in which hundreds more players will become available.
3. Know your salary cap
Big-time programs now spend millions to retain their current players and attract new ones, through the use of booster-led NIL collectives. This is right up Belichick’s alley, since he essentially served as the New England Patriots’ GM during his time there. Managing a roster and a salary cap, long the heart of NFL team operations, is becoming part of college football, too, and will become even more central when schools are permitted to share revenue with their athletes via the House settlement.
“You should walk in right now and somebody should be able to give you a roster number and salary cap number,” Morgan said. “What you’re paying each player now and how much will be available to spend. Figure that out right away, then from there you divvy it up and figure out how you’re going to allocate to the different positions of need.”
Mack Brown, at his final UNC news conference, said the Tar Heels’ next coach would have roughly three times as much money to work with for the roster.
“He’ll have a better situation than we did with NIL, because of revenue sharing,” Brown said. “We had about $4 million. He’ll have at least $12 million.”
UNC says it will pay $13 million to football players in revenue-sharing.
Belichick will also have a full staff salary pool larger than the amount going to players. The $10 million assistant pool is double what UNC paid this year. pic.twitter.com/LmElWbdI0R
— Chris Vannini (@ChrisVannini) December 12, 2024
When the House settlement takes effect, the initial cap for schools — which includes athletes in all sports, not just football — is expected to begin at around $20 million annually.
Player development, which Belichick emphasized as a priority on his Monday appearance on “The Pat McAfee Show”, is also critical because when teams strike out in the portal at certain positions, they must have coaches who can get younger players ready at a moment’s notice.
“Development might matter even more now because your roster’s going to be imperfect all the time,” the Big 12 GM said.
4. Fill out your staff — and retain key members
This part is already underway and was likely part of Belichick’s interview process, because that’s common practice. During interviews, schools want to know who a coach will potentially hire to his staff.
Elko categorized priority staff hires into four “critical” areas: on-field coaching staff, strength and conditioning staff, operations staff and a general manager.
“Those positions really drive so many levels of your program, that you’ve gotta really hit on all of them,” Elko said in March.
GMs have become a more common position throughout college football in recent years, though they typically don’t have as much power as an NFL GM. The head coach has the final say in most cases. Some schools have given their GMs more autonomy in player evaluation. Stanford recently took the bold step of hiring former quarterback Andrew Luck as the program’s GM and tapping him to oversee all aspects of the program, including player personnel and the coaching staff. That’s a first-of-its-kind move in college football.
But Lombardi will set the tone for player evaluation and recruiting at UNC. And recruiting staffs at Power 4 programs have grown immensely in the last decade. In the early 2010s, you could count recruiting staffers on one hand at most schools. Now, Elko said Texas A&M’s current recruiting and personnel department has 14 people. At most programs, some staff is devoted to high school recruiting, some is devoted to scouting college personnel for the portal.
When asked how “hands-on” he would be with recruiting, Belichick said “the recruiting process belongs to everyone.
“It belongs to Michael and his scouting staff and evaluations and setting that up the recruiting department in terms of making this an attractive destination for the athlete,” he said. “But it’s also part of the coaching job and certainly the head coach has a big role as well.”
Coordinator and on-field staff hires go hand-in-hand with recruiting because Belichick needs players who fit what he wants to run. His son, Steve Belichick — who worked under his father in New England and spent the 2024 season with the Washington Huskies — is expected to be part of the staff. Filling out the rest of the staff will take time, as it does with any coaching change.
On Thursday, Belichick didn’t specify whether he would target mostly NFL coaches or college coaches for his staff, but said there will be “a strong presence of NFL people” on the staff. “We’ll hire the best coaches we can hire,” he said. He alluded to coaches in the Playoff or bowl games: “I wouldn’t interfere with the process at those schools with their commitments to their teams.” That suggests it will take some time to fill out his staff.
And the college GMs say it’s worth meeting with members of Brown’s staff who are still there. Some incumbent employees, especially in team operations or recruiting operations, may have institutional knowledge of the school or the local area that is helpful to utilize. Many new head coaches clear out an entire staff, but some retain select assistants.
“You can fail or not meet the standard and get let go, but it doesn’t mean there aren’t good coaches on that staff,” the Big 12 GM said. “You could have a group of really good coaches and things just don’t go your way. I think he would be smart to use whatever context he has to figure out who the good ones are, meet with them and decide who to retain.”
Though Belichick is new to college football coaching, it’s unlikely he’s going into this blind. During his interview with McAfee, he seemed to have a grasp of the different areas he needs to tackle. His son’s time at Washington will inform him, and retired Alabama coach Nick Saban, who was a defensive coordinator for Belichick with the Cleveland Browns in the 1990s, has remained a close friend for 40 years. And college football’s evolution to parallel the NFL in many ways should make the transition easier.
“There’s certainly some differences, but there are some parallels,” Belichick said Thursday. “And I think that’s the reason for the general structure of Michael as a general manager and myself as a coach and working together collaboratively like we have done in a professional organization.”
What’s clear is that Belichick has a lot to do and little time to do it. There are 261 days until the Tar Heels host TCU in their 2025 season opener, but the building blocks of that team, from coaches to players, will be constructed in the coming days and weeks.
Wes Fritz called his initial time at Houston “very hectic” as he tried to attack the portal and shore up the recruiting class while his father hired a coaching staff. He arrived at Houston on Dec. 4, 2023 and stayed in hotels for two weeks straight while navigating the frenzy of portal and recruiting season.
“There are so many different things happening in such a short amount of time,” Fritz said. “It was a total blur. … It’s a lot of fun, though. You just have to embrace it.”
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(Photo: Steph Chambers / Getty Images)
