Chasing history: UNC football and Bill Belichick's attempt to revive a program

WRAL's newest documentary, Coaching Carolina: The Belichick Way, reveals how the University of North Carolina landed Bill Belichick, arguably the greatest football coach of all time, and what unfolded next.
Posted 12/16/2025, 3:19:00 PM Updated 12/18/2025, 9:04:57 PM

When you're describing Carolina there there's such a history there

but talk about the football part of it

It really kind of starts in earnest in the late

1940s because out of World War II North Carolina had

a great football team

They had Charlie Choo Choo Justice and Art Weiner and

Charlie Justice in the late 40s was runner up for

the Heisman Trophy in back to back seasons

I remember this is before professional sports really inundated the

Southeast

He's on the cover of Life magazine

I am West Durham

Since 2019 I've been a part of the ESPN the

ACC Network

I grew up around Carolina athletics

My dad Woody was the 40 year voice of the

Tar Heels

Snap spot kick away high enough long enough

Bill

So Charlie Justice was my dad's hero

He was a standalone icon for many many years

Carolina's next big football chance was when they brought Jim

Tatum back as the head coach in the early 1950s

and he came to Carolina as the head coach and

was building a really good program and then unfortunately suffered

a tick bite that led to Rocky Mountain spotted fever

and cost him his life

And since Jim Tatum's death North Carolina in some respects

historians probably look at it as Carolina's been trying to

recapture that glory now for what the better part of

70 80 years but that's been it

There have been moments

The early 80s I mean Lawrence Taylor became a worldwide

football icon and he played at Carolina

And so that was kind of like the Michael Jordan

of football for years

So Carolina had something to hang on to but that's

been it

And then last December they hired Bill Belichick

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