Bill Belichick shares how House settlement impacts vision at North Carolina

New North Carolina Tar Heels head coach Bill Belichick has needed to transition from nearly five decades in the NFL to college over the past few months. Now, with Judge Claudia Wilken approving the House settlement, he’s going to need to deal with another round of changes.

Belichick recently addressed those changes. While the House settlement was expected, now he and the rest of the staff at North Carolina are going to need to find a way to adjust to it.

“The House settlement [is] something that we’ve all kind of been waiting for,” Bill Belichick said. “And now that that’s been handed down, it’s quite lengthy and technical, and we have people on our staff and lawyers and so forth that are looking at it, so we have a full understanding of exactly what we’re doing. We did that over the weekend, and Mike Lombardi and I will be meeting with those people that are advising us on what exactly it means, what we can do, how we need to consider and configure things a little bit differently than maybe we’ve done in the past couple months.”

At its core, the House settlement is going to allow for revenue sharing between schools and athletes. Schools will $20.5 million to allocate to athletes across sports. The hope for many is that the settlement is also going to limit NIL deals. NIL deals above $600 will need third-party approval.

“Again, a lot of this was anticipated,” Belichick said. “But now that it’s more formalized, we’ll have to make sure that we’re compliant with every part of it, from roster size, to payments, and fair market value, reasonable market value, and terms like that. The Deloitte part of it.”

The third-party approval for NIL deals is going to be submitted to a clearinghouse called NIL Go. Deloitte is set to oversee the fair compensation ranges. The hope is that it will help to stabilize the market.

“There’s a number of things that are interconnected. We just want to make sure that we understand everything before we march too far forward,” Belichick said. “But I’m glad that it’s out. I’m glad it’s that we have rules and policies and so forth that we can work with. I think now it’s just understanding exactly how the mechanics of some of those will work. Again, what we can do and what we can’t do. As we identify that, and as it becomes clear, that’ll just help us going forward.”

Another major change coming with the House settlement is going to be incoming roster limits. Again, those are going to impact all sports, including the football program. Football teams will be down to 105 players. At North Carolina, those changes are going to cut 850 roster spots to 735 across sports.

“I would just say, I would expect that over the next year, there’ll be a lot of things that’ll come up,” Belichick said. “And probably a year from now, some modifications will be made. Who knows what they are, but I think that, as you get all these schools, all these  student athletes, and so many different NIL, let’s call them deals, we’ll see how all that plays out, and what the boundaries are or aren’t going forward.”

One of the biggest changes coming with the House settlement is going to be the new enforcement agency called the College Sports Commission. How strong that agency ends up being and what the limits of the settlement truly are, however, remain unknown.