Paul Finebaum on Bill Belichick's debut season at UNC: 'This is not Deion Sanders coming back to college'

Among the biggest storylines coming into this upcoming season in college football is the arrival of Bill Belichick at North Carolina. That said, for all the spotlight on his hire, the Tar Heels’ year as a whole might not be worth that amount of attention.

‘Get Up’ took a look at Belichick’s debut season at UNC on Friday morning. That panel included Paul Finebaum, who has low expectations for how this tenure starts, considering what the roster looks like in Chapel Hill and what Belichick’s coaching resumé looks like since 2020.

“They are very low for this reason. He doesn’t have a very good team, although he’s in a workable league. I think he can win seven games, maybe steal one to go eight,” Finebaum said. “But, ladies and gentlemen, this is not Deion Sanders coming back to college. For a couple of obvious reasons, Shedeur Sanders and Travis Hunter? He doesn’t have anyone like that. Therefore, the eyes of the nation will be there on opening night, maybe a second or third time, but it’s not going to be must-see TV.”

“And, as far as Bill Belichick? You know the NFL better than me, but I can read. I followed his career. The end of his career was a disaster. He didn’t win a playoff game in his last five seasons. He had losing seasons three of the last five. It was a mess at the end. He should have been fired earlier than he was,” Finebaum continued. “This is just trying to make good, trying to impress his girlfriend, he’s trying to make some money and, ultimately, I don’t think it’s going to work.”

When North Carolina hired Belichick in December, it immediately became a headline in the sport with one of the greatest coaches in the history of the National Football League coming to the NCAA. However, while there’s still buildup to their season and beyond based on his overall body of work, it has come down a bit considering how difficult this first year could be as he adjusts to the new level and with the amount of portal transactions they had in and out of the program this offseason.

With that, any big expectation for the postseason would seem wrong, as Damien Woody said. Harry Douglas would then set a more reasonable, realistic aspiration for the Tar Heels this fall, as making a bowl game after all this turnover on the roster.

“Nah, that’s fiction,” Woody said of UNC’s chances to make the CFP. “I think it’ll take an act of God for them to get to the College Football Playoff. Listen, I went down there and watched their spring practice. And, listen, everyone knows the admiration I have for Coach Belichick, but they’ve got some — their roster needs a lot of work. And, I know they’ve been in the transfer portal but I just don’t see, in year one, UNC being in contention for the College Football Playoff.”

“Bowl game,” Douglas said of his expectations for the Tar Heels. “You’re only as good as your quarterback allows you to be but, also, they have a boatload of transfers. You’ve got to get all these guys to gel together for a common goal and that’s going to be difficult to do, in my opinion. So, it’s different from Bill Belichick, you know, installing something in the meeting room in the National Football League and saying, ‘Hey, guys, I expect you to go out there and execute’. No. You’ve got to have a lot more patience at the collegiate level because guys might not be able to grasp things as fast as the players that you coached in the National Football League…All these things are questions for North Carolina Football.”

If nothing else, Belichick being a college coach will be interesting to follow, especially throughout his first season on the job. Those on ‘Get Up’ on Friday just had doubts about how interesting the Tar Heels could make it by year’s end under their new, big-name head coach.