Bill Belichick's awful North Carolina debut shows Chapel Hill's 'New Hope' needs to go back to the drawing board

When the general assembly decided to build a state university here 235 years ago, they named the town for a church built by the British.

The little chapel on the hill was actually called New Hope.

Though the site has been knocked down and built over in the subsequent centuries, the spirit of that name has been the fundamental underpinning of North Carolina football. Without a new hope emerging every few years, promising to wake up this perpetually sleeping giant, they’d have razed this program to the ground too.

As history has shown, neither the Church of England nor the football field has been a great place for faith in the North Carolina Piedmont.

But on Monday night, the latest iteration of New Hope could be found stalking around the 50-yard line at Kenan Stadium in a gray hoodie with the sleeves cut down.

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Since he took the job last December, having been thoroughly rejected by the NFL despite his six Super Bowl Rings, the football world has been wondering what 73-year-old Bill Belichick would look like coaching a college team. It subsequently became a nine-month journey of interest in his personal life, a book tour, a series of awkward interviews and a branding initiative led by his 24-year-old girlfriend.

What we didn’t hear much about was the football team he had to coach.

Maybe now we know why.

North Carolina’s 48-14 drubbing Monday night at the hands of TCU was evidence that $10 million for the most accomplished coach in the history of the sport may not go as far as it used to.