Josh Pate: North Carolina 'is in a state of disrepair' under Bill Belichick
Josh Pate offers a scathing assessment of the North Carolina football program under Bill Belichick -- detailing how dysfunctional recruiting visits have been for prospects and how the program could have had better options at head coach and quarterback.
Video Transcript
So North Carolina football is in a state of disrepair right now.
Most predictable thing in the world.
There's a new athletic director in charge, Steve Newmark, who inherited this.
It, it won't be his mess for long, but it is a mess right now.
He does have to clean it up.
I gotta tell you, and I forgot to tell this story, I, I think I don't remember telling this story on air.
Few months ago, I was talking to someone pretty important in the media world who has a kid who had toured some of the schools, and he had toured North Carolina, and he had also toured some of the other big-time schools.
And he was just talking about how dysfunctional the visit was at North Carolina, how unorganized the visit was compared to these other places, and h- the way he summarized it so perfectly fits what pretty much everyone has heard who knows anyone at North Caro- North Carolina, and it is they almost acted like it was doing you a favor to have you there, even though they're supposed to be the one trying to recruit you and convince you to play for them.
There was a fundamental disconnect from the word go from not only Bill Belichick but also the people in his camp about what it was ever gonna take to win in college football.
They didn't win last year.
They're not gonna do any better this year.
In fact, their shot was last year, if you understand schedule making.
But just want to remind everyone as we get into this how badly they screwed themselves and the opportunity they had.
We talked about this at the time, so this is not, this is not sour grapes.
This is not revisionist history.
I'm gonna play some sound for you in just a second, but I want you to remember when Mack Brown got fired, they could have had John Summerall, and John Summerall had a quarterback down there named Darion Mensah, who was about to transfer to Duke.
But in this world where North Carolina is able to get out of its own way and let a coaching search be run properly, John Summerall is hired, Darion Mensah, and, best number I've gotten is well over a dozen Tulane players are coming with Summerall to North Carolina.
Now, that's option A.
Option B is the pile of crap you have in your lap right now.
So understand what we could be talking about right now.
We could be talking about entering the 2026 season, Summerall entering year two with Darion Mensah as his starting quarterback at North Carolina.
You could have had that, or you could have what you have right now, which is a complete torpedoing of your brand, which is resilient and will still survive.
But also, this, this sort of like freak show experiment.
I don't know how else to describe this.
It's like a star doing everything it can to implode in on itself in the twilight of its career and doing it on your dime.
