The University of North Carolina, which has been playing football since 1888, has never paid its head football coach at the top end of the college market.

Until now.

On Wednesday, UNC put the finishing touches on a five-year, $50 million contract that immediately makes legendary coach Bill Belichick the sixth-highest-paid college football coach in America and one of only eight men who will make at least $10 million per year in 2025, even before achieving any potential bonuses.

Coach, School, Conference — 2024 Compensation

1. Kirby Smart^!, Georgia, SEC — $13.3 million
2. Dabo Swinney^!, Clemson, ACC — $11.1 million
3. Steve Sarkisian!, Texas, SEC — $10.6 million
4. Lincoln Riley, Southern Cal, Big Ten — $10+ million
5. Ryan Day!, Ohio State, Big Ten — $10+ million
6. Bill Belichick, North Carolina, ACC — $10 million*
6. Kalen DeBoer, Alabama, SEC — $10 million
6. Mike Norvell, Florida State, ACC — $10 million
9. Brian Kelly, LSU, SEC — $9.9 million
10. Mark Stoops, Kentucky, SEC — $9+ million

^ — has won FBS national championship
! — participating in 2024 College Football Playoff
* — 2025 compensation (others 2024)

Belichick’s contract was preliminary approved by UNC Board of Trustees members in small-group briefings on Wednesday afternoon, as reported by the North Carolina Sports Network. The BOT will formally approve the deal in an official meeting on Thursday morning.

For perspective, consider that UNC stopped short of such high-level financial commitments even with its only other high-profile football hires in the modern era: Butch Davis in 2007 and Mack Brown in 2019.

Davis most recently had spent four seasons (2001-04) as a head coach in the NFL, with the Cleveland Browns. Prior to that, he had helped build the Miami Hurricanes into a national championship-caliber program, both as an assistant coach (1984-88) and as the Canes’ head coach (1995-2000). His final Miami team finished #2 in the national rankings, and the megatalented squad he left behind for his successor, Larry Coker, won the national championship in 2001.

Brown, who was a young (37), inexpensive, up-and-coming head coach the first time he was hired at Carolina, was a far more proven commodity when the Tar Heels lured him away from his ESPN broadcasting job prior to the 2019 season. During his 16-year tenure (1998-2013) at Texas, Brown had led the Longhorns to the 2005 national championship and a stunning 10 consecutive seasons (2000-09) where they finished at #13 or higher in the national rankings.

Carolina paid both Davis and Brown fairly well by the standards of the time, but the Tar Heels certainly didn’t break the bank, relatively speaking.

Davis, who was almost 55 years old when the Tar Heels hired him in November 2006, made about $2 million per year during his four seasons in Chapel Hill (2007-10). That compensation level did not rank among the top 20 in college football that year, when Alabama legend Nick Saban ($6 million) and Texas’ Brown ($5.2 million) were the only two head coaches above the $5 million mark.

More recently, Brown did make about $5 million per year with the Tar Heels, but the market had changed so dramatically over the past two decades that his compensation ranked outside the top 40 in major college football, meaning in the bottom half of the 66 head coaches in the Power Four conferences (plus Notre Dame). UNC did upgrade many other aspects of its football-related resources and commitment during Brown’s recent tenure, but overall the Tar Heels still weren’t spending anywhere near the level seen at college football’s traditional powerhouse programs.

At $10 million per year, believe it or not, Belichick is taking a major pay cut from what he was making in the latter part of his legendary career with the NFL’s New England Patriots, whom he led to six Super Bowl championships and scores of other success. That professional-level number ultimately exceeded $20 million per year.

At the same time, UNC just doubled the highest amount it has ever paid any of its football coaches, it’s paying top-10 money to its head coach for the very first time, and it’s planning to upgrade the program’s Name-Image-Likeness budget, among many other things, in preparation for the 2025 season.

That sort of gridiron commitment, financially speaking and otherwise, is a truly unprecedented development in the history of UNC football.