With Swinney-Belichick Finally Here,
Both Coaches Face Difficult Questions
By David Glenn
North Carolina Sports Network
(last updated Oct. 3, 2025)
In more than a century of college football, only once has a game matched a head coach with multiple national championships against a head coach with multiple Super Bowl championships.
That scenario will happen for just the second time ever, on Saturday afternoon in Chapel Hill, when Clemson coach Dabo Swinney leads his Tigers into an Atlantic Coast Conference contest against North Carolina coach Bill Belichick and the Tar Heels (noon, ESPN).
“Are you kidding me? It’s amazing,” Swinney said Tuesday. “I mean, I never in my lifetime thought I would get an opportunity to coach against Coach Belichick. I mean, how cool is that?”
Swinney and Georgia’s Kirby Smart are the only active college football coaches who have won multiple national championships. Swinney led the Tigers to the college gridiron’s promised land in 2016 and 2018. Smart helped the Bulldogs raise the trophy after the 2021 and 2022 seasons.
Belichick, of course, won six Super Bowl titles as a head coach in the National Football League, during his 24 seasons leading the New England Patriots. He earned two more Super Bowl rings while serving as the defensive coordinator for the New York Giants.
“The guy’s got eight rings,” Swinney said. “He’s arguably the greatest ever, certainly at the pro level. It’s a cool thing.”
Soon after UNC’s unexpected hiring of Belichick last December, the spectacular nature of the Swinney-Belichick pairing drew the attention of the national sports media.
In mid-May, at the ACC’s annual spring meetings in ritzy Amelia Island, Fla., ESPN assigned one of its top hosts, Rece Davis, to moderate an hour-long conversation with Swinney and Belichick.
The ACC Network, which is owned and operated by ESPN, the ACC’s long-time television partner, then hyped the event as an offseason extravaganza. ACC Huddle Special: Dabo Swinney & Bill Belichick, An Hour-Long Conversation Between Two Coaching Legends premiered on May 28, exclusively on the ACC Network.
With Davis’ prodding, the coaches explored their humble beginnings in the profession, their affinity for recruiting multi-sport athletes, the current landscape of college athletics, and a variety of additional topics.
“I have a ton of respect for Dabo and what he’s done,” Belichick said at the ACC Kickoff event in July. “Great opportunity to spend some time with him at the ACC coaches’ meetings.
“He’s always been a really enjoyable guy to be around. I don’t know if that will be true on Saturday afternoon. Probably not.”
Belichick actually smiled when he said that last part, but he wasn’t kidding.
It’s one thing to mention Swinney’s two national championships or his nine ACC titles, or the fact that — just last year — Swinney, who’s only 55 years old, also passed Florida State legend Bobby Bowden as the winningest coach in ACC football history. Such things reflect the past.
When Belichick made his “Saturday afternoon” joke over the summer, he likely was contemplating another Clemson juggernaut this season. Indeed, the Tigers were #4 and #6 in the preseason polls, and some media and coaches voted them #1, in part because they returned about 80 percent of their production from last season, the highest number nationally.
The ACC media also picked the Tigers, who brought four potential first-round NFL draft picks (quarterback Cade Klubnik, defensive end TJ Parker, wide receiver Antonio Williams, defensive tackle Peter Woods) to the ACC Kickoff event, to win yet another league championship.
It hasn’t worked out that way.
Just as UNC has stumbled to a 2-2 start, with embarrassing losses to its only Power Four opponents (TCU, UCF), Clemson has become one of the most disappointing teams in the entire nation. The Tigers will arrive in Chapel Hill with a stunning 1-3 record, which represents the worst start of Swinney’s entire 17-year tenure.
Both teams have been extremely dysfunctional offensively. The Tigers are dead-last in the ACC in scoring offense, at less than 20 points per game. Against their three Football Bowl Subdivision opponents, the Tar Heels have averaged only 14 points per game.
Among the 10 college football coaches making $10 million or more this season, only three lack winning records right now: Belichick, Swinney and Colorado’s Deion Sanders (2-3). That fact has taken much of the buzz away from this week’s Clemson-UNC tilt.
The only previous college football contest that matched a coach with multiple national championships against a coach with multiple Super Bowl championships happened in a bowl game, more than 30 years ago.
Bill Walsh, who had won three Super Bowls in the 1980s while leading the San Francisco 49ers, was the 61-year-old head coach in the first season of his second tenure at Stanford. Joe Paterno, who led Penn State to two national championships in the 1980s, was the 66-year-old head coach of the Nittany Lions.
At the end of the 1992 season, in a matchup dominated by defense, #13 Stanford defeated #21 Penn State 24-3 in the Blockbuster Bowl. In that clash of coaching legends, the Super Bowl winner had beaten the national championship winner, and convincingly so.
Carolina would love to see history repeat itself in that regard, but the Tar Heels are a 13-point underdog against the Tigers on Saturday.
