In the immediate hours after North Carolina announced Bill Belichick‘s hire as the Tar Heels’ next coach and reportedly signed the six-time Super Bowl winner to a five-year deal worth $50 million, the popular sentiment among college football pundits has been skepticism. If you’re tallying talking points to compare why Belichick will succeed as North Carolina’s coach against why he won’t, there will be more countable ones in the latter column. Concerns over no experience with ingrained university politics, booster involvement, high school recruiting, collegiate roster management and staff assembling, especially at 72 years old in the fast lane of the NIL era, are all valid.

But one ingredient outweighs all the others: talent accruement. And that’s the story here, because college football programs don’t win national championships without a cream-of-the-crop roster.

What player — at any level — wouldn’t at least consider the opportunity to be under the tutelage of future first-ballot Hall of Fame, six-time Super Bowl-winning coach Bill Belichick?