At some point between Bill Belichick’s final Super Bowl victory and Wednesday, the day he became the head coach at the University of North Carolina, the NFL as an entity must have become unsolveably tired of its most legendary modern coach. That feeling also seems to have been mutual.
As with most issues, a kind of growing corporatization of everything—but especially the front offices around the league—is to blame. Owners, team presidents and other high-six-figure suits were wary of the maverick Belichick and his desire to run a football organization like some clandestine branch of the FBI in which everyone operates everything on a need-to-know basis (in addition to his insistence on bringing his favorite sidekicks along for the ride in a forever appointment at his right hand). Belichick, too, seems to long for a taste of the Wild West without the responsibility of having to answer to MBAs, JDs, other various paid-for initials and, above all, the owners to which he always felt intellectually superior.
