So here’s another new thing I’m going to try: Working through some questions inspired by the biggest sports stories of the day. If it works and I decide to do more posts like this, I’ll give it a more creative name…
1) Why Did Bill Belichick Go To UNC?
After nearly a year of speculation about where Bill Belichick would end up coaching next, he surprised everyone by taking the head coaching job at the University of North Carolina. It’s a truly strange choice, and the question is: Why would he take this job?
Belichick has never coached at the college level in any capacity, nor does he have much personal connection to North Carolina.1 UNC is not one of the college football blue bloods, like Alabama or Notre Dame or USC — it’s a basketball school, obviously. Even with Belichick on the sidelines, it’s hard to imagine football eclipsing the basketball team at Chapel Hill. But UNC is also not a completely dormant football program: They’ve made bowl games every year since 2019, and appeared in the ACC Championship Game twice in the last decade. So it’s not like Deion Sanders going to Colorado, where even modest success will seem like an amazing turnaround.
No, the only explanation is that Belichick wants to coach again, and that he wasn’t sure he could get another job. This is kind of sad. Belichick is widely considered the greatest coach in NFL history, and there are likely to be at least half a dozen head coaching vacancies in the NFL when the season is over. But apparently nobody wants him. And while a year ago, I was saying that Belichick was overrated, I’m still not crazy about this. After all, it’s not like Belichick’s reputation has dimmed: People still consider him the greatest coach ever. But owners do not want to hire him because of various issues with him personally: he’s old, he’s hard to get along with, he has certain assistants he’s loyal to, etc. Basically, owners don’t like him. It’s just a reminder that PMC workers, although they are trained to identify with the ownership class, are still workers, subject to the same cold logic and irrational bigotries as any workers.
2) Is the College Football Playoff Fixed?
The first expanded College Football Playoff bracket came out earlier this month. It’s mostly familiar faces (Oregon, Georgia, Texas, Notre Dame), with a few of this year’s fun surprise teams: Indiana, Boise State, SMU. The big “controversies” are hard to get worked up about: Should an Alabama team with three losses have made it in? Did Indiana deserve a home game?
In truth, the bracket looks a lot like the bracket for every pro sports league in North America, which is seemingly what fans have wanted for decades. It is the homogenizing effect of capitalism: As entertainment appeals to the same mass audience, it all kind of starts to look the same.
Given how bad the old system was, though, this seems like an improvement. The big unanswered questions, though, are whether the games will be any good, and whether players will start to get a cut of the money. Since we now have a professionalized playoff system, we can hopefully dispense with the idea that these bowl games generate revenue based on tradition or the program names — it’s about the players on the teams. So they should demand a cut of the loot…
3) Will the Caitlin Clark Story Ever Change?
TIME magazine named Caitlin Clark the 2024 “Athlete of the Year,” and the profile of her centers on the outsized attention she received, whether she is worthy of it, the resentment of other WNBA players, the racial dynamics of her fandom, etc. It was, in fact, quite similar to the last year’s article in The Sporting News, naming Clark and Angel Reese “Athletes of the Year” in 2023. The whole thing is starting to feel a bit repetitive and boring — and I say that as someone who has contributed to it by writing multiple pieces on Clark’s celebrity status.
But there’s a place in the TIME story that kind of reveals what’s going on here:
Clark is cognizant of the racial underpinnings of her stardom. “I want to say I’ve earned every single thing, but as a white person, there is privilege,” says Clark. “A lot of those players in the league that have been really good have been Black players. This league has kind of been built on them. The more we can appreciate that, highlight that, talk about that, and then continue to have brands and companies invest in those players that have made this league incredible, I think it’s very important. I have to continue to try to change that. The more we can elevate Black women, that’s going to be a beautiful thing.”
Ah, yes. It is truly all about the brands, isn’t it? This paragraph really sums so much of the racial discourse of the last few years, where building up the brands of Black superstars and getting companies to invest in a few high-profile Black players is viewed as the best, or perhaps the ONLY, way to address racial inequality.
To be clear, I’m not blaming Clark for her answer. It’s good that she seems legitimately concerned about racial inequality, and it’s refreshing that she seems seriously annoyed about how she’s been turned into a culture war symbol by the most annoying trolls. It’s just a bummer that her answer — the standard liberal answer to racial issues now — is ultimately about how many Black people might be in a Gatorade commercial…
4) Are Baseball Players Underpaid?
In addition to the mega Juan Soto deal, which I wrote about last week, there have been a number of other big MLB free agent deals: Max Fried, Willy Adames, Nathan Eovaldi, etc. But the one I’m really interested in is Luis Severino, who signed a three-year $67 million deal with the Athletics.
The Athletics!
The No-Longer-Oakland Athletics have never given out a contract that big. The only deal that even comes close in franchise history was the $66 million extension given to Eric Chavez in 2004 — but that was a 6-year deal for a franchise player. This is a short-term contract for a pitcher who has barely been replacement-level for the last six seasons.2
But there are two missing pieces to this story: The first is that the A’s are going to play the next three seasons in a minor league stadium in Sacramento, which is likely to make it very difficult for them to attract free agents, especially pitchers who are likely to struggle in the smaller ballpark. So the Athletics need to pay above-market for free agents. But the reason they’re even going after Severino in the first place has to do with the second missing piece: The A’s new stadium deal.
For years — decades, really — the various owners of the Athletics have insisted they cannot afford to invest in payroll until they replaced the Oakland Coliseum. Well, now the team has a new stadium, at least in theory. The Las Vegas deal is allegedly going to happen, so now the A’s no longer have their old excuse to avoid spending, so now they can go after guys like Severino.
I suppose a less cynical person might view this as a happy ending, but not me. After all, this is a short-term deal: Severino can opt out after two years. In other words, it’s exactly the kind of bare minimum gesture you would make if you were trying to prevent any Vegas officials from getting cold feet, but didn’t actually want to make long-term financial commitments. And when a team like the Athletics shows that it DOES have money like this to spend, I always wonder how much else their hoarding…
His father, Steve Belichick, was briefly an assistant coach at UNC in the 1950s, but Bill would have been too young to really remember that time.
I like Luis Severino, and think the Yankees kind of screwed him over by botching his rehab and recovery. But the fact remains that he missed almost all of 2019 – 2021 with injuries, and has been inconsistent ever since. Even in his bounce back 2024 season, he was basically a league average pitcher.