CHAPEL HILL — The ceiling is the roof, the greatest Tar Heel athlete once said about North Carolina’s football program. With Michael Jordan and other greats in attendance at Monday’s season opener, whatever that upper limit is for head coach Bill Belichick’s debut season came crashing down.

Nine months of hype and build up and talk of the university finally committing to football and of UNC being the NFL’s 33rd team and … poof. Gone in a purple haze before a national television audience.

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The brutal 48-14 beatdown by Texas Christian University in Belichick’s coaching debut stoked online mockery from every corner, including the Horned Frogs’ X account.

The optimism that surrounded the Tar Heels was based on Belichick’s football brilliance and résumé of NFL success. If he can win six Super Bowls – as he did with the New England Patriots – and stake a claim to being the greatest coach in league history, surely Belichick can find success in his first attempt at college coaching.

The best-case scenario went a bit like this: Sprinkle a little “do your job” magic on the Tar Heels, stop the defensive breakdowns of the Mack Brown 2.0 era, beat up on an average ACC and, viola, UNC is a football school. 

Fans, donors, sponsors and ESPN – which aired Monday night’s game and broadcast a one-hour pregame show with plenty of Belichick love – bought in on the $50-million bet.

Things appear a lot different in light of the Tuesday morning hangover. The questions aren’t so lofty now. Can this team get bowl eligible? Who is the quarterback? What have we done?

With a rebuilt transfer-filled roster, especially along the offensive and defensive lines, it was never going to be that easy. This isn’t Deion Sanders at Colorado, who in his first season at a power conference school brought with him a future Heisman Trophy-caliber wide receiver/cornerback and a star college quarterback. Belichick, 73, brought his two sons to coach the defense, which was shredded Monday night. 

Belichick is having success on the recruiting trail for the Class of 2026, but when will those current high school seniors be able to contribute? The clock is always ticking in college sports.

And what if Belichick – who didn’t bring in a blockbuster coaching staff filled with recruiting dynamos or schematic wizards – isn’t that Super Bowl mastermind anymore, but instead closer to the coach who went 29-38 and didn’t win a playoff game in four NFL seasons without star quarterback Tom Brady?

Did UNC, in its quest for football relevance and splash, buy a depreciating asset?

Is this all an overreaction to one game? The way TCU dominated UNC raises questions about how successful the Tar Heels can be against even a weak schedule. TCU played for a national title in 2022, finished 9-4 last season and returned a standout quarterback. What is it that UNC can bank on week in and week out? What is the team’s strength?

The scene on campus was electric Monday. With near-perfect weather, fans flooded to the school’s iconic quad for a country music concert, team walk and more tailgating areas. The pregame at Kenan Stadium, with the lights and rapper Petey Pablo, hit the right notes. The Tar Heels carved up TCU on the game’s first drive. It was everything the UNC leaders who dreamed up this experiment could have hoped for.

But the game lasted 60 minutes, not four. The rest was a disaster. Belichick made no excuses.

“We have to correct some of the mistakes we made tonight,” Belichick said after the game. We just can’t perform well doing some of the things that we did. We got to be better than that.”

A lot better. And fast.