By R.L. Bynum
CHAPEL HILL — Carolina coach Bill Belichick says that college football’s revenue-sharing era is a different world from the NFL system he worked in for decades.
Belichick described how college sports, particularly college football, are in flux. He compared it to a period in his pro coaching career when rookie contracts were not yet governed by a wage scale.
“The rookies got a lot more money in a lot of cases than the veterans did,” Belichick said Monday during his weekly press conference at the Kenan Football Center. He pointed to Cam Newton’s 2011 draft class as the first under the NFL’s new rookie wage system.
This season, he said, the picture is more layered. Revenue sharing is only one piece, and the other pieces have to be built around it. He said there are other ways to generate money, but those arrangements have to be tied to marketing.
“It’s not as simple as, ‘OK, we’re just going to pay you X, and that’s the end of it,’ ” he said. “How do you get the money? What do you have to do? What comes from the rev share? How much is marketing? How much is incentives?”
Belichick said the biggest difference from the NFL is the lack of shared information. NFL player contracts operate under a collective bargaining agreement, with certified contract agents and a centralized system for salary information. College football lacks comparable transparency, he said.
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“You know exactly what that team paid that player for every single thing for their offseason participation, for their number of catches, for X amount of play time, and so forth and so on,” Belichick said of the NFL. “We just don’t have that here.”
That gap makes negotiations harder for everyone at the table, he said. A player’s side can point to a teammate or a rival who is reportedly earning more, but there is rarely a reliable comparison.
“Those negotiations are a little tougher because the information is, I would say, more scarce,” Belichick said.
He also said the rules themselves can be unclear to the people representing players, which would rarely happen in the NFL. Between NCAA rules, revenue-sharing rules and marketing rules, he said, agents sometimes ask for things that simply are not allowed.
“You wouldn’t have that in the NFL because the NFL agents would know,” Belichick said.
The system is still new for everyone, including the agents and players on the other side.
“There’s not a lot of history of the way that the system is now,” Belichick said. “It’s only a couple years’ worth.”
Belichick acknowledged that pending legislation could change the system again. The Protect College Sports Act passed the Senate in September and awaits House action, but he said he is working within the existing guidelines.
“Now it looks like there’s other legislation that may or may not modify that,” he said. “We’ll worry about that later. But in the meantime, you work on the set of guidelines you have, just like we did in the NFL when the rookie wage scale was, let’s say, unlimited, and when it wasn’t.”
Inside the program, he said, the approach is to set a plan and adjust as things change.
“The idea is to have a plan on how you want to do things, and then if you deviate from that plan and say, ‘We’re going to pay more for this guy than we budgeted,’ then you pay less for somebody else, or you raise more money, or you figure out a way to pay him,” Belichick said.
He credited the collaboration among the head coach, general manager, coaching staff, athletics director, donors and others for smoothing out the early confusion.
“The more that we’ve worked together on that, the more that everything has aligned and become in sync,” Belichick said. He did not claim the process is finished, but he said the contrast with last year, when the roster was still being assembled, is stark.
His final assessment avoided any judgment about which system is better.
“I wouldn’t say it’s better, worse, more complicated, less complicated,” Belichick said. “It’s just different.”
| Team | ACC | All |
|---|---|---|
| No. 1 Miami | 6–0 | 8–0 |
| No. 14 Wake Forest | 5–1 | 7–1 |
| SMU | 4–2 | 6–2 |
| Louisville | 4–2 | 5–3 |
| Duke | 3–2 | 6–2 |
| Virginia Tech | 3–2 | 6–2 |
| Clemson | 3–2 | 5–3 |
| Pittsburgh | 3–3 | 6–3 |
| Boston College | 2–3 | 4–4 |
| North Carolina | 2–3 | 4–4 |
| N.C. State | 2–3 | 4–4 |
| Syracuse | 2–4 | 4–4 |
| Stanford | 2–4 | 4–5 |
| Virginia | 2–4 | 4–5 |
| California | 2–4 | 3–6 |
| Florida State | 1–4 | 3–5 |
| Georgia Tech | 1–4 | 2–6 |
Saturday’s results
No. 1 Miami 38, North Carolina 35
Duke 47, Boston College 2
N.C. State 31, California 10
Syracuse 30, SMU 27
Louisville 52, Stanford 24
No. 14 Wake Forest 51, Virginia 7
Clemson 36, Florida State 24
Pittsburgh 34, Georgia Tech 11
Friday’s game
Virginia Tech at SMU, 7 p.m., ESPN
Saturday’s games
North Carolina at UConn, noon, CBSSN
Clemson at Syracuse, noon, ESPN2
Florida State at Boston College, noon, ACCN
Duke at N.C. State, 12:30, The CW
Merrimack at No. 14 Wake Forest, 3:30, ACCN
No. 1 Miami at No. 5 Notre Dame, 7:30, NBC
Louisville at Georgia Tech, 7:30, ACCN
Friday, Nov. 13 game
Florida State at Pittsburgh, 7 p.m., ESPN
Saturday, Nov. 14 games
Duke at No. 1 Miami, noon, ABC
No. 14 Wake Forest at SMU, noon, ESPN or ESPN2
Syracuse at N.C. State, noon, ACCN
Georgia Tech at Clemson, 12:30, The CW
Boston College at No. 4 Notre Dame, 3:30, NBC
California at Virginia, 3:30, ACCN
Stanford at Virginia Tech, 7 on ESPN2 or 7:30 on ACCN
Louisville at North Carolina, 7 on ESPN2 or 7:30 on ACCN
| Month/ date | Score/ time | Opponent (current ranking) | Record/TV |
|---|---|---|---|
| August | |||
| 29 | W, 15–10 | vs.TCU in Dublin | 1–0 |
| September | |||
| 12 | W, 35–3 | vs. ETSU | 2–0 |
| 19 | L, 28–20 | at Clemson | 2–1, 0–1 ACC |
| October | |||
| 3 | L, 37–26 | vs. No. 4 Notre Dame | 2–2 |
| 10 | W, 21–18 | at Pittsburgh | 3–2, 1–1 |
| 17 | W, 24–20 | at Duke | 4–2, 2–1 |
| 24 | L, 31–30, OT | vs. Syracuse | 4–3, 2–2 |
| 31 | L, 38–35 | vs. No. 1 Miami | 4–4, 2–3 |
| November | |||
| 7 | Noon | at UConn | CBSSN |
| 14 | 7 or 7:30 | vs. Louisville | ESPN2 or ACCN |
| 21 | TBA | at Virginia | TBA |
| 28 | TBA | vs. N.C. State | TBA |
Photo by Smith Hardy
