After taking a year off from coaching in the NFL, Bill Belichick moved to the college level to take over the North Carolina Tar Heels.
Belichick is 72 and perhaps entering the final phase of his coaching career. Sean Payton, 61, still has three more years left on his contract with the Broncos. If all goes well, Payton will likely be offered a contract extension to extend his stay in Denver.
About a decade from now, though, when Payton has reached the point of Belichick’s current coaching status, will Payton consider switching to the NCAA, too?
“No,” Payton said on Dec. 13. “I’m excited for him (Belichick). I consider him a friend. Like everyone, I’m a little bit surprised. My problem — I’ll be honest with you — is I grew up with a father who was a business man. Every day, he put a suit on, and he got on a bus, and he took it to a train station. The train into Chicago, went to work, train back, bus home. Then maybe once a month, he fell asleep on the train and called my mom from Aurora who’d come pick him up. He had the high black socks with the rubber bands around them, and he wondered why he had varicose veins. I knew I didn’t want to dress up. I’m like that little kid that gets itchy in church if I have to wear a sport coat.
“I think [Belichick]’s a teacher. I haven’t spoken to him [about switching to college coaching]. I sent him a note. I think he truly loves coaching. In 2012, the year that I didn’t coach with the Saints, I went back and helped out the sixth-grade team. Very quickly, you’re invested in that. This sounds silly, but you’re figuring out what these kids do well. There are a ton of parallels to like, ‘All right, what can we do with this group? Who does this well?’ Our No. 1 mission statement that year was that every kid returned the next year, [that] they had a good experience and they played two positions. So there is a natural teacher in there with most coaches, and certainly with Bill. I don’t know that I would do that, but I think there was something that drew him there. I think he’ll do a great job.”
Name, image and likeness (NIL) deals and the transfer portal have changed the landscape of college football in recent years. Payton, meanwhile, has been coaching in the NFL since 1997. He doesn’t plan to change course.
“When I got into coaching, the first nine years I was in the college game,” Payton said. “My goal was to be a coach in the Big Ten — it’s where I’m from —a nd maybe a head coach. Then this league found you. So even your first few years in the league, you’re more in-tune to the college game. These rookies pay attention to the scores on Saturday. The first-, second-, third-year players — then players in Year 8 look up and they see the score… I would say the one thing that’s significant that’s taken place — any one of these three are major changes for college athletics — the [transfer] portal, NIL and conference realignment. All three took place in the same 10-year period. We could have a discussion on all three of those topics. Not just one, but three major changes.
“The thing that it’s hard for me a little bit is the realignment. That I felt like there was an easy solution to that with revenue sharing amongst the TV… When I saw the Pac-12 championship game last year, and all those mascots, to think that was the last time that conference was going to play football, I thought, ‘Shame on it. How did that happen?’ In other words, because I think what’s good for Alabama, Auburn and LSU, what’s good for Oregon State is just as important to them. That’s why this league, [Pro Football Hall of Fame owner] Wellington Mara in a meeting a long time ago said, ‘What’s good for the Bengals is good for the Giants.’ That revenue sharing, but losing the conferences as we know it, I struggle with.
“Then the other sports that have to meet somewhere halfway to play, I struggle with. Now the other two elements, that was coming to some degree or another, but I felt like the realignment process, that could’ve bene handled in a better way. I don’t follow enough of it. I kind of know the current climate, and they’re learning right now. I think they’re figuring things out. It kind of got ahead of them.”
Payton was an assistant coach at the college level at San Diego State, Indiana State, Miami (Ohio) and Illinois before landing a job in the NFL in 1997. It sounds like the coach has no interest in returning to the college level.
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