The Trainwreck in UNC Continues With Joint Statements No One is Buying, Late Night Phone Calls to Recruits, an Injured Player Reportedly Sent Away, and One Very Tone Deaf Blog

How it started:

How it's going:

The situation between Bill Belichick, his coaching and front office staff, and the University of North Carolina football program is, in a word, fluid. In the way that a dam bursting is fluid. Or a tsunami is fluid. Or a Category 5 hurricane making landfall at peak high tides during a full moon could be considered fluid. Come up with a watery metaphor involving a disaster, and it's applicable to this ever changing catastrophic event. 

So let's get caught up in where this Old Testament-sized, 40-day long, diluvian punishment for the sins of mankind stands at the moment. 

For starters, there was this joint statement:

Which virtually no one is buying for a couple of reasons. First, because it's the polar opposite of every single report coming out of Chapel Hill. The kind of thing Keith Urban and Nicole Kidman would've told their kids in the hours before their lawyers started filing the divorce papers. Second, because these joint statements read very much like the joint statements Belichick and Patriots ownership used to put out. Statements you needed smoke a lot of very potent, very fat joints to buy into. And the truth has revealed itself there:

Then as if to make the case he's "fully committed" to the Tar Heels, someone let it be known that Belichick was working the phone lines. He believes that 5-star recruits are our future; reassure them well and let them lead the way:

Which might be all well and good were it not for this disturbing report that landed at around the same time:

… program since he could not help the team on the field this fall.

Big, if true. I mean, it's all well and good to tell your 2026 freshman you're in this for the long haul and will still be coaching them when they're making the All-ACC team and being scouted by NFL scouts. Make that the NFL scouts of 31 teams. But it can't help for them to get off the phone to have mom and stepdad say, "Have you seen this?" And find out the that "commitment" might come with a footnote that says, "But only if you're healthy. If you get injured, we'll delete your keycard from the system and send you into exile. We don't want to look at you until you can help us beat NC State, Gimpy." 

Then this morning, this landed on everybody's virtual front porch. From UNC's General Manager. The guy who hasn't been winning a lot of hearts and minds on Chapel Hill:

As a long time media member and very vocal, outspoken critic of a lot of people in the football world over the past few decades, Lombardi is a man who has never pulled punches. And today is no exception. 

Finding himself in the eye of this aforementioned controversy hurricane, he took to his own website and penned this post, all about … the Ryder Cup:

I'm not joking. It doesn't mention a word about what's happening right now. I won't even quote the blog. There's no reason to. The biggest topic of discussion in the sports world for the past three days has been the ground crumbling beneath his and Belichick's feet, and Lombardi addresses the golf tournament that ended two weeks ago. And tells a story about Bill Parcells messing with Lawrence Taylor is a model for how to motivate people. And then pivots to how Michael Jordan should be the next Ryder Cup captain. Which makes Jordan the only Tar Heel in the piece. 

So that's where we stand as of me posting this. UNC's next game is still eight days away, and it's anyone's guess as to whether the greatest NFL coach in history will be on the sidelines. This could be the worst ending to a great career in the history of sports, or it could be just the low point of what will become his greatest comeback. At this point, you have to be the most shameless Belichick fanboy in the world to think it will be the latter, and not the former. And I for one am sick of being wrong about all of this.