Nick Saban has an idea of what Bill Belichick will have to overcome during his move to the college level.
During an appearance on “The Pat McAfee Show” on Friday, the legendary college football coach dished out his thoughts on Belichick, an eight-time Super Bowl champion, taking the job at the University of North Carolina.
“I’m happy for Bill. I think he probably wanted a new challenge and this will certainly be a new challenge for him,” Saban said during the television hit. “The difference in college is, how do you bring guys to the team? It’s different drafting guys than having to recruit them, because recruiting is like a full-time, relationship-building, 365-days-a-year [effort] in terms of not only evaluating the players that you want but creating relationships with them to get them.”
The process of recruiting players to Chapel Hill, Saban claims, will be the toughest part for the 72-year-old Belichick.
“The biggest thing that will be a challenge for him is the time you have to spend recruiting, making phone calls, talking to parents, all those types of things to get the kind of players that you need … the biggest adjustment for him will be the time spent recruiting,” Saban said.
The two are longtime friends, as then-Browns head coach Belichick hired Saban as his defensive coordinator, his first job in the NFL from 1991-94.
The pair’s more than four-decade-long relationship was documented in the 2019 HBO Sports’ documentary “Belichick & Saban: The Art of Coaching.”
Unlike Belichick, Saban has already spent time as a head coach at both the NFL and college level, running the Dolphins for two seasons in 2005-06 and collecting 28 seasons as a college football head coach, which included seven national titles.
