Beli-chucked

Hey, didja hear the one about Bill Belichick?

Knock-knock.

Who's there?

Bill Belichick.

Bill Belichick who?

Bill Belichick who is the Dean Wormer of college football.

Because Chapel Hill was ready to get down last night, ready to par-tay, because Belichick was making his college football coaching debut and every Tar Heel who was any Tar Heel was there. Roy Williams was there. Mia Hamm was there. Hey, look, it's Lawrence Taylor! And MJ! And a bunch of guys who didn't even go to North Carolina, the University of!

It was gonna be a celebration, a coronation, a big ol' powder blue lord-it-over-you-ification. Prime-time game. Labor Day evening. ESPN, which was on the Full Hype  setting, constantly rolling out graphics about all the Super Bowls Bill Belichick had won with the Patriots, and all the division titles and all the games he'd won, and OMG, look, the Tar Heels marched right down the field and scored on Bill Belichick's very first possession!

And then ...

And then, Bill Belichick went all Dean Wormer on them.

Which is to say, no more fun of any kind.

Not long after Belichick, er, North Carolina scored on its first possession, see, here came Josh Hoover and TCU. On their second possession the Horned Frogs went 58 yards in just six plays, and Hoover dropped a throw right down the bucket to Jordan Dwyer for six, and the air went out of everything. Hoover kept completing passes and transfer running back Kevorian Barnes kept punching holes in the Tar Heels' D, and over on the sideline, ESPN kept cutting to Belichick with his brow all knit up, looking down at his play sheet as if it were written in Klingon.

Meanwhile, TCU scored to go up 14-7.  And then, as ESPN comically kept running Belichick graphics, the Horned Frogs turned hanging curve from North Carolina quarterback Gio Lopez  into a pick six to go up 20-7. And then Barnes opened the second half with a jaunt down the sideline that seemed to cross three state lines on the way to the end zone, and TCU kept scoring, and suddenly the Horned Frogs had reeled off 41 straight points and the Belichick Tar Heels looked like just another cruddy college team the couldn't stop anyone and couldn't move the football.

Final score: TCU 48, North Carolina 14.

Final stats: Twenty-nine first downs for TCU; 10 for North Carolina. Five-hundred forty-two total yards for TCU; 222 for UNC. Hoover was 27-of-36 for 284 yards and two scores. Barnes lugged it 13 times for 113 yards and the cross-country TD, an 8.7-yard per-carry average. The Horned Frogs 7.4 yards per carry as a team.

Which meant Carolina couldn't stop the run or the pass, and it couldn't run the football, either. Offensive coordinator Freddie Kitchens' old-school plan to establish the run went kablooey as soon as TCU got the Tar Heels down, and the plan wasn't such a great one anyway.  Not when you get no push up front and average a barely-visible 1.8 yards per carry.

Meanwhile, ESPN was telling us Belichick's 13-man coaching staff includes seven assistants with extensive NFL coaching or playing experience, including Kitchens and Belichick's sons, Steve and Brian.

Maybe they shoulda got more college guys.

The college game ain't the pro game, after all, and at least now Belichick knows that. There is less you control, because you're dealing not with grown professionals but with 19-, 20-, 21-year-old college kids who occasionally do goofy college-kid stuff. Also there is the utterly ungovernable transfer portal to deal with. Also Gio Lopez and his (at least last night) more competent backup, Max Johnson, are not, you know, Tom Brady.

Who was not Tom Brady, either, when he was a college backup at Michigan.

The good news?

At least Belichick doesn't get the Chiefs or the Ravens next week. He gets Charlotte, which went 5-7 last season and lost 38-20 to the Tar Heels. Then he gets Richmond. Then he gets Central Florida.

Lot less likely he gets Beli-chucked in those three. Lot more likely he'll be 3-1 heading into the showdown with No. 4 Clemson.

In the words: Hang onto that hype.