JUST IMAGINE THAT HOODED SCOWL AT A DECEMBER BOWL GAME
The home visits would astonish. No, mom, he's not a vagrant. That's the coach. The one that was supposed to come by today. No, he's not a mendicant priest, either. He's the greatest coach of a generation even if he's wearing horrifying cutoff sweatshorts and sporting a heinous dickprint while sitting on our couch and eating meatloaf with his hands. He's eating with his hands because he forgot our society and abandoned it to achieve monastic football perfection, and thus forgot all things unrelated to the game.
He would like more; that's what it means when he slams his bowl against the wall.
It's not a sign of disrespect if he has forgotten all courtesy, mom---it's what happens when you replace that part of the brain with exotic blitz schemes and the phone numbers of lonely Harvard Square divorcees. He's going to sleep here tonight, okay? He's very tired, and he says there's a spot right under the dryer vent outside that looks like it'll do. There's like, a zillion giant nugget rings on the table that look like Super Bowl rings. He says we can pawn them because gold is one of the rarest elements in the galaxy, and he wouldn't cherish something this bastard of a universe would consider precious.
If he wins, he will flood college football with his lesser flunkies. Romeo Crennel, you get that South Carolina job. Eric Mangini, welcome to UVA. (Eric Mangini would SO end up coaching at UVA.) Jim Schwartz, you're all over that damn Michigan State job when Mark Dantonio moves on. Josh McDaniels was a candidate for the Florida job this offseason, and that wasn't even the realm of sports fantasy, where you'd have to make up a character insane enough to hire him simply because he'd coached with Bill Belichick! Because surely that person doesn't exist, and isn't in charge of a major athletic department! Never!
This would be nothing but good news for you if Belichick were your coach, because he would lose very few games if he salted his own division with them.
He will lose a game to someone 1/10th as smart as he is. Not to say that he hasn't already done this: granted that the average IQ of a coach stays pretty constant over football in general, the shakeout of a schedule ensures that once in a while in the grind of a season there will be a hiccup against a very dumb opponent.
Example! Bill Belichick lost a football game against Chan Gailey once. The NFL admits it happened and everything.
Mark Richt never even did that, Bill, and he lost to a Will Muschamp-coached Florida team this past year. Belichick is also 5-4 lifetime against Dave Wannstedt as a head coach. He's more than ready to run off nearly perfect seasons marred with a loss to a Terry Bowden Akron team, or maybe a disastrous noon home game against Houston Nutt. (Coaching Auburn, of course, because of the Inevitable Houston Nutt Coaches Every SEC West Team Eventually Theorem.)
He can cheat to his heart's content. Here's the trick: there is no shield to protect here. Putting Belichick in the fence-free environment of college football would be dropping a hungry jackal in the heart of a lamb orphanage. It's sooo much easier to pull shady shit like taping opponent practices and fucking with footballs in college, too. By the time the NCAA starts an investigation, you've already had a three month head start to pay off all the witnesses. If you don't cooperate with an NFL investigation, you can get fired. If you don't cooperate with an NCAA investigation, you can get a plaque at the next booster club luncheon.
The man cannot pretend to care. The NFL works for Bill Belichick because he only has two modes - coaching a game that matters, or preparing for coaching a game that matters. If Bill Belichick had been on the sidelines when Bane blew up half the field, his postgame response would have been "we're just focused on preparing for Sub Diego." So now imagine Bill Belichick forced to go through all the press conferences and events associated with a non-championship bowl game. You think the man won't show up to the Russell Athletic Bowl team dinner with a sleeping mask and Tevas?
Watching the media reaction would be the bworst experience imaginable. Oh, just imagine the hoary brows of the New England/NFL Industrial Complex vamping for this, just tripping all over their pleated Haggars to praise BILL BELICHICK BRINGING THE PATRIOT WAY TO COLLEGE FOOTBALL AND TEACHING THESE BOASTFUL CHILDREN WHAT'S WHAT. A season of recruiting might have turned up a crop of three stars, but HE WINS WITH THREE STAR PLAYERS BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT GEORGE WASHINGTON WOULD HAVE DONE OH GOD I'M CLIMAXING.
Dan Shaughnessy would throw up that "Belichick was nothing without Tom Brady" column before he even knew what he was doing. He'd just chuck it up like a hairball.