TCU will be in familiar territory when it opens the 2025 college football season. The Horned Frogs are in for a high-profile opener Sept. 1 at North Carolina, and all eyes will be on the opposing sideline when Bill Belichick puts on the headset for the first time with the Tar Heels. It lines up to be the second opener against a marquee first-year coach in three years for Sonny Dykes and the Horned Frogs, who in 2023 were at the center of the college football universe for all the wrong reasons.
Then the reigning College Football Playoff runners-up, the Horned Frogs entered the 2023 opener as massive favorites over Colorado. Shedeur Sanders and Travis Hunter enjoyed an explosive afternoon, though, as they led Deion Sanders to a shootout victory in his first game as an FBS coach.
“Not sure how we pulled that off,” Dykes quipped to ESPN, referencing the 2025 opener against UNC. “It’s called bad scheduling. Hopefully we’ll fare better than we did last time. We didn’t play well last time, but we’ve got a second chance.”
Expectations for Belichick’s foray into college football are all over the board. On one hand, the longtime New England Patriots coach is an eight-time Super Bowl champion who could take UNC to new heights with his unmatched coaching acumen and winning experience. On the other hand, he is entirely new to college football and inherited a program that took steps backward each of the last two seasons.
Where should Bill Belichick rank among college football coaches? A middling newcomer or strategic savant?
John Talty
Despite the off-field drama that largely defined the early months of the Belichick era at UNC, the Tar Heels have palpable momentum under their new coach. The NFL celebrity constructed a colossal recruiting class ahead of his debut college football season with 40 transfers and 29 incoming freshmen set to reshape the roster.
“We’re in the process of trying to look at all those players, identify their strengths and weaknesses, and figure out how to attack the schemes and go play a big game,” Dykes said of the Tar Heels. “That’s the good thing. You can project the two-deep and say, ‘These guys are going to be the starters. You can find the tape of where they were last year and get a quick view of what they’re like. We’ve already begun doing that.”
The clash between the Horned Frogs and Tar Heels is the start of a two-year non-conference series for TCU and UNC. The squads agreed this spring to open the 2026 season against each other, as well, in the annual Aer Lingus College Football Classic in Dublin, Ireland.
Read the full article here