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Bill Belichick paced the sideline with his arms crossed and brows furrowed as if it were still late November in Foxborough. Across the way, Ron Rivera — now, from the suite level — surveyed his team. 

Only this wasn’t the NFL in primetime on a Sunday. This was Memorial Stadium in Berkeley on a Friday night, two years and two lifetimes removed from their last meeting.

The pair’s previous encounter, on the sidelines at Gillette Stadium during a 2023 season that marked a career low for both, was now long behind them. NFL opportunities had largely run dry for the longtime coaches. A return to college wasn’t just a change of scenery — it was a push to recapture what once was. 

Halfway into their rookie seasons on the collegiate stage, it’s clear redemption looks different for each. 

For Rivera, a two-time NFL Coach of the Year and proud Cal alum, he’s found purpose in reviving the faded tradition of Cal football.

For Belichick, owner of eight Super Bowl rings, it’s about reviving the legend of Bill Belichick.

The two have taken starkly different approaches to their comebacks. One leans into deep university ties; the other has almost none. One is a general manager, scheming for a longer-term strategy around the future of an entire program. The other is still a head coach, focused narrowly on the X’s and O’s, and now clinging to the hot seat.

Perhaps the most telling contrast lies in how they view the fundamental difference between college football, a rapidly professionalizing game, and the NFL. Rivera understands it, embraces it. The other, in what appears to be stubbornness and arrogance from the outside looking in, does not. 

But when the Bears and Tar Heels took the field on Friday night, despite the contrasting styles of Rivera and Belichick, the teams appeared evenly matched. As freshman quarterback Jaron-Keawe Sagapolutele’s offense struggled to convert several opportunities, Cal’s defense allowed the team to escape its home turf with a narrow 21-18 win. 

Two stellar defensive plays — one on Carolina’s very first possession, the other on its very last possession — sandwiched some uninspiring play from the Bears. A fumble forced and recovery by Cal on UNC’s first drive of the game placed Sagapolutele on UNC’s 18-yard line. Four quick plays later, a quarterback keeper put Cal up 7-0.

The second, and decisive, moment came at the goal line with under four minutes to play. Cal cornerback Paco Austin stripped the ball from Nathan Leacock just a stride short of the end zone for what would have been a go-ahead UNC touchdown. 

Postgame, Belichick wore the same expression he has all season (and much of his life): hangdog. 

Last winter, he parachuted into Chapel Hill with practically no connection to the program (his dad was an assistant coach from 1953-1955), and a five-year, $50 million deal in hand to become the highest-paid public employee in the state of North Carolina. He brought a playbook of control and precision, one that’s battle-tested through three decades in the NFL, tucked under one arm. Working in tandem with UNC general manager Mike Lombardi, the two vowed to run their program as “the 33rd” NFL franchise. 

“The process will eventually produce the results that we want to produce, like they have everywhere else I’ve been,” Belichick said at a press conference Monday — this after firmly denying what he called “categorically false” rumors that he was seeking a buyout just five games into his first season.

After Belichick was hired at UNC last winter, Rivera, who was already in preliminary talks with UC Berkeley Chancellor Rich Lyons about a potential role, teased his return to his alma mater in a nod to the 73-year-old NFL coaching veteran of nearly 30 years: “Coach Belichick made going back to school cool.” Though he, at one point, imagined taking the reins at Cal as head coach, Rivera now sees a clear divide — acknowledging the coaching responsibilities on the NFL and college football stage as “vastly different.” 

And so, Rivera found a better place for himself and his Cal pride in the Bears’ administrative office. He’s now dedicating his hours to elevating the football program by lightening the load on nine-year head coach Justin Wilcox, strengthening alumni and community engagement, and generating financial support for both the football program and Cal Athletics as a whole. 

“I’m not trying to eclipse anyone else around here,” Rivera said. “I’m just trying to make sure that what we have is the opportunity to be viable, to continue, and be a better program that can be measurable to our academic side as a university.” 

Community building and player retention top Rivera’s list of tasks these days. Even as Sagapolutele endures growing pains through his freshman season, Rivera knows that building around the Bears’ quarterback would mean everything to the players that line up beside him and the fans that proudly back him.

“We have a quarterback that a lot of people know, so retention, and his retention, is very important to us,” Rivera said.  

While Rivera focuses on packaging NIL marketing deals and contributing to on-campus recruiting, Belichick’s — and Lombardi’s, too, for that matter — inexperience with college recruiting, both through the high school ranks and in the transfer portal, quickly showed. Taking over UNC days into December’s portal window, the two scrambled to overhaul the working roster, as nearly 50 players deserted the program and 70 newcomers arrived. After a 2-4 start, struggling against Power 4 competition, the Tar Heels are now on pace to miss a bowl game for the first time since 2018. 

Yet it’s not just the mounting missteps on the field and inside the program that have dragged Belichick’s once-enticing rebuild into full-blown flop territory. The spectacle and headlines have turned the Tar Heels into college football’s punchline in 2025. 

An undoubted, and nonstop, flashpoint in the frenzy surrounding his girlfriend, Jordon Hudson — 49 years his junior — whose presence around the program and on the UNC sideline has created a media circus from the start. In May, Pablo Torre reported that Hudson had been operating as Belichick’s manager. The drama has only grown after she interrupted a CBS Sunday Morning interview, and after a pre-planned Hulu docuseries that chronicled the UNC program under Belichick was scrapped midseason. 

Just last week, months after Belichick’s chaotic entry into the halls at UNC, Lombardi finally addressed the season’s disappointment in a bizarre letter to program supporters, as published by Football Scoop. In the note, he urged patience and for fans to trust the process, referring back to Belichick’s early struggles in the NFL before his glory alongside Tom Brady. 

As for Rivera, with Belichick’s team now vanquished — not beautifully, but nonetheless — a 5-2 start to the season is the best Cal has seen under Wilcox. And Rivera intends to keep it rolling. He is not only committed to the program’s goal of winning nine games for the first time in decades, but to the development of football players and the long-term strength of the university itself. Under his watch, he sees football as a catalyst, a platform to elevate the entire institution, from the athletic department to academics.

“This is not just about football,” Rivera said. “This is about the athletic department, and more important, it’s about the university. We can take pressure off the university. We can also create and generate more funds to help the athletic department. We can also help to raise Cal’s visibility academically.”