CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — Bill Belichick spent time after his NFL exit talking with college coaches wanting his thoughts on managing new wrinkles at their level that looked a lot like the pros.

The two-minute timeout. The transfer portal as de facto free agency. Collectives generating name, image and likeness (NIL) money for athletes becoming like a payroll. The impending arrival of revenue sharing.

It didn’t take long for Belichick to envision how a college program should look based on his own NFL experience.

“I do think there are a lot of parallels,” Belichick said.

And that’s at least partly why the six-time Super Bowl-winning head coach is now taking over at North Carolina. Years of rapid change at the have only increased the professionalization of college football across the country, with schools adjusting staffing to handle growing duties once seemingly more fitting for a pro team.

UNC just happens to be making the most audacious of those bets, bringing in a 72-year-old who has never coached in college and asking him to build what amounts to a mini-NFL front office. But plenty could follow.

“I really think there’s going to be some of those guys that maybe don’t have a job in the NFL anymore,” Kansas State general manager Clint Brown said, “and now that this is going to be structured in a way where there is a cap that that’s going to be something they’re interested in.”

New course

The rapid changes in college athletics have fueled that, notably with players able to transfer and play right away without sitting out a year and be paid through NIL endorsement opportunities in the last five years. Recruiting is now just as much about bringing in veteran talent through the portal as signing recruits out of high school, mirroring the NFL with free agency and the draft.

And a bigger change looms with revenue sharing, the result of a $2.78 billion legal settlement to antitrust lawsuits.

Specifically, that model will allow the biggest schools to establish a pool of about $21.5 million for athletes in the first year, with a final hearing in that case set for April 2025. It will be up to schools to determine how to distribute that money and in which sports, though football’s role as the revenue driver in college sports likely means a prominent cut everywhere as a direct parallel to a professional team’s salary cap.

Throw all that together, and it’s why coaches are adjusting their staffs like Florida’s Billy Napier interviewing candidates to be the Gators’ general manager.

“We’re built to do it now,” Napier said. “The big thing here is that we’re getting ready to be in a business model. We have a cap. We have contracts. We have negotiation. We have strategy about how we distribute those funds, and it’s a major math puzzle.

“We’re going to build out a front office here in the next couple of months, and it’s to help us manage that huge math problem,” Napier added. “There’ll be a ton of strategy around that. I’m looking forward to it.”

Still, that also explains why Nebraska head coach Matt Rhule, the former head coach of the NFL’s Panthers, said: “This job as a head coach is a juggernaut. There’s way more to do here than I had to do in the NFL.”

Value of a hire

And it explains why the Tar Heels are betting on Belichick to be the right fit for today’s changing climate.

“If I was 16 of 17 years old, a coach who came at you and won many Super Bowls? And he said, ‘Come play for me,’ ” said Giants offensive lineman Joshua Ezeudu, now in his third year out of UNC. “I mean, that’s pretty hard to turn down now, especially in this day and age, he’s telling you to come play for him and he’s offering you some money, too. I mean, you can’t go wrong with that choice.”

The timing worked for UNC with Belichick, who was bypassed for some NFL openings after leaving the Patriots last year and instead spent months taking a closer look at the college game. Those conversations with coaches — some in the Atlantic Coast, Big Ten and Southeastern conferences, he said Thursday — made him understand how the changes in college aligned with his pro experience.

“College kind of came to me this year,” Belichick said. “I didn’t necessarily go and seek it out.”

And his mere presence in Chapel Hill makes a difference, with athletic director Bubba Cunningham saying his “visibility” would likely allow the team to raise prices for advertising such as sponsorships and signage.

Belichick is also hiring Michael Lombardi, a former NFL GM and executive, as the Tar Heels’ GM.

Cunningham also said the plan is for Belichick to continue his appearances on former NFL quarterbacks Peyton and Eli Manning’s “Manningcast” broadcasts during Monday Night Football as well as ESPN’s “The Pat McAfee Show” — all giving the coach the chance to promote himself and the program.

AP writers Tom Canavan in New Jersey, Mark Long in Florida and Eric Olson in Nebraska contributed.