At UNC, Bill Belichick has used more "live" work than he'd ever seen in the NFL

There are very real differences between college football and NFL football. As North Carolina coach Bill Belichick is experiencing during his first college training camp, after 50 years in pro football.

“We’ve done a lot more live work here than than we ever did in the NFL, at any team I was ever on,” Belichick told reporters on Wednesday. “So that part of it’s been actually an interesting thing to see, you know, some of the coaches that are on our staff that have had a lot of college experience have talked about the necessity to do that. Again, obviously, without preseason games it’s, you know, we do need to do it, we’ve done it.

“And so it’s been good, the intensity’s been good, the competitiveness has been good, and I think, you know, we’ve really emphasized trying to practice — learn how to practice and practice very competitively, but at the same time taking safety into account, knowing that we’ve got to take care of our teammates and the players have done a really good job of adapting with that. We really haven’t had too many issues, very few injuries to deal with, and even though we’ve had quite a bit of contact in our padded days. I think that part’s been really, really good. The amount of contact that we’ve had with very few guys, you know, losing any plane time at all because of it has been good.”

The live work will likely continue into the season, because there are no real guardrails or limitations to the intensity of any practice.

That’s one of the reasons why most college football coaches will aggressively resist a union of college players. Without a union, there’s no entity that can secure the kind of restrictions that the NFL Players Association has obtained for pro players.

At the college level, coaches can coach how they see fit — subject to basic time limits, once the 20-hours-per-week rule activates. Within those 20 hours, however, the coaches can have padded practices featuring full, tackling-to-the-ground contact.

So they do. And that will continue until the players find a way to band together to secure greater rights. Or, as the case may be, any rights.

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