BOSTON – There was an elephant in the room on Friday as North Carolina interim head football coach Freddie Kitchens and team captains took to the dais in the 521 Overlook space on Lansdowne Street, which provided a view of Fenway Park from above its right field bleachers, the east end zone.
This was an elephant who prefers cutoff hoodies, and just so happens to be very familiar with New England.
Media was asked to keep questioning focused on the Fenway Bowl and the players and coaches who earned the opportunity to play against UConn in the historic venue on Saturday. But the hiring of Bill Belichick, arguably the greatest NFL head coach of all time who won six super bowls with the team based 20 miles south, was impossible to ignore. Belichick signed a five-year deal to take over the Tar Heels just three days after the bowl matchup was announced.
And while he won’t be on the sideline calling plays at Fenway, the impact of the 72-year old first-year college coach couldn’t be ignored. Belichick hasn’t been around team practices but he has been communicating daily with Kitchens, who was offered a position to remain on the North Carolina staff, while working the recruiting trail to formulate his first college roster.
Belichick questions were met with Belichickian responses on Friday.
“There’s gonna be buzz, there’s gonna be hype, but as a team, I feel like as a unit behind Coach Kitchens we’re all focused on this game and winning this game. That’s kind of outside noise,” said sophomore starting linebacker Amare Campbell, who was home in Virginia weighing his options in the portal before hearing Belichick’s pitch by phone.
After the call, Campbell said his decision to stay was an easy one.
It went the similarly for a handful of his teammates, including a pair of offensive linemen and a wide receiver, Kobe Paysour. Now North Carolina, which was a six-point underdog when the Fenway Bowl was announced, is a 2.5-point favorite with players looking to impress their new coach.
When UConn arrived for its turn on the dais, about an hour late after wrapping up practice at Harvard, the Huskies didn’t want to talk about Belichick either.
“It’s irrelevant to us,” said UConn coach Jim Mora, also a former NFL head coach. “We can’t control the emotional component of our opponents, so we don’t try to. We try to focus on what we can control, and that’s our preparation, that’s the way we work, that’s our attention to detail, that’s our mindset, that’s the way we go out and perform. As far as I know, Coach Belichick will not be taking the field on Saturday, so it’s irrelevant to our football team.”
Taking in the Fenway experience
Both teams were able to get a lay of the land at Fenway Park on Thursday. They got to tour the stadium, went inside the Green Monster and threw a baseball around on the field.
“Those are just amazing memories,” Mora said, revealing that he’s always been a Red Sox fan and has attended many games at Fenway Park, even bearing witness to a Carl Yaztremski home run when he was a kid. “I know as these (players) go through their life, they’re gonna reflect back on these moments and it’s gonna mean more and more to them as they get older. And I’m sure now that when the Red Sox are on TV, they’ll probably tune in a little bit longer and say to their kids, ‘Hey, I was on the field at Fenway.'”
Valentin Senn, a senior offensive lineman from Austria, said he attended his first baseball game at Fenway Park – “At the Pahk,” he pronounced in his best Boston accent – two summers ago.
“Completely honest, I did not know what baseball was before coming to the United States, I would say skiing and soccer is Austria’s favorite past-time,” he said. “But obviously coming here the first time and just seeing all the fans and the way Boston loves this baseball team, that was very special. All of the tradition, you can definitely feel it in this place.”
UConn will take over the visitor’s clubhouse as its locker room on Saturday, with North Carolina setting up in the Red Sox clubhouse.
Preparing for a different set-up
The way Fenway Park is converted to a football stadium, with one end zone where home plate would be and the other out in right field, both teams will be on the same sideline for the game.
“We’ve put in a lot of work practicing the special situations,” senior defensive lineman Jelani Stafford said. “We put all of our guys on one side of the field like we’ll be… on gameday. And we’ll go through our situations from the hurry-up stuff with the offense, the field goal stuff, the defensive signals, offensive signals, making sure everyone’s in the right position… Because that stuff can lead to a penalty and things of that nature, so we just try to do the best we can to mimic what we do on game day.”
