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Photo: Erick W. Rasco/Sports Illustrated/Getty Images

It has been long forgotten, what with the 10 million news events between now and then, but do you remember what Donald Trump’s closing message was the night before Election Day 2016? It was not about Hillary Clinton, or Billy Bush, or whatever madness was going on at the time that seems downright pedestrian now. Donald Trump’s closing-night message in 2016 as he spoke in New Hampshire was: Bill Belichick wants me to win.

In the evening’s closing remarks, Trump simply took an email he claimed Belichick had sent him and read it aloud:

Congratulations on a tremendous campaign. You have dealt with an unbelievable slanted and negative media, and have come out beautifully – beautifully. You’ve proved to be the ultimate competitor and fighter. Your leadership is amazing. I have always had tremendous respect for you, but the toughness and perseverance you have displayed over the past year is remarkable. Hopefully tomorrow’s election results will give the opportunity to make America great again. Best wishes for great results tomorrow. Bill.

The presumption at the time was that Trump had simply made it all up. Not only did the email match Trump’s tone almost exactly, but it wasn’t like Belichick to weigh in on politics — or much of anything.The Patriots coach was notoriously focused solely on football and well known for his grouchiness if you dared bring up anything else. When it turned out that, yep, Belichick had really sent that email, people were shocked, not least of all Patriots players, some of whom said they felt “betrayed.” “When the letter came out, I felt kind of like we got kind of bamboozled,” Patriots cornerback Devin McCourty would later say. “Bill always said things like, ‘We don’t have to be in the media talking about these different things.’ I had some opinions I might have wanted to share, but out of respect to the team, I didn’t.” It just didn’t seem like something Belichick would ever do.

Nine years later, it’s considerably less surprising, and not just because Belichick is so open in his support for Trump these days that he did a podcast with him on the eve of the last Election Day. In 2016, Belichick was on top of the world, clear of the Deflategate scandal and about to win his fifth Super Bowl, the most of any coach in NFL history. (He’d win one more two years later.) Now? Belichick is not just gone from the NFL entirely, he’s the laughingstock of college football, a man whose North Carolina team got destroyed on national television in his debut (with Michael Jordan in attendance, averting his eyes) and who is perhaps better known at this point for his influencer (and lobster lobbyist) girlfriend, Jordon Hudson, who is 49 years his junior. It’s no longer the least bit surprising that Belichick is an avid Trump supporter. An old white man with delusions of grandeur who’s mucking everything up at his job and has a predilection for much younger women? How is he not in the Cabinet?

Belichick Schadenfreude has been a long time coming; even before he stuck his nose into politics, he was perhaps the most hated man in football. That he is struggling at a level below the NFL is one of the more delicious aspects of this pile-on. It’s particularly sweet because he and his team were so confident they would show up and just start wrecking the sport, with Michael Lombardi, North Carolina’s general manager and one of Belichick’s longtime consiglieres, saying he thought of the Tar Heels as “the 33rd [NFL] team.”

Why isn’t Belichick coaching one of the actual 32? It’s because no one in the NFL wanted him after he left the Patriots. Belichick interviewed for several jobs last year and was universally rejected, in large part because he demanded too much control. (Not to mention his record as Patriots coach got a lot worse once Tom Brady wasn’t his quarterback.) “Most team owners are loath to grant a single person as much power as Belichick wielded in New England, even with his career results,” wrote Don Van Natta Jr., Seth Wickersham, and Jeremy Fowler in ESPN last year. “Owners now value collaboration and cooperation among football operations, the coaching staff and other team executives. Most reject the fear and leverage that fueled New England’s dynasty. This time around, what made Bill Belichick great limited his options.”

That left college football. And for that the sport has become professionalized in an age of NIL and unlimited transfers and free-agent quarterbacks — it’s turning into Minor League NFL — one fundamental thing about college football has not changed: The coaches are the stars. They have all the power, they have all the control, they are the kings of all that they survey. Belichick had gotten very used to that power in New England, and it’s difficult to say he hadn’t earned it, with the six Super Bowl rings and all. But again, when his teams began to struggle after Tom Brady left for Tampa Bay (and ultimately retired), leading to the Patriots split, he looked around and saw the league had shifted around him — and away from him. The power in the NFL, like with every professional sports league now, is with the front offices. Bill Parcells, Belichick’s mentor and rival, strove to be both general manager and coach of his teams, saying, “If they want you to cook the dinner, at least they ought to let you shop for some of the groceries”: He wanted to coach the team and pick the players. But no NFL team works like this anymore. There was no team that would allow Belichick to do it.

But that’s what college football is: one single head coach in charge of everything. (It’s why you see more close-ups of Georgia coach Kirby Smart during a televised game than you do most of his players.) Now, there are signs that college football, as it becomes more professionalized, may evolve as the years go along, but Belichick is 73 years old: He won’t have to worry about that. (That’s more of an issue for Jordon Hudson, I guess.) He’s in charge now. What Belichick wanted — more than money, even more than winning — was power.

It’s far too early to judge Belichick’s college career a failure. He’s only two games in, for crying out loud. Maybe he’ll be able to wield his newfound control as successfully in Chapel Hill as he did in Foxboro, and maybe he won’t. But that’s why he’s there.

It makes his affinity with Trump even more logical. Belichick, one suspects, is a Trump supporter first because he agrees with his politics, whatever Trump’s politics even are anymore. But what aligns him most with the President temperamentally has always been their shared sense that they — and only they — should be in charge of everything. That kind of megalomania, unfortunately for Belichick, just isn’t an option anymore. Unfortunately, it still is for his friend in Washington.

Why Bill Belichick Is Slumming It As a College Coach

Why Bill Belichick Is Slumming It As a College Coach