College football’s 2026 season begins today in Dublin with one of the sport’s most recognizable coaches trying to put a difficult first year behind him. Bill Belichick begins his second season at North Carolina against TCU in the Aer Lingus College Football Classic. The matchup is a familiar one. TCU was also Belichick’s first opponent as a college head coach last September, and the result set the tone for a disappointing season in Chapel Hill. North Carolina opened that game with an 83-yard touchdown drive, then gave up 41 unanswered points in a 48-14 loss.
TCU is favored again. The Horned Frogs were listed around 8.5-point favorites as of Saturday morning, with North Carolina at roughly +271 on the moneyline. After removing the sportsbook margin, those prices imply about a 26% chance of a UNC victory. Recent history in Dublin gives North Carolina at least one interesting reason for optimism. Underdogs have won three of the four season-opening games played there since 2022, even though the betting market expected fewer than one underdog victory across those four games.
Dublin Has Been Unusually Kind To Underdogs
The Aer Lingus College Football Classic has become a regular part of college football’s opening weekend. Since 2022, each season has begun with a game in Dublin.
In 2022, Nebraska entered its game against Northwestern as an 11-point favorite. Northwestern was approximately +350 on the moneyline, which translated to about a 21% chance of winning after adjusting for the sportsbook margin Northwestern won 31-28.
Notre Dame produced the only favorite victory in the current run in 2023. The Fighting Irish were 20.5-point favorites over Navy and won 42-3. Navy was priced around +860 on the moneyline and had only about a 10% implied chance of winning.
A year later, No. 10 Florida State arrived in Dublin as a 10.5-point favorite over Georgia Tech. The Yellow Jackets were around +342 to win outright and had an implied win probability of roughly 22%. Georgia Tech won 24-21 on a 44-yard field goal as time expired.
Iowa State continued the run last season. Kansas State was favored by 3.5 points, while Iowa State was approximately +138 on the moneyline. The Cyclones won 24-21.
Using the available moneylines for both teams and removing the sportsbook margin gives approximate pregame win probabilities of 21.3% for Northwestern, 10.0% for Navy, 21.6% for Georgia Tech and 40.4% for Iowa State. Those probabilities add up to 0.93 expected underdog victories across the four games compared to the actual number of three. The probability of at least three underdogs winning was about 3.5%.
It is an interesting result, although the sample is far too small to support a meaningful “Dublin effect.” There have only been four games in the current run, and one of the three upsets was relatively modest. (Iowa State entered last year’s game against Kansas State with roughly a 40% chance of winning.)
The more interesting question is whether Dublin amplifies the uncertainty that already exists at the beginning of a college football season. International games add several unusual variables. Teams cross multiple time zones, adjust practice and sleep schedules and play at a neutral site far from their normal routines.
There is also a broader forecasting problem. Week 0 takes place before analysts, sportsbooks and statistical models have any current-season performance data. Team strength has to be estimated from last year’s results, returning production, transfers, recruiting, and coaching changes. That has become increasingly difficult in the transfer portal era, when rosters can change substantially from one season to the next. For now, the sample only tells us that favorites in Dublin have performed considerably worse than the betting market expected.
What This Means For UNC
North Carolina’s current moneyline implies roughly a 26% chance of beating TCU. Dublin underdogs have won 75% of the past four openers, but four games are nowhere near enough to justify replacing the market estimate with that historical rate. A Bayesian interpretation would give some weight to the recent Dublin results while heavily shrinking the effect because of the small sample.
The practical conclusion is simpler: UNC remains a clear underdog, but there is more uncertainty around an opening-week game like this than the point spread alone may suggest.
There are football reasons for that uncertainty as well. TCU went 9-4 last season but enters 2026 with a new starting quarterback, Harvard transfer Jaden Craig. North Carolina has overhauled its offense and brought in Bobby Petrino as offensive coordinator for Belichick’s second season. Both programs have changed enough that last year’s 48-14 result is an imperfect guide to Saturday’s matchup.
A 26% win probability sounds low because it is low. It also means UNC should win roughly one out of every four comparable games. By comparison, Northwestern entered Dublin in 2022 with an estimated win probability just above 20% and beat Nebraska. Georgia Tech had a similar chance against Florida State in 2024 and won. Neither result required the market to be wildly wrong. Low-probability outcomes are supposed to happen.
For Belichick, the significance would go well beyond extending an unusual statistical trend. A win over the team that embarrassed UNC in his debut would give his second season a very different opening and provide the first meaningful evidence that the program is moving in the right direction. If Dublin has any luck left for underdogs, Belichick could certainly use some.