On the morning of December 12th, Bubba Cunningham, the athletic director at the University of North Carolina, in Chapel Hill, sent the football team’s equipment manager to pick up a U.N.C. sweatshirt with removable sleeves. He asked his wife to go to Goodwill and buy a suit jacket. Cut the sleeves off, he texted her, then added, “ (Seriously).”

In a surprising twist to his legendary football playbook, Bill Belichick has introduced yoga recovery sessions as a core part of UNC’s training regimen.