Ravens coach John Harbaugh faced Bill Belichick’s New England Patriots 12 times over their long, often heated battle for AFC supremacy. Now he’s eager to see what Belichick might do in college.

Belichick, who won an NFL-record six Super Bowl titles with the Patriots over two-plus decades in New England, was introduced as North Carolina’s head coach Thursday. The hiring ended Belichick’s nearly yearlong stint out of coaching, a period filled with media appearances and even a May cameo in Owings Mills, where he was a guest speaker at the launch of the Harbaugh Coaching Academy. Harbaugh said then that he was “blown away” by Belichick’s appearance.

“I’m really happy for Coach,” Harbaugh said Friday of Belichick, who grew up in Annapolis. “I think it’s a really cool thing. I texted him. I haven’t heard back yet. Gave him a congrats — he’s a little bit busy. ... I saw where he said it’s something he’s always dreamed of, which is really something. To read that, it’s like, ‘He’s won how many Super Bowls?’ He’s got all those rings. Arguably the greatest NFL coach in the history of the game — certainly the most successful. And to say, ‘I always dreamed of this,’ that speaks to him. That says something. That’s something he’s always thought about wanting to do; now he gets a chance to do it.

“He’ll be amazing. He’ll do a great job. He’ll have great players. One thing about Coach Belichick: He’s going to have a bunch of guys that like football. He’s going to have a bunch of guys that want to be great, that want to work hard, that think about football, think about football going home, think about football coming in to work. They’re going to have to think about classes a little bit now, too, probably. That’ll be part of it. But, if you’re interested in football and you want to be great at what you do, North Carolina is going to be a destination for those guys.”

Harbaugh, whose brother, Jim, coached Michigan for nine seasons before leaving for the Los Angeles Chargers in January, said there’s not a big difference between coaching at the professional and college levels. John Harbaugh himself spent over a decade as a college assistant, though his time there came long before the transfer portal and name, image and likeness deals had reshaped the sport.

“Coaches coach,” he said. “You can coach at any level. You can coach at high school. There’s great coaches at every level. There are coaches in high school football that could coach in the NFL like that. There are coaches in the NFL that can coach in high school. I think coaching is coaching, pretty much. It’s different challenges, for sure, and schemes and everything are different, but the ability to kind of connect with guys, to put the players first, their best interests at heart, put together a team, build a team — all those things are the same.”