Ever since former New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick’s name started floating around Chapel Hill during Bubba Cunningham’s search for a replacement for Mack Brown, there’s been a lot of curiosity about what having him coaching college football actually looks like. Does what made him a Super Bowl winning coach translate well to college? How does recruiting go? Is he the perfect fit for modern day college football given the fact that NIL/the transfer portal makes the game closer to the NFL game than ever? We all have had so many questions, but there’s one question that I don’t think any of us were asking right at the beginning, which was: “How much control would Bill Belichick’s girlfriend have over not only him, but the Carolina football program?”
Yes, you read that correctly, and yes, that is a legitimate concern now.
Look, I refuse to get into the whole backstory of what we’re dealing with, but if you need to get caught up, please direct your attention to Google for more information. For the sake of the current issue that we’re dealing with, however, let me start here: when Belichick accepted the Carolina head coaching job, his girlfriend, Jordon Hudson, requested that she be CC’d on certain e-mails regarding the program. This alone seemed weird, but also, Belichick is a weird guy. There was no telling why she requested this, but as a little more information trickled out, it started to seem like she wanted to act as a bit of a PR rep for her boyfriend.
Fast forward to this past Sunday, and Belichick showed up to CBS Sunday Morning for an interview, and things turned awkward/unhinged pretty fast. Again, I won’t go into detail, but you can click this link to get an idea of how bad things got. The revelation from this interview, however, is that we now know that Hudson’s desire to be copied on e-mails isn’t without reason: it’s now understood that she is referring to herself as “chief operating officer” of “Belichick Productions” on her e-mail signatures.
Alright. Yup. We have a problem now, and UNC seems to think so as well.
Awful Announcing reported that TMZ gathered from an anonymous source close to the program that there is a “growing sense” that Hudson’s involvement “could become a problem.” From the information that was gathered, it sounds like they plan to have a conversation with the couple about Hudson’s involvement with day-to-day operations of the program. This, of course, is where the situation becomes hard to ignore: if UNC higher ups have acknowledged that your girlfriend has too much involvement with day-to-day operations, then something is not only wrong, it’s dysfunctional. Let’s forget the girlfriend element of this for a moment: can someone tell me the last time someone’s PR/communications specialist/agent became so involved with a program that the school had to step in and tell them to knock it off?
I’ve tried very hard to mind my business and hope that Hudson just fades into the background of things and that, once September rolls around, we can just focus on the product on the field instead of TMZ-worthy content. The problem, though, is that the TMZ content has essentially become 90% of Belichick’s stay in Chapel Hill, and one has to wonder if the on-the-field product starts to overlap with what’s happening off the field. More importantly, we may have to start wondering what the next move is for UNC if they can’t reel in what is happening. Perhaps everything will be fine in the long run, but the COO of Belichick Productions may look more and more like Yoko Ono if things continue to play out how they have so far.
