If you were scripting a Lifetime movie, you couldn’t cast it any better: the 24-year-old former cheerleader and the crusty champion football coach, the oddest of odd couples making a go of it together in a college town. Hell, the taglines write themselves: From New England to new romance! Tar on their heels, love in their hearts! He’s got six rings, does she only want one?
Bill Belichick is the most fascinating what-if of the college football offseason, and his relationship with Jordon Hudson is a strangely compelling element — in large part because Hudson is theatrically protective of Belichick. She shut down a CBS interviewer’s attempt to delve into their story during an interview about Belichick’s book. She’s tried to put PR distance between Belichick and his defensive coordinator … who happens to be Belichick’s son, Steve. She’s asked to be included on all work-related emails. She was a striking and highly visible presence at North Carolina’s spring game:
None of this is wrong or even improper, but — despite what Hudson wants to believe — it’s all newsworthy, given North Carolina’s all-in gamble that Belichick can return (bring?) Tar Heel football to relevance.
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Maybe this is giving North Carolina officials and boosters pause, maybe it’s not. Maybe this will all be worth the publicity headaches, maybe it won’t. This much is certain: Belichick and Hudson are running the America-in-2025 publicity playbook the way Tom Brady used to run the Patriots offense.
Consciously or not, Belichick and Hudson are following the example Deion Sanders laid down in 2023 when he took over as head coach at Colorado: Stand tall in the center of the chaos you create, and let the noise swirl all around you. It doesn’t matter what they’re saying about you; what matters is they’re talking about you.
Belichick doesn’t have the force of personality that Sanders does; the emotional spectrum of Belichick’s public persona ranges from “surly” to “grumpy.” But Belichick’s coaching acumen is indisputable, his achievements virtually unmatched. The one guy in the college ranks who could go toe-to-toe with his record is now commenting on College GameDay and acting in insurance commercials with, yes, Coach Prime. (Time is a flat circle.)
But coaching skills alone aren’t nearly enough to win in the college game. In the NFL, Belichick had control of his roster; he could (and did) sign and cut players on a whim. In college, the roster, in effect, controls the coach — if, say, the entire Ohio State football team decided to transfer in protest of Ryan Day, well, Day would soon follow it out of Columbus.
Bill Belichick and girlfriend Jordon Hudson look on during the first half of the North Carolina Tar Heels and Duke Blue Devils game at the Dean E. Smith Center on March 8, 2025. (Photo by Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images)
(Jared C. Tilton via Getty Images)
That puts today’s college football coaches in a position that’s both massively powerful and intensely vulnerable. While coaches are the face of their programs and the toast of their college towns, they’re also at the mercy of the transfer portal. Where Belichick knew that his Patriots would be in uniform as long as their contracts allowed or he still wanted them there, whichever ended first, his Tar Heels will be in Carolina blue as long as they want to stay.
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That means Belichick is in the position of selling the Tar Heel Way every year, to every player. His pedigree doesn’t mean much to players who were still years from being born when Tom Brady replaced Drew Bledsoe. The Patriots’ Super Bowl wins may as well be campfire legends to present-day players. In college, the rule isn’t What have you done for me lately?, it’s What have you done for me today?
If you’re a coach in 2025, you can take to your weekly radio show and bemoan the sport’s current state of play, and you’d find plenty of colleagues agreeing with you. Or you could take a different tack and steer into the wind.
Belichick, via Hudson, is speaking the language of the NIL-era college player: more attention equals more money. Come to North Carolina, the implicit pitch goes, and you’ll have a whole lot more eyeballs on you than at NC State or Wake Forest.
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It’s a high-stakes gamble, but a high-upside one, too, as Sanders has demonstrated at Colorado. Coach Prime persuaded the No. 1 prospect in the country — fella by the name of Travis Hunter — to join him at Jackson St. He then brought him to Boulder and put him on the path to a Heisman and a No. 2 pick in the NFL Draft. After a rocky first season, the Buffaloes went 9-4 — 7-2 in the Big 12 — and finished the season ranked 25th just two years after going 1-11.
If North Carolina has the patience to let the Belichick and Hudson show play out, the rewards for the school could be immense — victories, prestige, respect, and eventually maybe even a CFP berth. And that might even be enough to get a smile out of the grumpy old coach.
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