With conference spring meetings now in the rearview mirror, the University of North Carolina’s new head football coach Bill Belichick can get back to the task at hand: preparing his team for the upcoming season. The legendary former New England Patriots coach should be focusing on how he can turn what has been a fairly inconsistent ACC outfit into a nationally dominant squad.
But that’s not what the media wants to ask him about. Instead of questions about who will start at quarterback or how Belichick is adjusting to life in the NCAA, his relationship with 24-year-old former cheerleader Jordon Hudson has taken center stage. And that’s a bit of problem — both for Belichick and for the Tar Heels.
Instead of questions about who will start at quarterback or how Belichick is adjusting to life in the NCAA, his relationship with 24-year-old former cheerleader Jordon Hudson has taken center stage.
When Belichick became a free agent after the conclusion of the 2023 NFL regular season, it seemed like just a matter of time before somebody took a chance on a coach with the second-most wins in the history of the NFL. Belichick interviewed with the Atlanta Falcons twice in his first offseason but nothing came of it. And as the days turned into weeks and the weeks turned into months, the same pundits who thought Belichick would be hired started to wonder why he wasn’t being courted for many of those same jobs.
Did Belichick want too much control? Was he too old to start somewhere new? Was his success just a product of GOAT quarterback Tom Brady? Then North Carolina announced it had offered Belichick a five-year contract worth $10 million a year (although only three years are guaranteed). And with a new plan in place, Belichick finished up his book on “The Art of Winning” and prepared to move to North Carolina.
That book project, in some ways, has been his undoing. Because books mean book tours. And Belichick’s book tour has offered an intriguing look at the role his girlfriend seems to be playing in his new life.
To be clear, this relationship is not a secret. And indeed, the relatively private Belichick has opened up about his private life recently — at least on social media. But during a recent CBS “Sunday Morning” interview about his book, he was asked specifically about how he had met Hudson, whom he calls “his muse” in “The Art of Winning.” Hudson, as it so happens, was on the CBS set and shut down the question from the proverbial sidelines. It was an incredibly awkward TV moment that immediately went viral.
It also raised eyebrows in the sports media world and set off a new round of gossip about how exactly Hudson is involved in Belichick’s professional life. Hudson’s email signature lists her as the “Chief Operating Officer of Belichick Productions,” and she has positioned herself as “the de facto manager of his personal brand,” according to a Washington Post feature on the couple.
Athletic Director Bubba Cunningham denied a report that the UNC athletic department had asked Hudson to keep away from campus football facilities. For his part, Belichick said Tuesday that Hudson “doesn’t have anything to do with UNC football.”
We shall see if any of this can calm the storm of speculation.
Belichick is facing sky-high expectations and a complex college landscape where star athletes expect to get paid.
North Carolina plays its first game of the 2025 season against TCU on Sept. 1. We all assume that Belichick will be the head coach for the team when they take the field. He has an opt-out in his contract that states he must pay back the school $10 million if he leaves prior to June 1. If he leaves after June 1, that buyout drops to a mere $1 million. But in any case, that seems unlikely. The summer months in college football tend to be fairly quiet. And everyone — except maybe Belichick’s publisher — has many reasons to try to make this narrative go away.
Because truthfully, Belichick can hardly afford more distractions. A largely mediocre coach with the Browns prior to teaming up with Brady, Belichick is facing sky-high expectations and a complex college landscape where star athletes expect to get paid — and have no qualms about transferring elsewhere if they don’t. Meanwhile, UNC hasn’t won a conference championship in four decades.
Belichick knows how fickle the sports world is. For better or for worse, you can get away with almost anything if you keep winning. His record, and what he does to revive an inconsistent Tar Heels program, will likely determine how this next chapter impacts a legacy that has already been largely written. No relationship, no matter how headline-grabbing, is bound to change that. Probably.