Belichick’s love life is overshadowing his new job already: Telander

CHICAGO - Yes, there are more important sports stories out there, but more intriguing? Juicier? Don’t think so.

We’re talking about the University of North Carolina’s new football coach, Bill Belichick, and his girlfriend, Jordon Hudson. Belichick, you might know, is 73. Hudson is 24.

He is well-renowned for his tenure with the New England Patriots, where he won six Super Bowls in his 24 seasons as head coach. She is late of the Bridgewater State University cheerleading team and is also a graduate of The New England Hair Academy, a cosmetology school in Malden, Massachusetts.

Besides the 49-year difference in their ages, the seeming incongruity of their career arcs, their clothing choices, their knowledge of zone blitzes, and, well, yes, that almost half-century age difference, there is something else fascinating about this love affair. Not only is the legendarily crusty Belichick enthralled with a perky woman who is 17 years younger than his own daughter, but he seems to be letting Hudson take increasing control of his business and personal life.

North Carolina Tar Heels football head coach Bill Belichick and his girlfriend Jordon Hudson look on during the first half of the game between the North Carolina Tar Heels and the Duke Blue Devils at Dean E. Smith Center on March 08, 2025 in Chapel H (Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images / Getty Images)

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It's been reported that Hudson is copied on many of the coaches university emails and sometimes visits the Tar Heels sideline during practices. She’s all over social media about the pair, having posted photos of him lying on his back on the beach, balancing her on his feet, her arms outstretched like a kid playing airplane with Grandpa, as well as a weirder shot where he’s standing by the surf with a rod and reel in hand and she’s below him, in a skimpy mermaid costume, offset with necklaces and cherry red lipstick, hooked in the mouth like a brunette mackerel.

The caption she attached: "Ouucchhh!!!"

Wild stuff. Especially when you remember her new boyfriend is the guy who was fined $500,000 by the NFL for his role in the Patriots’ "Spygate" scandal and who previously seemed as jolly as a Scrooge clone. Yet it was Belichick’s recent appearance on CBS Sunday Morning to promote his new coaching book that zoomed the relationship to a new level. When host Tony Dokoupil asked Belichick how he and Hudson met, the girlfriend (the "Miss Hancock" beauty pageant winner who will soon be competing in the "Miss Maine" contest) hissed from the shadows, "We’re not talking about this."

"No?" said the host.

"No," snapped Hudson.

Belichick was mute.

So, what could have been a relatively dull football TV thing with a spoonful of old-man eccentricity thrown in, simply exploded. As Heather Schwedel wrote for Slate on Sunday, "I don’t actually condone any of (Hudson’s) behavior, but I can’t help it: I’m fascinated by our next great American antihero."

That’s how fast stuff like this happens. Unknown fisherman’s daughter one day (nine generations of fishermen, Hudson has claimed), Shakespeare’s red-handed Lady Macbeth the next. There are a lot of historic precedents here in the way women have been written about and depicted in stage and screen dramas for ages.

Thus, the Belichick story goes from wacky, cradle-robbing coach to conniving mermaid seducing a naïve and trusting senior citizen. In an earlier era, it was Yoko Ono who filled this role, warping John Lennon’s mind with artsy nonsense, primal screeching and sexual wiles, breaking up the Beatles in the process.

But it takes two to tango.

I just finished, "Yoko: A Biography," a new book by David Sheff, and it becomes clear that the depressed, angry, maternal love-deprived Lennon was so in need of nurturing that as he himself put it, "I realized I needed Yoko more than she needed me, and I always thought the boot was on the other foot, you know?" At the 1975 Grammy Awards, where he was a presenter, John laid it bare as can be when he said to Yoko, "Thank you, Mother, thank you."

So maybe Hudson isn’t the power-hungry temptress she’s being portrayed as by some. As a "source close to the couple" told People Magazine, Belichick himself "is totally enamored by Hudson." It seems she’s filling a real need for the old boy, not just gold-digging, though both processes could be true. 

So two key questions. How are UNC recruits and their parents going to feel about all this?

And what will transfer portal vets make of it when they realize their girlfriends and the ancient coach'es are the same age?

Can’t wait for kickoff.