North Carolina head coach Bill Belichick is standing by his girlfriend Jordon Hudson after their awkward moment on “CBS Sunday Morning.”
The former longtime New England Patriots head coach was interviewed for the show as part of a promotional tour for his upcoming book. When CBS host Tony Dokoupil asked Belichick, 73, how he and Hudson, 24, met, Hudson curtly said the topic was off limits.
In a statement released Wednesday, Belichick said he told his publicists at publisher Simon & Schuster that he wanted to talk about only the contents of the book in promotional interviews. He then blamed CBS for the moment ending up in the eight-minute segment and said that Hudson was “simply doing her job to ensure the interview stayed on track” as the two have “both a personal and professional relationship.”
“Unfortunately, that expectation was not honored during the interview. I was surprised when unrelated topics were introduced, and I repeatedly expressed to the reporter, Tony Dokoupil, and the producers that I preferred to keep the conversation centered on the book,” the statement said. “After this occurred several times, Jordon, with whom I share both a personal and professional relationship, stepped in to reiterate that point to help refocus the discussion. She was not deflecting any specific question or topic, but simply doing her job to ensure the interview stayed on track. Some of the clips make it appear as though we were avoiding the question of how we met, but we have been open about the fact that Jordon and I met on a flight to Palm Beach in 2021.”
“The final eight-minute segment does not reflect the productive 35-minute conversation we had, which covered a wide range of topics related to my career. Instead, it presents selectively edited clips and stills from just a few minutes of the interview to suggest a false narrative — that Jordon was attempting to control the conversation — which is simply not true.”
Following Belichick’s statement, CBS said there were no topics deemed off-limits ahead of the interview.
“When we agreed to speak with Mr. Belichick, it was for a wide-ranging interview. There were no preconditions or limitations to this conversation,” CBS said in a statement. “This was confirmed repeatedly with his publisher before the interview took place and after it was completed.’
Belichick’s statement comes two days after a TMZ report about Hudson’s actions during the interview. According to the TMZ report, Hudson sat in for the entire interview and no one from his publisher’s PR team was in attendance.
We’re told outside of that baffling moment that made the final edit, there were numerous other instances of Hudson butting in — even when the legendary coach was answering questions about football, she would stop and correct him.
The statement also continues a theme that Hudson made public Tuesday via her Instagram account. She posted a screenshot of an email from Belichick on April 10 that complained of the way that an interview promoting the book was framed.
“The book is about how I did my job, and lessons from my 50 years in and around the NFL — not a bathroom book that highlights my mistakes,” the email said.
“I acknowledge the mistakes in the book, but of course, ‘I f****** up’ is the catch phrase. I have, at times, reluctantly, gone along with the title, cover and language in the book. I am not going to be the conductor of a hype train in the book promotion — we have enough hype to work with.”
On her Instagram stories, Hudson also posted a picture of a book that Belichick signed for her dated in February of 2021. Hudson was 20 when the two first met.
Their age gap has led to massive interest in their relationship — and they’re both well aware of that interest. It’s why it’s extremely head-scratching that they weren’t prepared for a question about the origins of their relationship with a canned answer for any and all interviews Belichick is doing in advance of his book. Questions outside of a book’s subject come up all the time in promotional interviews like this and Dokoupil had every right to ask them the respectful question he did.
A basic answer to a basic question about how they met wouldn’t take the internet by storm. Instead, the viral moment caused from her unwillingness for Belichick to answer the question has put even more scrutiny on the couple.
It was, in short, a brutal PR blunder from someone who appears to be doing PR for Belichick as the coach has asked for her to be copied on his emails and she was even distributing advice to North Carolina for how the school could handle the announcement of Belichick’s son Steve as the team’s new defensive coordinator.
