Bill Belichick finally got ahead of the story at ACC spring meetings this week, restarting his book tour and correcting the record on his relationship.
After a disastrous sit-down on CBS Sunday Morning created a juicy round of headlines for Belichick and his girlfriend Jordon Hudson, this week Belichick sat for multiple interviews on ESPN and ABC. That allowed him to diffuse the questioning around Hudson and slowly turn the conversation back toward Tar Heel football.
The latest conversation came on The Pivot podcast with Ryan Clark, the retired NFL safety against whom Belichick clashed frequently in New England and worked alongside on Inside the NFL this week for The CW. Previous reports suggested Hudson was a major force in changing course with HBO, a move that cost North Carolina $200,000 in potential facilities fees and a major chance for exposure during Belichick’s takeover.
“The Hard Knocks thing, just for the record, Hard Knocks is training camp. And we’re not training camp,” Belichick said. “That’s not what we are, the drama of training camp, and who’s going to get cut and all that. We’re a season, and they don’t want that.
“There’s film issues, too. But forget about the film issues. Just say you could straighten all those out. The Hard Knocks just didn’t fit for us. That’s the bottom line.”
News initially broke in late February that North Carolina could become the first college football program to be featured on the popular HBO docuseries. It would also have been Belichick’s first time on the show, as his New England Patriots famously never appeared on it.
By March 3, the NFL, which co-produces the project with HBO, pulled the plug. The Athletic’s reporting cited an email from the NFL’s VP of business affairs stating that “the conversation took a turn that we were not comfortable with.”
Days later, UNC general manager and longtime Belichick confidante Michael Lombardi appeared on The Pat McAfee Show and claimed the football program was the side that axed the project. Like Belichick did this week on The Pivot, Lombardi contended that they did not want the story to end after training camp when they wanted to document all of Belichick’s work in his first season as a college coach.
While Belichick maintains that Hudson is not officially involved at UNC, the university is reportedly hiring longtime former Chicago Bears PR chief Brandon Faber to run communications around Belichick’s program. There’s still a long way to go before Week 0, but Belichick is at least getting his story straight and bringing in help to avoid confusion like what happened with Hard Knocks in the future.
About Brendon Kleen
Brendon is a Media Commentary staff writer at Awful Announcing. He has also covered basketball and sports business at Front Office Sports, SB Nation, Uproxx and more.