ESPN’s Stormy Buonantony survives the Bill Belichick interview treatment

Are you officially a football reporter or interviewer if you’ve never received a curt answer from Bill Belichick to a reasonable question?

If not, then ESPN’s Stormy Buonantony officially earned her wings on Saturday.

Buonantony was part of ESPN’s broadcasting crew for the North Carolina-Clemson game at Memorial Stadium in Clemson, South Carolina. As the game’s sideline reporter, she faced the unenviable task of extracting information from Belichick, whose reputation for rudely brusque responses to interviewers is the stuff of legend.

There was the possibility that Belichick might be slightly effusive coming out of halftime as his Tar Heels led Dabo Swinney’s Tigers 14-3. However, as Buonantony soon learned, there’s no such thing as a good time to ask Bill Belichick what’s on his mind.

Vintage Bill Belichick enthusiasm during an interview in the UNC-Clemson game.

ESPN’s Stormy Buonantony after the interview: “I’m fine. I made it out alive, guys.” pic.twitter.com/EYO4epFBEI

— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) September 19, 2026

“We talked a lot yesterday about how much cleaner this version of your team has played than others,” she told Belichick. “What have you seen so far with the penalties?”

“Too many,” replied Belichick. “Yeah, too many.”

“Is there anything else you think that this group needs to clean up?” Buonantony followed up.

“No, just got to keep executing better,” the coach replied, dryly. “Too many penalties.”

With that, the Tar Heels coach was off, having conveyed as little information as possible.

“Well, Stormy Buonantony, welcome to the club. You are now a member,” said play-by-play voice Bob Wischusen. “There’s hundreds of media members that have sat in that Patriots room over the years that probably right now are printing up Stormy’s jacket.”

Buonantony followed up by saying that while that’s par for the course on game day, Belichick is actually a lot more forthcoming behind the scenes.

“I’m fine, I made it out alive, guys,” she told Wischusen and analyst Louis Riddick. “But I did just want to say, very different feel on the sideline than we had yesterday at our meetings, right? The way he was talking, it was story time.”

“Yeah, once you get him kind of off the record and talking football, it can be a great conversation, and it was yesterday,” added Wischusen.

“He was supposed to be in there for 15 minutes. He was in there for over an hour,” said Riddick. “We talked about everything from 1993 Cleveland Browns to playoff games to— look, he is a football historian. He’s the very best when you’re talking about the history of this game. Nobody knows it better.”