Who Is She: The Bill Belichick Girlfriend Story

On April 29, “Page Six” published photos of Bill Belichick’s girlfriend, Jordon Hudson, wearing a ginormous ring at an American Museum of Natural History luncheon. The potential engagement ring is yet another development in the media firestorm that surrounds the couple following an awkward interview with CBS Sunday Morning on April 27. The 24-year-old Hudson is nearly 50 years younger than the former NFL coach, but their “twin flames” relationship hasn’t been a target of the internet’s typical age-gap discourse. Nobody is trying to save her — everyone’s actually a little afraid of her. Opinions are currently vacillating between “She is a succubus” and “Go, evil girlboss, go.” One TikToker, @geniusgirlalert, suggests that Belichick’s “scary girlfriend” is instilling some healthy fear into what she calls “sportsy guys.”

With her new jewelry, Hudson is sending a message: She’s here for keeps. All the drama has made the story cross over from “sports world” to “pop-culture world” in ways not seen since when Kelce met Swift, so here’s a rundown of everything culture nerds need to know, with an assist by the Sports Bros of Vulture.

I don’t follow sports. Who is Bill Belichick?

Bill Belichick is best known as the former coach of the New England Patriots from 2000 to 2023, during which time the team won six Super Bowls. “He won a ton of Super Bowls, arguably responsible for creating Tom Brady,” critic Nicholas Quah explains. “Also known for his sartorial aesthetic: favors sloppy-looking, hole-ridden shirts or cut-off sweats.” Nowadays, he no longer coaches for that team. “He got let go from the Pats after the 2023 season, when they kind of fell apart,” writer and Chiefs fan Justin Curto says. “He didn’t coach in ’24; he was a talking head on TV and wrote a book.” In January 2025, Belichick accepted a coaching job at the University of North Carolina. “It’s probably important to note that Belichick wanted an NFL head-coaching job after the Patriots, but basically no team really wanted him,” senior editor Ray Rahman adds.

How did this guy meet a 24-year-old?

Before meeting Belichick, Hudson was a cheerleader and former pageant contestant from Maine. The two reportedly met cute on a plane ride from Miami to Boston in 2021; she was studying a textbook titled Deductive Reasoning, and he asked her about it, per TMZ. He autographed the book, said “Thanks for giving me a course on logic! Safe travels!,” and the two exchanged numbers. Otherwise, she’s pretty mysterious. Since then, her stature has grown exponentially in the football world. “Jordon is proving to be an exceptional Media Character,” Quah says. “She seems quite invested in controlling public narratives. She will probably be a billionaire someday, or the White House press secretary.” Curto thinks she should be a “general manager or vice-president of a team,” because the “GM/VP has more power than the coach.

On IG, Hudson posts photos of herself and Belichick that Quah describes as “very good.” This includes one where he is a fisherman and she is dressed as a mermaid caught on his line, perhaps a nod to her family’s fisherman past. She’s also posted videos of herself doing what she calls #Billates — balancing in the air on splayed-out Belichick’s arms and feet. “Belichick has an image as a no-nonsense grump who hates fun,” senior writer Nate Jones says. “It’s incredibly funny that he now has a 20-something, Gen-Z, Instagram-girlie girlfriend.”

Wait. What was that about an interview?

This whole kerfuffle is centered around the April 27 CBS Sunday Mornings interview conducted by CBS’s Tony Dokoupil. In it, Belichick wears his trademark ratty sweatshirt and does a pretty good job making it awkward on his own — avoiding questions about former Patriots owner Robert Kraft, etc. At first, Hudson doesn’t appear on-camera, but six minutes in, Dokoupil’s voice-over reveals that she was a “constant presence” during filming. Dokoupil asks Belichick how he met Hudson, and the camera flashes to her kneeling just off-screen. “We’re not talking about this,” she says from the corner as if instructing both Dokoupil and Belichick. “No.”

“It was supposed to be an easy-ish interview; he was there to promote his book,” Quah explains. “But when the focus turned toward the couple — specifically, on how they met — she shut the line of questioning down, producing a deliriously awkward moment. She clearly has a ton of power in whatever dynamic they have, maybe in whatever room she enters. It was deeply entertaining.”

On April 30, UNC released a statement from Belichick calling out CBS Sunday Morning. “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,” Belichick wrote. “After this occurred several times, Jordon, with whom I share 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.” He added that the interview “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.”

Is that enough to call her “scary,” though?

This is just the loudest incident. As Jones points out, there have been revelations, previous to the CBS interview, about how Hudson is involved in other parts of Belichick’s life, including “the micro-managing emails she sends to staff at the university he coaches at.” Since UNC is a public university, the Athletic obtained the emails on April 15 through an open request, confirming that Hudson is definitely sharing opinions about how the team should cover the announcement of Belichick’s son being hired, for example. “Is there anyone monitoring the UNC Football page for slanderous commentary and subsequently deleting it / blocking users that are harassing BB in the comments?” Hudson said in an email sent on February 13. Then, on April 30, the Athletic additionally reported that Hudson was instrumental in preventing the TV series Hard Knocks from doing a planned edition on Belichick’s first season with UNC.

Hudson also filed for 14 trademarks on phrases that Belichick coined while coaching for the Patriots that the Patriots already own. People reported on April 15 that Hudson’s company, Trouble Club Enterprises, filed for the trademarks with “(Bill’s Version)” appended, à la Taylor Swift. The phrases include Belichick classics like “No Days Off” and “Do Your Job.” To be fair, “No Days Off (Bill’s Version)” would make a good bumper sticker.

I still don’t get it. Explain this to me in Beyoncé terms.

“Take a pop star like Beyoncé, who’s really invested and involved in every aspect of her career,” Curto says. “Even though she works with so many other people, everyone knows she’s in control, and there’s no real right-hand person who comes close, and she can be kind of private how she runs things. It largely works for her. This is like if Beyoncé decided to make an album with Jack Antonoff producing it, and she started letting Antonoff take the reins on a lot of it. Now she’s running decisions through Antonoff, and he’s in interviews with her, and she’s going out with him and his friends. Beyoncé fans would definitely be skeptical of Antonoff, but from the outside, it’s kind of like, Wow, he broke through to her somehow.” In this case, the “somehow” was textbooks on logic and Taylor Swift–inspired trademark filings. Take notes, hopeless romantics.

This post has been updated.

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