The Draw Play

I was not expecting Bill Belichick’s life to become a soap opera. Even for a guy with such a high profile in sports circles, even if he was dating the age equivalent of his own granddaughter, I never expected this to happen. Wild times we live in.

Everything about this entire situation has been very weird and kinda gross. Bill dating a young co-ed is gross. The way she is very blatantly using him to forward her own ambitions is gross. The way reporters discuss the story is gross. Just a big fat industrial-sized case of ick.

I think what’s been bothering me about the whole thing is the way Bill has been portrayed throughout the mess. Hudson is getting most of the negative attention. To be clear, I do not have a high opinion of Jordon Hudson from my very distant vantage point. I went over this in the other comic I made about these two, but while genuine love can certainly exist between such an age gap, the reality of a situation like this is obvious. In Hudson’s case, it couldn’t be more blatant. She is using him. She is forcing her way into his life in a very public way. She is making herself a very prominent figure alongside Bill. The most notable example of this is how she reportedly forced her way into a Super Bowl commercial. A lot of reporting on Hudson has revolved around her extreme involvement in Bill’s life and affairs. Despite her young age, Bill isn’t even her first old rich guy boyfriend. The thing is…I kinda just don’t care. Good for her. If she wants to date geriatrics during her youth to advance her goals, go for it. That’s bitchy queen villainess stuff. At least she doesn’t seem like she’s the victim of a creepy power dynamic but is at least in relative control.

But why is Bill not getting more flack for this? He’s a grown ass man who can make his choices. He has made the choice to start a relationship with a woman who was barely above legal age when they first met. That’s gross. It’s gross! Can Bill also really be so naive as to think she’s not doing what she is very obviously doing? I think he knows exactly what she’s doing and doesn’t care because he gets to pork some hot young ass. He will let her do what she wants because it means he can keep smashing that. We have this old stereotype of the creepy old powerful men who abuse their power dynamic to essentially prey on young women they absolutely could not land otherwise, but we also have a stereotype of the evil conniving gold-digger who takes advantage of the lonely old guy to steal all his money. Why cant both be true at the same time? Why can’t they both be shitty people? We can’t spend years talking about how Bill is the best and smartest coach ever and then come in here and pretend he’s been boondoggled by this evil young temptress. Give him credit. He chose to be this gross. The reputation hit he’s taken? He chose that, so he could smash that.

The thing that makes me laugh about all this is how Jordon seems simultaneously good at this and very bad at it. It appears that Jordon has essentially taken over as Bill’s media manager. I think in some ways, she’s actually proven her worth here. Bill has become far more media-friendly in recent years. He’s done podcasts, he was on the Manningcast, he does a lot more media appearances, he’s showing up in commercials. He’s good in them too! He comes across far more personable than he used to be without sacrificing the grumpy old man schitck that he’s known for. I think this is Jordon’s doing. The timeline lines up. She seems pretty good at getting him to do the right things to raise his profile and his space as a personality. In this regard, I think she’s smart and capable.

Her mistake seems to be one of vanity. She’s chosen to inject herself into this in a public way, and it has essentially resulted in the non-stop PR mess that has been going on for the past 6 months. A good manager is unseen. They exist as a producer, sitting behind the curtain, moving and controlling the talent. A good manager doesn’t force her way into a commercial with famous people so that she can raise her own profile. A good manager doesn’t end up in a weird conflict with UNC over how often she’s around and how much control she has. This is far from the first gross age gap relationship we’ve seen. If Hudson stayed behind the scenes, doing what she was doing to promote Bill around, this PR mess wouldn’t be happening. A few people who love the gossip would be interested in knowing about her, sure. But she’s not doing that. She’s become far too visible by her own hand for her own good, and the results are now making her look bad when she honestly seemed to be doing a decent job before. Her apparent desire to be seen is causing direct problems for her ride to the top.

So everyone here is just kinda gross. I didn’t want to end this without mentioning Pablo Torre, a sports reporter who has done a significant amount of coverage about this for his podcast “Pablo Torre Finds out“. I usually like Torre’s show (mostly because Katie Nolan is on it, and Katie Nolan rules). Bill Simmons called him out recently about his coverage of the saga being unnecessary and god help me, I kinda came down agreeing with Bill Simmons. Plenty of Torre’s reporting is fine. But in one episode he went full TMZ and went to the same Airbnb that had the video of shirtless Belichick doing the walk of shame back when his relationship was first exposed. Torre speaks to the owners of the Airbnb about the incident (At least kind of interesting) but he also pans the cameras over the place and makes a gross face when he focuses on the bed. All I could think of was “yeah, they fucked in that bed. Did we really need any of this, and to see you making a gross face over the bed? No, we fucking did not, this is immature garbage slop”.

I think that moment of Torre milking the scene like that is when I officially started kinda being on Hudson’s side in all this. Do your thing, girl. Take advantage of that gross old man. Ruin his legacy. I don’t give a shit. It would be incredible to see a football legend’s reputation crumble to bits because he could scheme a defense but couldn’t scheme his dick to stay in his pants. Hilarious way to end a career. This might be the first time I watch an entire season of college football.