Let’s check in on America’s First Couple, Bill Belichick and Jordon Hudson, a.k.a. Jordochick. There’s so much to tell you, I can hardly stand it! After the two filled their collective diaper in front of CBS cameras, Pablo Torre’s podcast reported that the University of North Carolina had banned Hudson from its football team’s facilities (which the school denied in a statement that I can poke more holes in than Belichick's formalwear). Then the Washington Post published a letter from Hudson resigning from her cheerleading gym, and the paper informed all of us that Hudson’s mother runs a “popular sex boutique” in Provincetown, Mass. Oh, and Hudson finished third in the Miss Maine USA pageant. A nation wept.
Now that’s a lot of information to take in. I’m so wrapped up in the story of Jordon Hudson—our heroine used to give henna tattoos to customers in Provincetown while wearing her regional beauty pageant sash—that I nearly forgot about the football part of this story. Lucky for you and me, Tar Heels GM Mike Lombardi has entered the chat room to remind us that actual work of assembling a winning football team in Chapel Hill isn't going so well, either:
The most disappointing thing about the college game that I've experienced is that the players don't view the contracts as binding. I come from a league where the contracts are binding. … We, as a league, the NCAA, and all these conferences have to make players honor a contract when they put their John Hancock on it. Just like I have to honor my contract. That's part of life. That's the only disappointing thing.
Mike Lombardi? Now, where have you and I heard that name before? Oh right, he’s that one longtime Belichick lackey! The one Jason Kelce publicly humiliated in front of 200,000 Eagles fans after their Super Bowl win! The one who evaluates quarterbacks based on imaginary metric he calls the “crib factor” and once told the football public, “Colts are not avoiding losing. Have to avoid losing before you can win.” That guy is still around! And UNC lets him into the facility to do important shit! That’s almost an even bigger shock than the fact that Hudson’s old lady is the Dildo Queen of New England!
Lombardi’s presence in this story as a side player is a tad more predictable when you consider his boss’s recent history. Belichick flamed out of the NFL after both his methods and his hiring practices had become woefully out of date. Only UNC was willing to put up with all of that bullshit, and that bullshit is now on full display before their season has even gotten underway. The incompetence is as glaring as the age gap.
To wit: The Tar Heels’ coaching staff is larded with discredited Belichick cronies, including Freddie Kitchens, Steve Belichick, Brian Belichick, Mike “Nuke The Gays” Priefer, and QB coach Matt Lombardi. Steve and Brian are the sons of Bill Belichick, with Bill forcing the school to promise that the older son would take over as head coach one day. Matt Lombardi is the son of Mike Lombardi. The crib factor on display here is simply breathtaking, and I haven't even mentioned Hudson yet!
But we have to factor her into the football element of this story, even as UNC officials attempt, unconvincingly, to spin her out of it. From an anonymous school official who spoke to the Post:
I know it’s hard to separate out this image of Bill Belichick and Bill Belichick the North Carolina football coach. Maybe it sounds silly for me to try to separate the two things. But really the football side of Bill and now the public side of Bill have become two different things, and she is in charge of the public side.
Every head coaching job involves a number of front-facing duties. This is especially true in college football, where a good head coach constantly has to sell their program to the press, fans, boosters, sponsors, playoff committee, and recruits. The football side of a coach and the public side are one and the same. That’s become true to a disastrous effect at Carolina. Hudson has already clumsily tried to force herself into the school’s communications apparatus, and now here’s Mike Lombardi—ostensibly representing the football side—publicly lashing out at program defectors with takes from 2021. “The players don't view the contracts as binding.” You know your boss’s contract with UNC isn’t binding on his end, yeah Mike? Or are you not avoiding losing this argument?
It was Belichick’s name, his public side, that lured an impressive number of top recruits to Chapel Hill this past spring. It is now his public side that’s compelled some UNC players to already leave, plus an unknown number of potential recruits out there to stay away. You can’t win games at a school like Carolina—which has finished in the AP Top 25 17 times in 89 years—without mastering both the X's & O's and the PR sides of the equation.
Belichick always had the first part of that formula down cold. But his coaching skills have demonstrably eroded, leaving his reputation even more critical to any success he wants the Tar Heels to have out on the field. This man used to be known, first and foremost, as the greatest football mind in history. He’s now known as a lech who can’t stop bringing grifters and morons into his orbit. If UNC buys him out before he’s ever coached a game, it’ll be money torched for a good cause.
