Are Bill Belichick and Jordon Hudson actually engaged? At this point, that remains unclear.
But that didn’t stop rumblings regarding college football’s most famous couple’s plans to tie the knot from spreading on Tuesday.
For now, the idea of a Belichick and Hudson engagement is somewhere between a report and a rumor. The primary source comes via a deep dive into the couple’s relationship that The New York Times published on Tuesday, which included exactly one sentence regarding their potential marriage plans.
“And Ms. Hudson has told at least one person that she and Mr. Belichick are engaged to be married,” Katherine Rosman wrote early in the story.
That’s it — no additional details about who that person might have been or what exactly he or she was told. The closest the well-reported story comes to addressing such rumors is an examination of one of Hudson’s Instagram pictures, in which the author notes that she can be seen wearing “a shiny bauble — what appears to be a pink diamond set next to a white diamond — on her ring finger” in a post celebrating her and Belichick’s “meetiversery.”
The rumor regarding the couple’s potential engagement is hardly the most noteworthy detail from the story; not because it wouldn’t be significant, but rather because it’s hardly been verified beyond a secondhand source. Still, that didn’t stop it from spreading across social media and becoming the main takeaway from the feature, which also included new details regarding the 24-year-old Hudson’s role in NFL Films pulling the plug on a Hard Knocks series focused on her 73-year-old boyfriend’s football program.
That’s not a judgement — after all, we’re now writing about it too. But the fact that a single-sourced sentence in story comprised of thousands of words can create such a firestorm only highlights how the headlines regarding Belichick and Hudson’s relationship aren’t going away anytime soon.
In the weeks since Hudson memorably interrupted Belichick’s interview with CBS Sunday Morning to shut down a question regarding how the couple first met, the Tar Heels head coach has understandably been recalibrating his PR strategy. That included another round of interviews to promote his new book, “The Art of Winning: Lessons from My Life in Football,” none of which featured Hudson as prominently as the CBS segment did.
While Michael Strahan asked the 6-time Super Bowl champion head coach about his relationship on Good Morning America, he also noted that Hudson wasn’t present at the time. And Belichick did his best to evade the question, reminding the Hall of Fame pass-rusher that he wasn’t going to talk about his personal life.
But regardless of how many non-answers Belichick is capable, the reality is that the floodgates have already been opened. So long as Hudson insists on being a public figure, interest will remain, especially the closer we get to the start of her boyfriend’s debut season in Chapel Hill.
Are Bill Belichick and Jordon Hudson engaged? At this point, the actual answer seems to be beside the point. Rather, the real story here is that despite their recent efforts to keep their personal life private, the spotlight isn’t getting any less dim. In fact, it will likely only get brighter the closer we get to kickoff.