Jordon Hudson and Bill Belichick met in 2021.
That much is undisputed.
Their meet-cute story happened on a flight to Palm Beach when Hudson, now 24, was apparently 19 years old. The head coach of the North Carolina Tar Heels, who was still coaching the Patriots, signed Hudson’s “Deductive Logic” textbook as the two struck up a conversation 40,000 feet over the continental United States.
Thanks to Pablo Torre, we now know that Hudson didn’t just meet Belichick in 2021; she was already around the Patriots organization that same year. Torre, who sourced 11 people for his recent exposé filled with fascinating details, revealed this new piece of information during an appearance on the Toucher and Hardy show, something he hadn’t even mentioned on his own podcast, Pablo Torre Finds Out.
“Something people may not know, that I didn’t even have time for in the episode, is the first time people spotted Jordon Hudson around the Patriots, around Bill Belichick, was when he was the coach of the Patriots,” Torre said.
The rest, as they say, is history.
It was just a story until it became the story when Hudson inserted herself into a viral CBS Sunday Morning interview. The former Bridgewater State University cheerleader cut off a question about how she and Belichick met, making it clear the topic was off-limits during the coach’s book tour appearance.
Torre, who’s made a strong case in recent weeks for why podcasts may be the future of sports journalism, has already theorized why Hudson might have dodged that particular question. He suggested it could be because she was 19 at the time. That might not have fazed Belichick, but it has apparently bothered his inner circle.
Concerns about Hudson’s influence aren’t new. Belichick’s family reportedly grew worried when a Ring camera video showing the coach shirtless went viral, fearing the potential leverage it might represent. But the seeds of that anxiety may have been planted years ago, possibly as early as 2021, when Hudson first started coming around.
“They are panicked that the thing that their family — that he has built as the patriarch of his family — the ‘Logan Roy’ of their Succession story, that it’s being incinerated by a 24-year-old, who doesn’t know what she’s doing,” Torre began during a Thursday appearance on 98.5 The Sports Hub. “They’re freaked out. I mean, look, as a human, as a human level — concern. Imagine it, right? Like, hold on, your 70-year-old dad shows up on a leaked Ring cam video, shirtless.
“It’s an incredible artifact. It’s the thing that [Tom] Brady made fun of at his roast. It’s the thing that everybody has known about, but imagine if you’re one of Bill Belichick’s family members. Like, my first instinct would not be, ‘Look at the D-Cup on dad.’ It’s: How many other videos are out there like this that he had no idea were being filmed? Who leaked this? How did this get out?”
Torre says he’s now working on a follow-up focused entirely on how that Ring cam video surfaced.
“There’s a lot,” the former ESPN personality teased.
But the video, the viral interviews, the awkward public moments, those are just the symptoms. According to Torre, this story has been simmering in the background for years.
“In the fall of 2021, it wasn’t 2023,” Torre said. “They’ve known about her showing up as early as the fall of 2021.”
After that flight to Palm Beach, Jordon Hudson didn’t exactly disappear. By the fall, she was showing up in Bill Belichick’s reserved outdoor seats near Section 120 at Gillette.
She was on the Patriots’ radar in 2021.
Now? She’s on John Mulaney’s, Saturday Night Live’s, and pretty much the entire internet’s.