During an almost 10-minute chat with Michael Strahan on “Good Morning America” on Friday, North Carolina coach Bill Belichick discussed his new book, his coaching philosophy and confirmed he’s happy in his romantic relationship with Jordon Hudson.
“It was a great opportunity to get some thoughts on paper and put it together,” Belichick said about the book. “It’s not about how to live your life, it’s kind of how I did my job. If there’s a lesson in it for somebody, great. Hopefully, there’s some entertaining stories.”
Entering his first season at North Carolina after spending 24 seasons in New England, Belichick noted that he tried to make practices harder than games by spraying footballs with silicone to make ball security more difficult, using artificial crowd noise in practice or making the offense operate with a 30-second play clock instead of 40 seconds, as NFL rules allow.
“I always tried to be the balance,” Belichick said. “When things were bad, I tried to be positive. When things were good, I had a way of trying to bring things down and saying, ‘Look, don’t believe the hype. We’ve still got a lot of work to do.’”
Belichick said he modeled his teams after his father Steve Belichick’s teams at Navy, where he was an assistant from 1956-89, with teamwork, camaraderie, communication and toughness.
Belichick said he hasn’t had to modify his coaching style much after moving from a career in the NFL to college for the first time.
“They’re so eager, they’re hungry. They have dreams. They want to be good. I want to help make them good and make them good on a good team. It’s really been exciting to work with these guys,” Belichick said.
“I’ve learned so much being back in the college environment, whether it be recruiting, the college game, the rules, the hash marks, some strategy and just putting a team together.”
FULL INTERVIEW: Former New England Patriots head coach and current UNC football coach Bill Belichick discusses his memoir “The Art of Winning” and his life on and off the field with @michaelstrahan. pic.twitter.com/NgmaCxxP9S
— Good Morning America (@GMA) May 16, 2025
Strahan shifted the conversation into Belichick’s personal relationship for the final 90 seconds of the interview. Belichick said Hudson, who did not accompany the North Carolina coach for the interview, was helpful in making the book more accessible to readers.
“She’s been terrific through the whole process. She’s been very helpful to me,” Belichick, 73, said of Hudson, 24. “She does the business things that don’t relate to North Carolina that come up in my life, so I can concentrate on football, and that’s really what I want to do.”
“I acknowledged her in the book. She was very helpful in that, with the tribute pages and also giving a perspective of the book from a business side,” he said. “Sometimes I get a little football technical and she did a good job of keeping me on balance there.”
Strahan asked what Hudson meant to Belichick, who spent last week in Maine supporting Hudson as she finished third in the Miss Maine pageant.
“Well, we have a good personal relationship. I’m not talking about personal relationships, Michael, you know that,” he said.
When asked if he was happy, Belichick said, “Yeah,” before later noting that he had a “long way to go” as a yoga practitioner, a reference to beach photos of the couple that Hudson posted on Instagram.
The interview has been in the works since long before Belichick’s relationship with Hudson became one of the biggest stories of the offseason.
Strahan reached out to UNC directly in December, two days after Belichick was hired, to pitch an interview about Belichick’s new role and the Tar Heels’ football future, according to emails previously obtained by The Athletic.
Last week, the podcast “Pablo Torre Finds Out” reported that Hudson was banned from the team facility. North Carolina released a statement correcting “false reports” and said Hudson was still welcome.
Belichick and Hudson’s relationship became a topic of public conversation after Hudson was prominently featured in a CBS interview with Belichick promoting his book in April. CBS called her a “constant presence” during the 30-minute interview, interjecting multiple times and most notably, after a question about how the couple met.
“We’re not talking about this,” she said.
The couple met on a flight to Florida in 2021 when Belichick signed a book for Hudson, then a student at Bridgewater State University.
In emails, Hudson refers to herself as the chief operating officer of Belichick Productions. The Athletic reported last month that Hudson played an “instrumental role” in NFL Films’ decision not to proceed with the production of a season of Hard Knocks focused on North Carolina football and Belichick’s transition to college football.
Belichick asked a UNC official to copy Hudson on some emails in December, shortly after his hiring, when North Carolina’s communications department was shorthanded. She no longer receives those emails but did write on Dec. 22 that UNC’s media team should be strategic in presenting defensive coordinator Steve Belichick as his “own, established, credible entity as opposed to an extension of Bill” to avoid appearances of nepotism and “prevent controversy.”
(Photo: Bob Donnan / Imagn Images)
