Bill Belichick finally broke his silence on a painfully awkward interview with CBS News that has since gone viral.
The football coaching legend defended his 24-year-old girlfriend and blamed the network for purposefully making her look bad.
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill released the long-awaited statement from the football coach Wednesday.
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Belichick explained why his girlfriend, Jordon Hudson, interrupted his interview with CBS Sunday Morning, claiming that he only wanted to speak about his new book, The Art of Winning — Lessons from My Life in Football.
“Prior to this interview, I clearly communicated with my publicist at Simon & Schuster that any promotional interviews I participated in would agree to focus solely on the contents of the book,” Belichick wrote in his statement.
But Belichick said that this “expectation was not honored” and “was surprised when unrelated topics were introduced,” claiming to have repeatedly asked CBS Mornings host Tony Dokoupil to keep the conversation focused on his book.
“After this occurred several times, Jordon, with whom I share both a personal and professional relationship, stepped in to reiterate that point to help refocus the discussion,” he explained.
A CBS News spokesperson later refuted Belichick’s claim, writing in their own statement that the network had agreed on a “wide-ranging interview” with Belichick, without any “preconditions or limitations” to the conversation.
“This was confirmed repeatedly with his publisher before the interview took place and after it was completed,” they said.
Hudson originally butted in after Dokoupil asked Belichick about his relationship with the 24-year-old, who he said was a “constant presence” during the interview, telling Dokoupil: “We’re not talking about this.”
“She was not deflecting any specific question or topic but simply doing her job to ensure the interview stayed on track,” the football coach said in defense of his girlfriend.
He also addressed the rumors that the pair was trying to hide their first meeting, saying how “some of the clips make it appear as though we were avoiding the question of how we met, but we have been open about the fact that Jordon and I met on a flight to Palm Beach in 2021.”
Sources told TMZ that Hudson was continuously interrupting the interview, even when Belichick was being asked questions about his career and football, and allegedly stormed off set while they were filming, causing a 30-minute delay.
One source said that apart from Hudson, Belichick had no representative from his publishing company or UNC-Chapel Hill with him during the interview, raising questions about how involved Hudson is in Belichick‘s professional life.
Ultimately, Belichick called out CBS for pushing a “false narrative” about Hudson, saying that “the final eight-minute segment does not reflect the productive 35-minute conversation we had.”
“Instead, it presents selectively edited clips and stills from just a few minutes of the interview to suggest a false narrative — that Jordon was attempting to control the conversation — which is simply not true,” he concluded.
Hudson, for her part, had already been speaking out online, sharing a cryptic Instagram story Tuesday that referenced a post she made in February for the couple’s “meetiversary.”
In it was a video of her opening a book to reveal a note from Belichick dated Feb. 11, 2021.
She also posted a screenshot of an email between her, Belichick, and what appears to be the promotional team for his new book Tuesday, with the caption: “Full statement to be released later today.”
In the email, dated April 11, Belichick complained about the coverage his book was getting, saying the stories being written focused on his mistakes rather than his accomplishments.
He said the narrative wasn’t “fantastic, but it probably will hype the book, which is clearly the ongoing theme here.”
