"Diminishing Skills" (1993)
Has Bill Belichick lost the thread?
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I.
Let us remember first who Bill Belichick was before he became Bill Belichick: In Cleveland, in his first-ever head coaching job, he was mostly viewed as an inscrutable jerk. Was that fair? Was that unfair? Or was that just Belichick? At one point after he became head coach of the Browns in 1991, a reporter asked him an innocuous question about one of his kid’s tonsillectomies; Belichick, according to the writer David Halberstam,1 “thought it an intrusion into his family’s privacy, and he brushed off the question with considerable irritation.” There was a sense, Halberstam wrote, that if Belichick showed off any actual personality in public, it would come back to haunt him, and so he refused to show anything to anyone.
This works fine when things are going well. And for a moment, things were going well enough in Cleveland, as when the Browns went 11-5 in 1994. Yet under the surface, Belichick was misunderstanding something fundamental, which is that he didn’t seem to understand the repercussions of his decisions. He didn’t fully understand the emotional part of what it meant to be the coach of the Cleveland Browns, a franchise whose fans are hypersensitive to their own trauma. He finally made the decision in November 1993 to cut wildly popular quarterback Bernie Kosar—who deserved to be replaced but not to be replaced with such seeming callousness, given that the fan base in Cleveland had such fealty toward Kosar. In citing Kosar’s “diminishing skills,” Belichick completely misunderstood the tone needed in that moment. “You can be right, but sometimes when you are right, you are wrong, too,” Halberstam wrote. “The brutality of the way it was done was unacceptable.”
All of this is meant to say that Belichick has never been an easy man to get a grip on (I might argue that even Halberstam, who befriended Belichick while writing a book about him, may have taken a softer perspective on him than he did with some of his other subjects). As Belichick burnished his reputation in New England and eventually became known as arguably the greatest professional football coach who ever lived, his inscrutability became viewed as an essential part of his genius. He was focused; he was unflappable. It was on to Cincinnati, over and over and over again. Which is why it’s so difficult to comprehend just what the hell is going on with him at this moment, when he seems to have completely lost all grip on his own tightly controlled narrative.
II.
Look, if you want an exhaustive report on the sordid details of Bill Belichick’s personal life, they’re right here in Vanity Fair. The bottom line is that Belichick is dating a 24-year-old social-media influencer named Jordon Hudson, and Belichick recently published a book, which led to an incredibly awkward CBS interview in which Hudson appeared to be attempting to control the narrative. Hudson also seems to be attempting to exert control on the image Belichick portrays as he begins his career as the head coach at the University of North Carolina. By many accounts, Hudson is smart and capable, and it is not my intention to judge her or to judge her relationship with Belichick, but the fact is that this is all just incredibly strange, and it does make me wonder if Belichick has once again misunderstood something about the fundamental nature of the job he’s just taken on.
III.
I still don’t fully get why Belichick chose to take the North Carolina job, but I wrote this back in December, and I think it still holds:
In college football, you have to do a lot of talking, even in an era where money talks. You have to sell your program, and you have to sell yourself, and you have to sell the alumni who help the money flow in, and you have to sell an often-unforgiving fan base. You have to act like you care. The coach who made the most smooth transition from the NFL to college football and back again was Pete Carroll, a natural salesman. Jim Harbaugh: A sociopath, maybe, but also a pure salesman.
I have seen no evidence that Belichick is capable of performing this aspect of the job. And maybe I’m wrong about him. Or maybe it won’t matter; maybe he’ll find a way to transcend these things, but I’m not sure about that.
IV.
Of course, I did not expect it would play out like this, but in a way it kind of makes sense. There are things that Jordon Hudson understands about the Internet and the attention economy that someone my age or especially someone Belichick’s age simply cannot get a grip on. I have to presume she is attempting in good faith to shepherd him through this new world, perhaps because she understands better than he does that it is now an essential part of being a college football coach. I might hate it, and you might hate it, and Belichick almost certainly hates it, but there is now an entire generation that has learned to consume culture through social media and that has become savvier and savvier about controlling their own narrative online, which apparently means performing gymnastics on a beach. (As
writes, “I think this (CBS) interview popped off because Belichick and Hudson have rarely been featured on a platform they don’t control since they started dating.”)In professional football, there is a draft that dictates who plays for you; in college football, there is a sales pitch that entices those who might be willing to play for you, and yes, there is also money and NIL deals, but when all those things are relatively equal it often comes down to attention. I think Belichick understands that, but the cries for attention are so completely antithetical to who he actually is that it has led to this moment where he seems to trapped in a middle ground that is, frankly, painfully uncomfortable to witness. It is easy even for his friends to wonder, then, if Belichick has lost sight of some essential part of himself.
Maybe none of this will matter, and maybe Bill Belichick will prove capable of winning football games and recruiting high-level athletes, but I wonder if perhaps he is attempting to desperately contort himself into a world where he doesn’t belong. Maybe he isn’t capable of striking the right tone in this scenario, because he doesn’t belong in this scenario in the first place. Sometimes even when you’re right, you’re also wrong.
And yes, this newsletter continues to be a shamless trojan horse to plug the work of David Halberstam. Sue me.
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As much as she may be helping his brand with the 16-22 year old demographic (if she is), she is unquestionably hurting his brand - crafted over more years than she has been alive - with everyone else.
All of what he’s doing is pathetic and sad. You only need to switch him out with any other legendary coach to see how ridiculous this all is. I’m imagining Joe Paterno laying on a beach hoisting his 20-something year old girlfriend on his legs. Or Tom Landry. Or Dean Smith.
He can date whoever he wants and needs no one’s permission, but this is going to be the denouement of his otherwise incredible career. He’d be better off throwing a chair.
You can never shill too much for Halberstam.