In November, the fact that Carolina beat Stanford was overshadowed by a nugget, in the Jobthat a dispute between Hudson and one of Belichick’s daughters-in-law, Jen, reached a point where Jen yelled at Jordon in Bill’s office, calling her a “crazy nutcase” and accusing her of “fucking twisting” Bill’s brain. Shortly after, Belichick was seen attending an adult cheerleading event where Hudson, dressed in a high pony and red scrunchie, was competing. A photo of him sitting in the audience, looking miserable, went viral.
WRAL was now reporting that nearly twenty percent of UNC players had been ticketed for reckless driving or speeding, and that a “significant” number of them were Belichick recruits. One of them, Thad Dixon, a star transfer who had played under Belichick’s son Steve at the University of Washington, was cited for making ninety-three in a fifty zone. At a news conference, Belichick wearily said, “We solved the problem.”
Generations of journalists have learned that it’s nearly impossible to get personal insight from Belichick. His memoir, “The Art of Winning,” published in May, feels like someone asked him to write an essay on leadership. The monotony of his gray flame and his supposed aversion to distraction are part of the reason Belichick scholars went on alert when he surfaced in an unusual way on social media, with Hudson playing the role of mermaid fisherman and yoga dad. What, I wondered, would Belichick’s best-known biographer, the late David Halberstam, have thought of all this?
Halberstam edited the Harvard Crimson and distinguished himself young, Timeswinning the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting in 1964 for his coverage of the Vietnam War. He went on to publish nearly two dozen books on politics, civil rights and professional sports: Bill Walton and the Portland Trail Blazers; the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry. In 2005, the Patriots were in the midst of a historic run, having won three of the last four Super Bowls. A friend of Belichick called Halberstam to suggest him as a new book subject.
Halberstam and Belichick both owned property on Nantucket, but had never met. Halberstam invited Belichick and his then-wife, Debby, whom Belichick had known since high school, to dinner. It turned out that Belichick wasn’t sold on the idea of a book, even though he admired Halberstam’s work, particularly “The Best and the Brightest,” on Vietnam. According to Halberstam, Belichick only agreed once the project was framed in terms of lineage and apprenticeship.
Much of what we know about Belichick first appeared in this book, “The Education of a Coach.” Belichick’s paternal grandparents immigrated to the United States from what is now Croatia. His mother, Jeannette, was a language scholar of English descent; she learned Croatian to communicate with those close to her husband, Steve. The family worked in “the coal mines of western Pennsylvania, the steel mills of eastern Ohio,” Halberstam once told PBS. Steve “got away with it and succeeded because he was a very good, albeit relatively small, running back in high school, and that took him to Case Western Reserve in Cleveland, and a coach spotted him and understood that he was tough, tough, but smart as hell, hard-working, and that whatever you asked him to do, he would do, and more. And the values of that house – of wasting nothing, of maximizing your talents – he passed them on to his son in a much-loved America richer.”
Bill was born in 1952, in Nashville, where his father worked briefly as an assistant football coach at Vanderbilt University, and he grew up in Annapolis, Maryland, where Steve spent thirty-three years recruiting for the Navy team, a position he was able to hold for so long, in a profession marked by turnover, because the Naval Academy assigned him the position of physical education instructor. The father took his son to work; future Hall of Fame quarterback Roger Staubach threw the kiddie passes. Belichick was a little kid when he began learning the art of breaking down a video game. He played football and lacrosse at Annapolis High School, where he met Debby, who led the cheerleaders. After graduation, he spent a year at Phillips Academy, in Andover, Massachusetts, to improve his grades and academic prospects. Playing center on the football team, he met Ernie Adams, a smart senior from Brookline, Massachusetts, who played guard and was a fan of “Football Scouting Methods,” a book published in 1962, which Steve had dictated to Jeannette with a level of density and detail that only other football obsessives could love.
