In November, the fact that Carolina beat Stanford was overshadowed nuggetV Mailthat an argument between Hudson and one of Belichick's sisters-in-law, Jen, escalated to the point where Jen was screaming at Jordon in Bill's office, calling her “crazy” and accusing her of “freaking out” Bill's brain. Shortly after, Belichick was spotted at an adult event attended by Hudson, wearing a high pony and a red scrunchie. A photo of him sitting in the hall looking unhappy went viral.
WRAL was now reporting that nearly twenty percent of UNC players had been fined for careless driving or speeding, and that a “significant” number of them were Belichick recruits. One of them, Thad Dixon, a star transfer who played under Belichick's son Steve at the University of Washington, scored ninety-three in the fifty zone. At the press conference, Belichick said wearily, “We've looked into it.”
Generations of reporters have learned that it is virtually impossible to get personal information from Belichick. His memoir, The Art of Winning, published in May, sounds like someone forced him to write a term paper on leadership. The monotony of his grumpy gray flame and supposed aversion to distractions is one reason Belichick's pundits were wary when he suddenly appeared on social media where Hudson was playing mermaid fisherman And yoga dad. What, I wonder, would Belichick's most famous biographer, the late David Halberstam, have to say about all this?
Halberstam edited the Harvard crimson and distinguished himself as a young man Timewinning the 1964 Pulitzer Prize for International Journalism for his coverage of the Vietnam War. He has published nearly two dozen books on politics, civil rights and professional sports: Bill Walton and the Portland Trail Blazers; 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 and suggested him as a new subject for a book.
Both Halberstam and Belichick owned property in Nantucket but never dated. Halberstam invited Belichick and his then-wife Debbie, whom Belichick had known since high school, to dinner. As it turned out, Belichick wasn't keen on the book idea, although he admired Halberstam's work, especially The Best and the Brightest about Vietnam. According to Halberstam, Belichick agreed only after the project was framed in terms of background and training.
Much of what we know about Belichick first appeared in The Education of a Coach. Belichick's paternal grandparents immigrated to the United States from what is now Croatia. His mother, Jeannette, was an English-born linguist; she learned Croatian to communicate with her husband Steve's relatives. The family worked in “the coal mines of western Pennsylvania and the steel mills of eastern Ohio,” Halberstam once told PBS. Steve “made it out and succeeded because he was a very good, if relatively small, high school running back, and that took him to Case Western Reserve in Cleveland, and the coach picked him up and realized that he was rough, abrasive, but smart as can be, a hard worker, and that whatever you asked him to do, he would do, and more. And the values of that home – nothing to lose, maximize your talents – he passed on to his son in much more rich family America.”
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 looking for the Navy team, a position he was able to hold for so long, in a profession marked by turnover, because the Naval Academy gave him a position as a physical education instructor. The father took his son to work; future Hall of Fame quarterback Roger Staubach threw a child's pass. Belichick was a small child when he began mastering the art of breaking down game film. He played football and lacrosse at Annapolis High School, where he met Debbie, who was captain of the cheerleading squad. After graduation, he spent a year at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, to improve his grades and college prospects. While playing center on the football team, he met Ernie Adams, a smart high school senior from Brookline, Massachusetts, who played defensive back and was a fan of Football Scouting Methods, a book published in 1962 that Steve dictated to Jeannette with a level of detail and detail that could only appeal to other football fans.
