UNC players open up about Bill Belichick and Jordon Hudson

Bill Belichick’s relationship with Jordon Hudson has created a cloud of attention around the North Carolina football program, but players insist they’re unbothered by the noise. 

“Social media can promote some narrative, but that was not a distraction to us at all,” UNC receiver Jordan Shipp told ESPN during Thursday’s ACC media day in Charlotte. “There was never a problem, like people saying she was running practice. We’d never really see her in the building.

“That was never a problem.”

Shipp added that he would often eat breakfast last season with the wife of then-UNC head coach Mack Brown, and that he sees no difference in Belichick having Hudson around.

“If anything, I feel like it’s not a distraction because it’s always good to have somebody in your corner in the building, just knowing they support us,” Shipp said.

Other Tar Heels agreed with that sentiment.

“I log on my phone and see something about Coach Belichick, so it is different, of course,” said quarterback Gio Lopez. “But you’d never think that about him. He’s a normal guy, a normal coach. That’s how he carries himself. He’s very personable, not worried about the spotlight. He just does his job.”

Belichick himself called the media attention around him and Hudson just “noise.”

“Sometimes it’s noisy and sometimes it isn’t,” he said. “Sometimes with the Patriots it was noisy, too.”

That noise ramped up in April when Hudson awkwardly interrupted Belichick’s “CBS Sunday Morning” interview when the coach was asked how the couple had met, and again in May when reports surfaced that Hudson had been banned from the Tar Heels’ facility, which UNC Athletics denied.

The players maintain that they are undeterred and fully focusing on the team’s season, which kicks off on Sept. 1 against TCU.

“We support Coach B no matter what he’s doing,” Shipp added. “We’re behind him 100 percent. Whatever stuff is in the news drug on more than it really was. It was never a distraction, never an issue, never a problem.”