Bill Belichick is one of the greatest football coaches of all time. His P.R. instincts leave much to be desired.
Beyond entrusting his personal brand to his 24-year-old girlfriend, Jordon Hudson, Belichick has a bad habit of not letting sleeping dogs lie and/or dead horses go unbeaten. Case in point, TMZ.com now reports that Belichick’s book publicist assured Belichick that the disastrous CBS interview would be only about Belichick’s book.
The report emerged today, more than a month after the CBS interview aired. And it has reanimated a dormant issue.
The TMZ.com article cites an April 9 email from Simon & Schuster’s senior director of publicity David Kass to Belichick. Wrote Kass: “I can assure you that the conversation [will be] about the book.” Kass also reportedly told Belichick the CBS interview would be a “puff piece . . . designed to make everyone look good and sell books.”
(Somewhat surprisingly, the new report doesn’t blame Kass for suggesting that Belichick wear an old football jersey with a giant hole in the neck to the CBS interview.)
Per TMZ.com, Belichick was “furious” when the CBS interview strayed beyond book topics. Then there’s this: “Sources say Belichick had actually shot down several interview opportunities Kass had put in front of him over concerns the media outlets would use his book promotion as a way to pry into subjects not related to the actual book.”
It’s a fascinating development, for several reasons.
First, the story is smeared with Belichick’s (or Hudson’s) fingerprints. Which means that one or both decided to dredge up a dead story, weeks after the fact. Which also means that one or both believed the new TMZ.com story would cause people to say, “Well, now we understand why she weirdly refused to let him answer the basic question of how they met.”
Second, one or both decided to throw Kass under the bus, both directly and by potentially instigating a stray, conspiracy theory-inducing remark that Kass “once helped Jeff Benedict’s Robert Kraft-themed book, The Dynasty, reach the New York Times’ bestseller list.” Kass is painted as the villain in this, the one who lied to Belichick about what the CBS interview was going to be.
Third, Belichick did other interviews in which questions unrelated to the book were asked — after the CBS sit-down. Michael Strahan asked a few personal questions on Good Morning America. Ryan Clark asked questions about Hudson on The Pivot Podcast. (Then again, those questions apparently were scripted to help Belichick undo the CBS-related P.R. damage.)
Fourth, Belichick and/or Hudson apparently have decided to try to get TMZ.com on their side by spoon-feeding information to the outlet. Given the extent to which TMZ.com had been hammering all things Belichick and Hudson, a subtle quid pro quo that gets TMZ.com to play nice in exchange for current and future information would be a smart move by Belichick.
Make no mistake about it. The issue is back on the front burner because Belichick and/or Hudson decided it would be a smart move to point a finger at Kass, weeks after the fact. And it’s just the latest time Belichick and/or Hudson have blamed others for their own blunders.
He/she/they have blamed CBS for editing the interview to create a “false narrative.” He/she/they have blamed North Carolina for not having a sufficient P.R. function in place when he arrived. He/she/they now blame Kass for failing to (wait for it) “do his job” properly.
It’s always someone else’s fault. It’s never their fault. And they presumably think people will buy the idea that they’re the victims of widespread incompetence and malfeasance.
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