Ways that Bill Belichick probably did not meet his girlfriend

Or: how an old man dates a woman forty-nine years younger than him

I don’t know much about Bill Belichick, other than he won a bunch of Super Bowls as a coach, and for some reason I have a tough time spelling his name. Also, he’s known to be a real jerk. And for cheating on the field. You can read about Spygate and Deflategate, both of which were scandals in which the Patriots, while Belichick was coach, cheated. But since we tend to forgive male celebrity scandals if they’re successful in their chosen field, most people choose to focus on the fact that Belichick is a “football genius.”

Fine. I’m sure that he is. But he’s also a clown.

Belichick’s current girlfriend is forty-nine years younger than he is. Forty-nine! Just for reference, here’s a picture of Belichick from the press conference when he was hired to be the Patriots coach in 2000.

His current girlfriend was born fourteen months after this picture was taken.

Pardon me while I barf.

Belichick no longer coaches the Patriots. It turns out that even a football genius finds it more difficult to win games when the greatest quarterback of all time leaves the team. A few months ago he was named the head coach of the University of North Carolina football team. He also has a book coming out tomorrow.

Last week, CBS Sunday morning aired an interview with Belichick to promote his book. When the interviewer asked him how he and his girlfriend met, his girlfriend – who serves as a sort of adviser/PR person/manager to him – chimed in from her spot off camera, “We’re not talking about this.”

Hmm. Okay. Well, maybe they’re not talking about it, but considering the oddity of the relationship, it’s a question that’s worth answering. And if they won’t answer it, then I have no choice but to offer some answers.

Before I begin, let’s be clear that even though Belichick is the older, rich and famous guy here, he’s also the clown. However they met, and whatever the nature of their relationship, and whether or not it’s genuinely affectionate, his girlfriend is the smart one. She’s young and just beginning her career, and an opportunity presented itself. Why not capitalize on it? On the other hand, there’s no way to look at this from Belichick’s point-of-view that isn’t just a sad old man trying to hold on to relevance, and maybe recapture some youth that he spent watching game films. I suppose if Belichick is aware of the transactional nature of the situation, then it’s less sad. But I’m sure that’s not the case.

So, here, according to my “sources” are the most likely ways they met.

Remember the movie Pretty Woman? The gist of it is that Richard Gere is a millionaire and he pays Julia Roberts, whose character is a prostitute, $3,000 to spend the week with him. I’m not saying that Belichick’s girlfriend is a prostitute. But I hope a twenty-four-year-old woman is getting some financial benefit from having a seventy-three-year-old boyfriend.

Robert Kraft is the owner of the Patriots. In 2018 he allegedly made numerous visits to a massage parlor that turned out to be a large-scale prostitution ring. Prosecutors had video of Kraft receiving more than just a massage, but the videos became inadmissible, and he was never convicted of anything related to that case. My favorite part of the story is that Kraft said that he had felt a real connection with the women at the massage parlor, and he was thrilled when they called him and invited him back. Imagine having so much self-confidence that you believe that you felt a connection with women that you paid!

As I mentioned before, Belichick is now the head coach of the University of North Carolina football team. I don’t know what kind of benefit package UNC has, but…

I don’t mean for any of these examples to portray the girlfriend in a negative light. Women have a tough enough time thanks to the patriarchy, so if this woman found a way to make gains at the expense of a cranky old football genius, good for her!

But maybe theirs is true love. Maybe they felt an electricity the first time they saw each other and they knew that they were made for each other in the way that eight track tapes and iPhones were made for each other. I don’t mean to denigrate their love.

So, in light of the fact that this may be a great love story, let me present a few less-cynical ideas of how they may have met.

Perhaps he was a patient when she did geriatric clinicals in nursing school. (I don’t know if she went to nursing school.)

Maybe she came to his house to sell Girl Scout cookies shortly after they won the Super Bowl, and then they reconnected a few years later.

Has anyone verified whether her father may have been a Patriots player? The math works. Tom Brady, Belichick’s quarterback, played his first game with the Patriots before Belichick’s girlfriend was born.

Amanda Belichick, Bill’s daughter, has been the lacrosse head coach at Holy Cross for ten years. Perhaps Bill visited the team and love blossomed after his girlfriend realized that he was the coach’s dad, and not just a creepy old guy hanging around and watching women young enough to be his granddaughter practice lacrosse.

Belichick moved the Patriots playbook to iPads, which he admits was difficult for someone who’s not a technology guy. You know who’s good with technology? College students. Did love blossom while trying to figure out the wi-fi?

Love can flourish anywhere, sometimes when you least expect it. It’s even possible that Belichick’s previous claim – that they met on a flight to Florida – is the truth.

After all, who can resist a football genius?