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There’s a movie that came out many years ago called “Shallow Hal.” It’s about a man, played by Jack Black, who is extremely shallow in that he’s only interested in attractive women and doesn’t care about anything else about those women except how they look.
A woman could be the kindest, most altruistic, and compassionate person in the world but none of that matters to Shallow Hal. All he cares about is how she looks and whether that is pleasing to his eyes.
I wonder if Bill Belichick is behaving like Shallow Hal these days. I wonder if at Carolina football games this Fall, Tar Heel fans will hold up signs across the bleachers with “Shallow Bill” signs.
Is Bill Belichick Shallow Bill? Is this all about him pumping himself with purple pills and getting his thrills? Are we all shallow, or at least have those inclinations? Are most of us able to call on our maturity and self-discipline and wisdom to defer instant gratification, which is what responsible people do?
He may be interested in coaching football but he’s also interested in – and probably surprised by – the fact that a woman half a century younger than him likes to spend time with him – meaning a lot of time off the football field and you know what I’m talking about.
What if on the airplane that night they met, Jordon Hudson, the woman upending his life right now, wasn’t an attractive woman by society’s physical standards – as shallow as they truly are. Would Bill have started dating her anyway because she showed herself in those initial conversations to be a warm and giving person? What is beauty? Does society tell us who is attractive and who isn’t? I believe there is beauty in everyone regardless of their physical appearance.
I believe Bill wants a young woman to be attracted to him. If we’re being honest, it’s nice when people are attracted to us. Who doesn’t like that? It can get out of hand and become creepy, but for the most part we like it when other people like us. It makes us feel worthy and seen and relevant. I’m talking about being wanted.
But here are my questions: Is she really attracted to him for his physical appearance – that scowl and unhappy look he wears so comfortably? Or is she interested in a conniving way to get a bunch of his money so she doesn’t have to work hard the rest of her life because she doesn’t want to update her resume and do job interviews and have bosses bossing her around which, to be candid, isn’t fun? Who wants all that aggravation when you can grab all that green and avoid suffering through a life of real working? Is this her get-rich-quick scheme?
Is she Shallow Jordon in the sense that she’s chasing material possessions, being superficial? I tend to think yes. I don’t think it’s because she finds the man attractive.
There are so many ways to go with this. Could it be all the men criticizing Shallow Bill are jealous of a man who has had total control in his job as coach of the Patriots, reached the pinnacles of professional success, and now has a cool job coaching college football for $10 million a year and has an attractive young girlfriend on top of all this?
There’s some of that. Most men, I think it’s fair to say, like to have control and be successful and be around beautiful women. If we don’t admit that we’re not being honest. So could it be that a lot of the criticism he’s getting about the botched CBS interview is because men wish they could have his life with financial independence, a fun job, and an active social life? At 72 years old, Shallow Bill is deep into the high life. There’s some of that going on, wishing we could be Shallow Bill, as shameful as it is to admit it to ourselves. Yet many of us can also see an unhappy man searching for something unsuccessfully.
There’s another plausible explanation for what’s going on. Maybe Shallow Bill is sad that people credit Shallow Tom Brady more for the Patriots winning all those Super Bowls. Maybe he feels he deserves more credit and realizes he’s never going to get it because Brady proved by winning a Super Bowl without him in Tampa Bay that he’s the Greatest of All Time and Belichick was along for the ride with Brady. A good coach, yes, but Brady drove that success more than Shallow Bill. That’s the current narrative.
Feeling unappreciated and angry about his place in football history, he’s become somewhat hopeless and is searching for happiness in places that to the rest of us don’t seem to make sense: coaching college football, dating a woman a million years younger than him. Male control freaks don’t suddenly surrender control of some of his football program to a woman. Or do they? If this is true love, maybe that emotion is fuzzing up his brain processes. Love has done this to many men and women.
I suspect Shallow Bill just doesn’t care that much anymore about much other than himself. I think he likes being “loved” by somebody because he’s a lonely old man and has been lonely for a long time huddled up in his hoodie watching football films in Foxboro, Massachusetts. The man has not lived in mainstream society. He’s been in football world which isn’t the real world. He doesn’t know how to act with appropriate social etiquette. He ruthlessly belittled his players and that made him feel good, I suppose, but really he was just being mean and psychologically manipulating them to make himself look better by winning more games and that, to me, is unappealing and unkind. I don’t admire a person who does that. Few of us do.
Is his decision-making impaired? Why would a control freak relinquish control of anything? It may be he’s just getting older and his brain isn’t working as well. It happens. During the CBS interview he said he doesn’t care much what people think of him. Well, that tells me he doesn’t care if they think he’s a jerk as a coach, and that doesn’t impress me no matter how many games he won.
What I do know is this: If I was the president of the University of North Carolina, I would call Shallow Bill into my office and tell him he’s behaving in shallow ways and that his girlfriend cannot be involved in the football program in any sort of official role. I would tell him if he didn’t abide by that rule he would no longer be the coach of the team.
This may be what he wants – see it’s always about what he wants – to get fired so his son will get the head coaching job, which Shallow tried to negotiate into his contract. It’s nice to take care of your son this way, but it’s also shallow because he’s using the university – playing them like a trumpet – to take their money and get what he wants. Bill took the CBS interview because he wanted to sell his book and it made him feel good to feel he’s got smart wisdom to share about football. But when CBS wanted to talk about his relationship with a much younger girlfriend, he didn’t want to give CBS any of that. Shallow people keep taking; their instinct isn’t to give.
Can you imagine this Fall at Carolina games how many fans will be jeering him about his girlfriend and won’t even be as focused on the football games?
Bill wants it both ways. He wants his players to be in total control and avoid allowing any distractions disrupt his team. And yet he’s created this girlfriend distraction because it suits him. It makes him feel good.
He’s doing this, I believe, because he has enormous power. Because he’s been the coach of Six Super Bowl teams. People who abuse their power are shallow and selfish.
But he’s not the only one. The university was shallow and selfish to hire him because they hope he’ll win more games so they make more money. The girlfriend is being selfish and shallow by acting as if she’s really in a serious relationship with a man fifty years older than her. That’s not serious. She has other motives and we know it’s not wanting to spend the next forty years with him.
Shallowness extends beyond these people to the entire quagmire that is college football. The student athletes are being shallow transferring from school to school year after year to play for whomever offers them the most money. The alumni throwing money at their alma maters to buy the best players so their teams will win more games are shallow.
The college football coaches who pump the universities for more money to coach the teams, and then quit when they can’t control who is on their team anymore because the players are now running the entire operation, are shallow.
This isn’t about a man loving a woman or woman loving a man, I don’t think. It’s a man wanting to feel good about himself and woman wanting to seize a financially secure future. In both cases, self-interests are driving them both.
I just wish they and everyone else involved would stop being so shallow and selfish. Where’s the substance? Where are human traits that we admire such as compassion and respect and selflessness and depth of emotions and being kind? In the CBS interview they ultimately were not kind to Shallow Bill and his girl by making both of them look stupid and lame when she interrupted the interview. They wanted them to look bad and they have the power to do so – so they did. It was shallow.
I see meanness in all of this. I see a world that has lost its way. I don’t see people behaving admirably. I see people behaving in ways that I don’t find impressive nor inspiring.
When the college football unfolds next Fall, I will not be watching UNC or any other teams because they’re not worthy nor deserving of my time. If you’re going to show me that you are shallow and selfish, I am not going to spend time following what you do.
I know it’s just entertaining and a sport and therefore not the most important thing in the world – people have done worse things. But I will not learn how to be a better human being watching and listening to all the people involved in this saga. They’re not teaching me anything that nourishes my soul.
They’re not what we should all aspire to. We should long for something more profound and deeper and more meaningful than what all these shallow people are demonstrating.
We all should be better. We can be better. Stop with all the superficialities and sensationalism and clickbait chaos.
Shut the door on college football.
Shut the door on Shallow Bill.
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Sammy Sportface, a sports blogger, galvanizes, inspires, and amuses The Baby Boomer Brotherhood. And you can learn about his vision and join this group's Facebook page here:
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