Bill Belichick's girlfriend shuts down a question posed during CBS interview

Bill Belichick's first book comes out soon. He's doing a book tour. Based on the most recent broadcast interview, it seems to be going roughly as well as the tour for Kramer’s coffee-table book about coffee tables.

In a mostly fluff-filed sit-down with Tony Dokoupil of CBS Mornings, the 73-year-old Belichick was asked how he met his 24-year-old girlfriend, Jordon Hudson.

Before he could begin to answer, Hudson intervened. Even though she wasn't part of the interview. She said, off camera from the producer's table, "We’re not talking about this."

It wasn't, we're told, the only time she interjected. While we don't know the total number of interruptions, it's our understanding that CBS decided to include that one specific instance because it wasn't a one-time thing.

Some outlets would have ended the interview and refused to run it. Belichick and his publisher want free publicity for his book. It wasn't a probing 60 Minutes profile, delving into skeletons tucked deep in his closet (next to whatever it is he was wearing for the interview). This kind of feature is a quid pro quo, with far more quid for the subject than quo for the network.

Other outlets would have left her comment on the cutting-room floor. CBS deserves credit for not excluding it.

All in all, it's another tangible example of what has been rampant over the past several months. She's very involved — in everything. From his coaching job at North Carolina to the program's negotiations with NFL Films about a Hard Knocks-style documentary/infomercial, she is taking a very active role. And exerting a very high degree of influence.

If that's what Belichick what's to do, so be it. It's still a free country. (We think.) But it's unprecedented, for any high-level football coach, to have a family member/significant other who isn't employed by the program to be so intimately connected to it.

And it's precisely the kind of thing that Belichick, in past years, would have mercilessly mocked.