Three months after winning his fourth Super Bowl as coach of the New England Patriots, Belichick rolls up the sleeves of his gray hoodie and scribbles a few notes on a sheet of paper. He’s in the back corner of a hotel reception room near Gillette Stadium, and his girlfriend Linda Holliday, executive director of the Bill Belichick Foundation, is introducing him at the podium. Belichick trots to the front of the room to deliver a speech to some of the 18 scholarship winners and nine grant recipients from his foundation, which gave out more than $100,000 in its inaugural year to football and lacrosse players and organizations. He’s relaxed, at ease, reminiscing about how football helped his father avoid life as a coal miner, cracking jokes about the winter snow and how “everyone’s got me outdressed today.” He might as well be a politician making a stump speech in New Hampshire. Then he asks the recipients to speak about how the money helped their work. And that’s when it happens.
