UNC players -- Bill Belichick-Jordon Hudson pairing a nonissue - ESPN

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — If Bill Belichick's personal life has been the predominant topic of discussion outside North Carolina's locker room in recent months, Tar Heels players insist it hasn't unsettled the team at all.

Belichick and his girlfriend, Jordon Hudson, have made numerous headlines since the 73-year-old, six-time Super Bowl champion coach was hired at UNC in December, from Hudson interrupting a «CBS News Sunday Morning» interview with him to reports that Hudson had been barred from the Tar Heels' football facility by school leadership (which officials denied).

It's all just «noise,» according to Belichick.

«Sometimes it's noisy and sometimes it isn't,» Belichick told ESPN. «Sometimes with the Patriots it was noisy, too.»

UNC receiver Jordan Shipp said none of that noise has disrupted the team, though.

Shipp said he has rarely seen Hudson, 24, around the team and believes any inferences that she's been overly involved in Belichick's work have been wildly exaggerated.

«Social media can promote some narrative, but that was not a distraction to us at all,» Shipp said. «There was never a problem, like people saying she was running practice. We'd never really see her in the building. That was never a problem.»

Shipp noted that he spent significant time last season with the wife of then-UNC coach Mack Brown, even eating breakfast with her nearly every day at the team's facility, so he saw no difference in his current coach having his significant other around the team.

Not that that has happened, Belichick quipped.

«I don't think Jordon's had lunch with anybody,» he said.

Indeed, quarterback Gio Lopez said, where players are far more likely to see Hudson is in stories and photos shared on social media.

«I log on my phone