Wedding bells for Bill?

Rumors continue to abound that Bill Belichick, the 73-year-old former Patriots coach, is engaged to Jordon Hudson, the much younger former cheerleader he’s described as his “creative muse.”

What’s all the buzz based on? Not a lot, actually. Hudson, who at 24 is nearly a half-century younger than Belichick, showed up at an event in April wearing what one New York tabloid referred to as a “ginormous” diamond ring. Then, in its lengthy dissection of the May-December melodrama, The New York Times this week reported: “Hudson has told at least one person that she and Mr. Belichick are engaged to be married.” (The Gray Lady didn’t reveal who that one person is, of course.)

Now comes TMZ, which has been chasing the Belichick-Hudson story for months. (A year ago, it posted the first photo of the two together, allegedly taken the day they met on a 2021 flight to Florida.) According to TMZ, Belichick’s boat, once dubbed “Eight Rings,” was recently rechristened “One Plus Eight Rings.” Eight rings refers to the number of Super Bowls Belichick won with the Patriots and as a coach with the New York Giants. The speculation is that the addition of “One Plus” refers to an engagement ring. Hudson, by the way, knows a thing or two about boats — as a kid, she spent a lot of time on her father’s 33-foot dragger, “Miss Daisy,” which he used to harvest mussels off the Maine coast. (Heath Hudson’s business, Frenchmans Bay Fisheries, eventually went bankrupt.)

Belichick has been married once before and has three children, all of whom are older than Hudson. (His two sons, Steve and Brian, work for their father at the University of North Carolina, where Belichick has a $30 million guaranteed contract to coach the football team.) Belichick’s marriage to his college sweetheart ended in 2006, around the time he was ensnared in a bitter divorce involving a New York Giants receptionist whose husband claimed in court documents that the coach began a long-term affair with his wife when he worked for the Giants.

The relationship with Hudson has bewildered most observers, in part because it’s unclear how a young woman who grew up in a small Maine fishing village managed to seize such a prominent role in Belichick’s personal and professional life. On Instagram last fall, Hudson posted a photo of herself dressed as a mermaid and Belichick as the fisherman who plucked her from the sea. The photo has over 2,000 comments, including one from Belichick: “My biggest catch!!!”

Mark Shanahan can be reached at mark.shanahan@globe.com. Follow him @MarkAShanahan.