Month: February 2023

If the Seattle Sounders win on Saturday, they’ll move on to play Real Madrid in the FIFA Club World Cup semifinals.

The assistant coach, who played at North Carolina, was fiery after the Panthers pulled off an upset win in Chapel Hill.

CHAPEL HILL, N.C.—Pittsburgh’s dramatic, 65-64 victory over North Carolina Wednesday night was punctuated by a boisterous, borderline bitter explosion from Panthers assistant coach and former Tar Heel Jason Capel.

It started on the court immediately after the game, when Capel and some of the Carolina fans began yelling at each other. North Carolina senior associate athletic director for media relations Steve Kirschner, who was the sports information staffer when Capel played at UNC from 1998-2002, yelled at Capel to leave the floor. But the anger didn’t stop there.

“Don’t disrespect me!” Capel yelled, walking around in circles in the hallway outside the Pitt locker room. “Y’all going to boo me? Disrespect me, all I did here? Final Four, ACC championship. …. I held this shit together when (former coach) Matt Doherty tore it apart!”

In response to a question from Sports Illustrated, Capel’s older brother and Pitt’s head coach, Jeff, addressed Jason’s strained relationship with his alma mater. Jeff said the hurt feelings go back as far as 2009, but asserted that there was fresh fuel to the fire before this game.

Jeff cited a Wednesday morning post from the North Carolina men’s basketball Twitter account that he said was “trolling” Jason. The post showed walk-on Creighton Lebo, the son of assistant coach Jeff Lebo, who has appeared in one game this season. Lebo wears No. 25, which was Jason Capel’s number as a Tar Heel. That, apparently, was the troll Jeff Capel was referring to.

“I was hoping he didn’t see it,” Jeff said. “This is one of the most tradition-laden programs in college athletics, not just college basketball, and you hear a lot about the Carolina family. And it’s just amazing to me that their social media people would do that.

“I don’t think it’s Hubert (Davis, the North Carolina head coach). Hubert’s awesome. I don’t think it’s the players on the team; they are incredibly respectful and really good guys. I hate it for (Jason Capel), I hate it for this program, because he loves this place.”

Jeff Capel said the 2009 incident that began the rift between Jason Capel and UNC was from a regional final game, when Jeff’s Oklahoma team was playing the Tar Heels for a spot in the Final Four. Jason was in the stands wearing an Oklahoma shirt in support of his brother, and Jeff said that drew some angry responses from UNC fans.

“The Carolina fans were pretty shitty toward him, excuse my language,“Jeff Capel said. “But pretty, pretty nasty. And it took one of the former players to say something.”

A North Carolina source told Sports Illustrated that this wasn’t the first time Jason Capel verbally confronted the home fans in the Dean E. Smith Center after a game. Last year, when the Panthers shocked the Heels in mid-February, the source said Capel yelled toward the stands that North Carolina was soft.

The Heels regrouped after that loss to win 11 out of 12 games, advancing to the national championship game. But in Pitt’s next trip to the Dean Dome, hostilities were renewed between the fans and a guy who played 120 games and scored 1,447 points in a Carolina uniform.

“My brother loves this school,” Jeff said. “Dreamt of coming here as a player when he was little. He wore that jersey with a lot of pride. And since he’s left here there’s been a lot of disrespect toward him. It’s a complicated relationship with him and North Carolina. He loves it but I think at times he doesn’t feel that back.”

The Rutgers Scarlet Knights increased their lead over the Minnesota Golden Gophers after Derek Simpson came away with a steal and threw down a dunk on the other end.

The Dallas owner shared his opinion on the top signal-caller in Mobile this week.

After Day 2 of Senior Bowl practices in Mobile, Ala., on Wednesday, Cowboys owner Jerry Jones told reporters which quarterback stood out to him.

Coincidentally, that quarterback happened to be from the program closest to AT&T Stadium, as Jones said he was “most impressed” with TCU’s Max Duggan.

“He just looked comfortable. He looked confident. And he was really throwing the ball around,” Jones said, via Jori Epstein of Yahoo Sports. “He was certainly the most impressive quarterback in my mind.”

The Horned Frogs QB announced his intent to declare for the 2023 NFL draft back in December. However, as of now, the Cowboys haven’t shown any interest in drafting a quarterback for next season. Starter Dak Prescott will be entering the third year of his four-year contract in 2023.

Duggan’s performance at the Senior Bowl and the practices leading up to Saturday’s game could help boost his draft stock.

Duggan was the runner-up in voting for the 2022 Heisman Trophy. This past season, he completed 63.7% of his passes for 3,698 yards with 32 touchdown passes and eight interceptions.

Ryan Bader and Bellator president Scott Coker pay respect to the living legend at Wednesday’s 290 press conference.

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LOS ANGELES—Fedor Emelianenko carries a legacy that is unmatched in the history of MMA.

The 46-year-old Russian legend, who went unbeaten for a decade between 2000 and 2010, is best known as PRIDE’s final heavyweight champion, taking the belt from a future UFC Hall of Famer in Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira before defending it in a rematch, and then in subsequent bouts with fellow MMA legends Mirko Cro Cop and Mark Hunt.

During that span, it was Japan’s PRIDE that was the dominant brand in MMA, not the UFC, and Emelianenko was one of the organization’s biggest stars, taking out a who’s who list of talent along the way, including the likes of Mark Coleman, Kazuyuki Fujita, Gary Goodridge, Heath Herring, Kevin Randleman and Semmy Schilt, among others.

Eventually, scandal behind the scenes of the promotion saw PRIDE lose lucrative broadcast deals, leading to the sale of the company to the UFC. That move was one of several factors that helped propel the UFC into the vast juggernaut it remains today.

While many of PRIDE’s top stars came to the UFC following the sale, Emelianenko did not, preferring instead to take starring roles in a number of global organizations such as Affliction, Strikeforce, Rizin and Bellator. There were rumored octagon clashes with Randy Couture and Brock Lesnar along the way, but Emelianenko never did come to terms with UFC officials.

Emelianenko’s appeal to casual MMA fans may have increased had he agreed to compete for the UFC, but hardcore fans of the sport were more than aware of his accomplishments, and the stoic slugger remained revered by his peers for both his incredible fighting skills, as well as his respectful manner.

On Saturday, Emelianenko will compete for one final time when he headlines Bellator 290, which airs live on CBS (9 p.m. ET) from The Kia Forum in Inglewood, Calif.

While he was offered a number of potential opponents for his farewell fight, Emelianenko (40-6 MMA, 4-2 BMMA) insisted on the toughest challenge available and will face reigning heavyweight champion Ryan Bader (30-7 MMA, 8-2 BMMA) in the night’s main event.

Bellator president Scott Coker marveled at Emelianenko’s accomplishments ahead of the contest.

“When I think about this fight and what it means and the historical significance of this event, it’s really a special moment for myself, personally, to see Fedor,” Coker said at Wednesday’s pre-fight press conference. “I mean, he was fighting in PRIDE. He was fighting in different organizations before we started working together, but since I want to say 2008, 2009, I think we’ve done probably eight, nine, 10 fights together, maybe more. To see this career over all those years—and I just recently went back and watched him fighting Mirko, went back and watched him fighting Kevin Randleman, him fighting Nogueira. I watched him fight Andrei Arlovski. I mean, the 10-year run of undefeated fights where he was fighting the baddest people on the planet—because at that time Japan had the best fighters in the world—it’s very impressive.”

Adding to the challenge for Emelianenko in his final appearance, the contest is actually a rematch of 2019 clash that Bader won in just 35 seconds when a lead left hook and a devastating right hand ended the contest in unexpectedly quick fashion.

Bader claimed the Bellator heavyweight title that night and has maintained control of it ever since, but leading into Saturday’s card, very little of the pre-fight banter has centered on his lengthy run but rather the end of Emelianenko’s illustrious career.

Bader insists he doesn’t mind any perceived snub.

“He deserves it,” Bader told MMA Underground. “He’s a legend in sport, and I respect that man, what he’s done for the sport, and he’s a good human being, you know?

“Yeah, don’t get it wrong. I know walking in there that I’d be doing the same if I’m watching Fedor’s last fight. I’m cheering for him. I like to do that. I like to see these legends go out on top. We’ve seen a couple of them retire in this last month, and make no mistake, I know people are going to be rooting for him, but on the flip side, I have a job to do, and my job is to go out there, spoil that party, and go out there and do what I came here to do: retain that belt, win that fight, and move on and hope for the best – and there’ll be respect there no matter what.”

Emelianenko has an opportunity to claim the Bellator heavyweight title in his final appearance, but it will certainly be a tall order. He’s currently a +260 underdog at SISportsbook.com, giving him an implied probability of winning at just under 28 percent, but in the grand scheme of things, the result hardly matters in terms of Emelianenko’s legacy.

MMA legends Josh Barnett, Coleman, Couture, Renzo Gracie, Royce Gracie, Dan Henderson, Matt Hughes, Quinton “Rampage” Jackson, Chuck Liddell, Frank Shamrock and Chael Sonnen are just a few of the sport’s luminaries who have committed to attending Saturday’s event to witness the end of an absolutely incredible career.

Emelianenko’s reputation is already secure, and he has simple ideas of how he wants the sport to think of him once his fighting days are done.

“First of all, I want to be remembered as an Orthodox Christian,” Emelianenko said through an interpreter. “Second of all, I want to be remembered, especially for my fans, as an athlete who gained his popularity, his fanbase, based on the fighting skills, not based on the trash-talk or all the nasty stuff that’s going around right now. That’s how I want to be remembered.”

Minnesota Golden Gophers’ Joshua Ola-Joseph went up strong on a fast break and delivered a powerful two-handed dunk against the Rutgers Scarlet Knights.