Steve Belichick has resigned from his job as defensive coordinator at UNC following an investigation that found "certain actions demonstrated a disregard for Carolina's values and standards of conduct," according to a statement released Thursday by the university. Belichick, the son of head coach Bill Belichick, already had been on medical leave.
Little else has been made public by UNC about what led to Lombardi and Steve Belichick's resignations. The university's statement described "a thorough and independent investigation into allegations related to culture and climate within the Carolina football program." It went on to say that the investigation found that what happened was "isolated in scope and not a systemic failure."
Rory Dames—the women’s soccer coach currently banned for life from the NWSL, and who has been accused of abuse by more than a dozen former youth players—is no longer listed in the U.S. Center for SafeSport’s centralized disciplinary database.
According to a document reviewe...
Following this week's news that the brilliant writer Annie Dillard has died at age 81, some Defector staffers wrote about what her work and example have meant to them.
Much is made of Dillard’s genius, her wizardry with language, her talent. But the Dillardism that has stuck with me strongest over the years comes from Alexander Chee's essay "The Writing Life," in which he describes taking an undergraduate course with her at Wesleyan in 1989: "Talent isn't enough, [Dillard] had told us. Writing is work. Anyone can do this, anyone can learn this. It's not rocket science; it's habits of mind and habits of work."
There is a cottage industry in publishing dedicated to understanding Donald Trump and his followers. Since his election in 2016, a spate of books have attempted to contextualize, deconstruct, and analyze the President’s ascendency. The second Trump term has been no less prol...
This week on the show, Harry and I hung out with the hosts of the State of the League podcast for an hour of classic offseason nonsense. We talked about Paul Schrader getting really into AI, which aging stars should be allowed to do steroids, and Brice Sensabaugh. Oh, you're not familiar with Brice Sensabaugh, the fourth-year shooting guard for the Utah Jazz? Well, you're about to be, as I am confident no other NBA podcast has dedicated this much of its runtime to talking about Brice Sensabaugh.
You can find Nothing But Respect in Apple Podcasts or whatever podcast app you use. Follow the show on Instagram, and contact the Broke Jumper Tip Line at (347) 380-6426. Thanks for listening!
The Moon got whacked. The Moon gets whacked a lot, honestly. You can just look at its beaten, cratered surface to see that. But these days we're pretty good at counting its scars. Since 2010, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has been circling the Moon and constantly imaging ...
Drew Magary’s Thursday Afternoon NFL Dick Joke Jamboroo runs every Thursday at Defector during the NFL season Got something you wanna contribute? Email the Roo. You can also read Drew over at SFGATE, and buy Drew’s books while you’re at it.
I should never find myself i...
Welcome to Listening Habits, a column where I share the music and musical topics I’ve been fixated on recently.
The last few months I've been in the throes of reading and watching information about the murder-for-hire trial of rapper Lil Durk. It's a complete...
This week, five sports leagues (MLB, NBA, NFL, NHL, and MLS) and their associated players' unions sent letters to gambling regulators in 35 states requesting that something be done to curtail the increasing amount of harassment athletes are facing from angry gamblers. Their ...
Well, Pope Leo gave it a hell of a go, we'll give him that. The former Father Bob, or something, kept the Chicago White Sox in first place in the American League Central for 73 consecutive days, or at least supervised their work well enough to keep them there. The team gave ...
Welcome back to Minor Dilemmas, where a member of Defector's Parents Council will answer your questions on surviving family life. Have a question? Email us at minordilemmas@defector.com.
This week, Dave answers a questionabout holding your child back from school for a year.
The NWSL received eight complaints about either sexual misconduct, sexual harassment, or retaliation during the first half of this year, according to documents obtained by Defector Media. The reports span multiple teams, and were received between February and June. The conclusions of any resulting investigations are redacted. So are the names of the teams involved. …
Who doesn’t love a little Normal Gossip surprise? OK, yes, we said that last week’s episode was our season finale, but when you’re sitting on a mountain of gossip stories, it would be selfish to not share more, right?
Today’s episode raises one of the ancient question...
Ed Sheeran, perhaps best known for writing the kind of music that your second cousin chooses to play for the father-daughter dance at her wedding, cemented his status as a floppy-spine dummy this week by bending the knee to American billionaire idiot Robert Kraft. After rapp...
On Tuesday, Tottenham did something that has been out of character since the start of the 2026-27 season: It scored a goal. The goal came in the 69th minute of its third-round League Cup match against Liverpool, it came from a corner, and it ultimately didn't matter all that...
The operative fact is that the Mets were eliminated from the playoffs on Monday. Everything about Pete Alonso's return to Queens this week as an Oriole is inseparable from that, in time but also in causation, to a subset of Mets fans. They gave him four separate standing ova...
The YouTube title of this week's All Ball episode is “Jalen Hurts Is OVERRATED.” This sort of headline is known as “clickbait,” or “ragebait.” But what if I told you that Arif Hasan and I spent time in this episode striving toward a more nuanced version of “overrated,” a word which itself has become overrated? I bet you feel a little less rageful now. A little less baited. I bet you’re saying to yourself, “Wow, I never realized that the words ‘overrated’ and ‘good’ need not be mutually exclusive!”
This is because you overrated yourself. You thought you were a genius right until this moment, but it turns out that you are are a stupid, easily led little twerp. That’s why you require the full-throated force of All Ball to become a more knowledgeable, more complete person.
Also we make fun of the Packers for eating shit against Carson Wentz.
For a brief period two decades ago, Miami was an amazing place to be a fan of women's professional basketball. The team had a roster full of promise and reached the playoffs in their second season of existence. The locals showed up for games and exceeded the number of requir...
The year is 2022. Movies are finally back, Bad Bunny is taking over the world, and everyone is trying to become a member of the Bored Ape Yacht Club. The immediate post-pandemic years were strange ones along many axes, most notably the economy. In the short, six-year window ...
Time for your weekly edition of the Defector Funbag. Got something on your mind? Email the Funbag. You can also read Drew over at SFGATE, and buy Drew’s books while you’re at it. Today, we're talking about college football, Reacher, unsalted snacks, and more.
The 2026 U.S. Open is done, with Elena Rybakina and Alexander Zverev hoisting the trophies. The Defector tennis corps got together to talk about their impressions of the tournament, their feelings on players who didn't win either Final, and the hair situations of the ATP Nos. 3 and 7. Enjoy!
Patrick: Lorenzo Sonego, I'm pouring vinegar on you, goat. Two points and all this could have been different. Instead, Alexander Zverev has won as many slams as Sincaraz combined this year and we had to talk about 20,000 ball bounces instead of Carlos Alcaraz's hair.
Kathryn: Which is tragic because it looked the best it's ever been, especially considering the, uh, previous situation, and that he was bald at this exact time last year. Between the Zverev slam count and the Alcaraz hair situation, change simply happens too quickly.
In a time when the algorithmically determined social internet serves primarily to trick people into becoming hosts to various parasites or simply drive them mad, it might be perversely comforting to imagine that the people on the other side of the screen are knowing, cynical...
Fair warning: This is a short blog post in which you are going to encounter exhausting behavior from some fellas who will leave you pining for the restoration of our culture's sense of shame.
Texas beat Ohio State in dramatic fashion on Saturday night, and Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian was all jacked up after the final whistle. After having skipped out on his halftime sideline interview due to a technical delay, Sarkisian decided that he also did not want to talk to ESPN sideline reporter Holly Rowe at the conclusion of the game. As Rowe attempted to corral Sarkisian on the field, he shouted some stuff in her direction, threw up the horns sign, and then ran off.
The new Polymarket ad spot opens with LeBron James stepping onto an elevator and pushing a button labeled "SPORTS." This is not some AI-extruded, near-enough visual representation of a generic basketball player of the stature of LeBron James. It is the actual LeBron James, n...
What does it mean for an NFL team to be "AI-first?" It's a question that football fans have been pondering ever since New York Jets Chief Analytics and Data Officer Iwao Fusillo revealed in May that the organization would be striving to "to think AI-first." It was hard to de...
On Monday morning, the rapper Macklemore posted a lengthy Instagram statement alleging that New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft and other NFL owners pitched a hissy-fit to get him dropped from the United States leg of Ed Sheeran's tour. Kraft, who has never shown much interest in music, allegedly called Ed Sheeran to tell him who was allowed to open his shows.
According to Macklemore, "Ed also told me that Kraft had rallied some of the other stadium owners and collectively they gave him an ultimatum: if Macklemore stays on the tour, you will not be allowed to play in our venues." Macklemore was set to play Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts, which is owned Kraft and his family, on September 25 and 26. Now, Sheeran will play there without him.
How strange it is to watch a whole Slam and feel as though we learned almost nothing about the true power hierarchy at the top of the men's tour. In Sunday afternoon's U.S. Open final, Alexander Zverev beat Ben Shelton, 6-3, 7-6 (2), 5-7, 6-2. Check the box next to every sin...
Ryan Garcia, the often troubled and always magnetic Californian who to this point in his career seemed unsure if he’d rather be an influencer who fights or a fighter who influences, struck a blow for his fighter side on Saturday in Las Vegas. Garcia hit Conor Benn flush in t...
There's been a lot of clamoring for answers as to what happened in the fourth quarter of Sunday's unusually messy divisional matchup between the Green Bay Packers and the Minnesota Vikings. And yet for much of the game, and even into the fourth quarter, there was very little...
The Video Assistant Referee is supposed to get everything right. This is an incredibly high standard to hold any sort of officiating, but this is VAR's main selling point and raison d'être. All of the delays, ticky-tack calls, and general disruption to the flow of a soccer m...
