BOULDER, Colo. — University of Colorado football coach Deion Sanders announced Monday that he had undergone surgery to remove his bladder after doctors discovered a tumor there. Sanders said, since the surgery, there are no traces of cancer, and he will continue to coach this season.

In a packed Touchdown Club in the Dal Ward Athletic Center, Sanders appeared with Dr. Janet Kukreja, director of urological oncology at University of Colorado Cancer Center, and answered some of the questions that have swirled around him throughout the offseason.

The 57-year-old Sanders has largely been out of the public eye in recent months, save for an appearance at Big 12 media days earlier this month when he acknowledged Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark for repeatedly checking in on him and praised Colorado athletic director Rick George.

Sanders deflected questions about his health at Big 12 media days and previously had not publicly offered any specifics. In July his son, Deion Jr., posted a video on social media in which Deion Sanders is heard saying he was dealing with a health issue and that “I ain’t all the way recovered.”

In the video he was seen stepping into an ice bath as well as shooting a basketball and a walk with his daughter. Sanders said in May he had lost about 14 pounds as he had limited contact around the program during the team’s spring and summer workouts.

Sanders has previously dealt with serious health issues. He has had bouts with blood clots in his legs, had two toes amputated in 2022 and emergency surgery in June 2023 to treat the persistent clots, including one in his thigh in one leg and several just below his knee in his other leg.

On the field, Sanders is set to begin his third season at the school. With his son, Shedeur, at quarterback and Heisman Trophy winner Travis Hunter, college football’s most accomplished two-way player in the modern era, the Buffaloes finished 9-4 last season with an Alamo Bowl appearance. Sanders’ son Shilo, a safety for the Buffaloes for the past two seasons, has also moved on to the NFL, along with several high-profile players on offense.

The top storyline on the field for the Buffaloes is the battle to replace Shedeur behind center. In two seasons, Sanders completed 71.8% of his passes for 7,364 yards with 64 touchdowns.

It will be the first season Deion Sanders doesn’t coach a high school or college team with Shedeur at quarterback.

Seventeen-year-old true freshman Julian Lewis, a five-star recruit and No. 2 player in the 2025 ESPN 300, and Kaidon Salter, who started 24 games in four seasons at Liberty, will compete for the job.

Cleveland Guardians closer Emmanuel Clase on Monday was placed on non-disciplinary paid leave through Aug. 31 as part of Major League Baseball’s investigation into sports gambling, the second Guardians pitcher to be caught up in the inquiry.

Guardians right-hander Luis Ortiz remains on non-disciplinary paid leave after originally being placed there July 3 after unusual gambling activity on two pitches he threw for balls, sources told ESPN. Ortiz’s leave was later extended to Aug. 31.

In a statement, the Guardians said “no additional players or club personnel are expected to be impacted” by the investigation. The investigation, a source confirmed, has not turned up information tying other players with the team to sports gambling.

Clase, 27, is a three-time All-Star and two-time winner of the Mariano Rivera Award as the best relief pitcher in the American League. He finished third in AL Cy Young voting last year when he posted a 0.61 ERA over 74.1 innings. In 47.1 innings this season, Clase has a 3.23 ERA and has already allowed more hits this year (46) than last (39) while striking out 47 and walking 12.

His ties to the investigation that started following a June 27 alert from IC360, a firm that monitors betting markets for abnormalities, are unclear. Sportsbooks and gambling operators were alerted after a spike in action on Ortiz’s first pitch in the bottom of the second inning against the Seattle Mariners on June 15 and in the top of the third inning against the St. Louis Cardinals on June 27, according to sources. In both cases, unusual amounts of money were wagered on the pitches being a ball or hit-batsman from betting accounts in New York, New Jersey and Ohio, according to a copy of the IC360 alert obtained by ESPN. Both pitches wound up well outside the strike zone.

At the All-Star Game in mid-July, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said while he still supports legal gambling because of the transparency regulation offers, he was concerned about so-called microbets, such as ones that offer action on individual pitches.

“There are certain types of bets that strike me as unnecessary and particularly vulnerable,” Manfred said. “I know there was a lot of sports betting, tons of it that went on illegally and we had no idea, no idea what threats there were to the integrity of the play because it was all not transparent,” he added. “I firmly believe that the transparency and monitoring that we have in place now, as a result of the legalization and the partnerships that we’ve made, puts us in a better position to protect baseball than we were in before.”

Philadelphia Phillies star Bryce Harper stood nose to nose with Rob Manfred during a meeting between the Major League Baseball commissioner and the team last week, telling him to “get the f— out of our clubhouse” if Manfred wanted to talk about the potential implementation of a salary cap, sources told ESPN on Monday.

The confrontation came in a meeting — one of the 30 that Manfred conducts annually in an effort to improve his relations with every team’s players — that lasted more than an hour. Though Manfred never explicitly said the words “salary cap,” sources said the discussion about the game’s economics raised the ire of Harper, one of MLB’s most influential players and a two-time National League MVP.

Ahead of the expiration of the collective-bargaining agreement between MLB and the MLB Players Association on Dec. 1, 2026, multiple owners have stumped for a salary cap in baseball, the only major men’s North American sport without one. The MLBPA vehemently opposes a cap, which it argues serves more as a tool to increase franchise values than to lessen the game’s large disparity between high- and low-spending teams.

Quiet for the majority of the meeting, Harper, sitting in a chair and holding a bat, eventually grew frustrated and said if MLB were to propose a cap and hold firm to it, players “are not scared to lose 162 games,” sources from the meeting told ESPN. Harper stood up, walked toward the middle of the room, faced Manfred and said: “If you want to speak about that, you can get the f— out of our clubhouse.”

Manfred, sources said, responded that he was “not going to get the f— out of here,” saying it was important to talk about threats to MLB’s business and ways to grow the game.

Before the situation further intensified, veteran outfielder Nick Castellanos tried to defuse the tension, saying: “I have more questions.” The meeting continued, and Harper and Manfred eventually shook hands, sources said, though Harper declined to answer phone calls from Manfred the next day.

“It was pretty intense, definitely passionate,” Castellanos told ESPN. “Both of ’em. The commissioner giving it back to Bryce and Bryce giving it back to the commissioner. That’s Harp. He’s been doing this since he was 15 years old. It’s just another day. I wasn’t surprised.”

When reached by ESPN, Harper declined to comment. Manfred declined to comment through a league spokesperson.

Though he has not been outspoken on labor issues in previous years, the 32-year-old Harper, who is represented by agent Scott Boras, personified the union’s perspective on the prospect of a capped system. At the All-Star Game in Atlanta earlier this month, MLBPA executive director Tony Clark called salary caps “institutionalized collusion,” and in a February interview with ESPN, he said: “We always have been and continue to be ready to talk about ways to improve the industry, and we do a lot of things with the league to do exactly that. You don’t need a salary cap to grow the industry.”

The meeting with the Phillies — some previous details of which were reported by The Bandwagon — covered a variety of topics, sources said, but CBA negotiations, and their potential consequences, loomed large. The specter of a potential work stoppage going into the 2027 season has hovered over the game since 2022, when the parties agreed to a five-year labor deal that ended a 99-day lockout by the owners.

“Rob seems to be in a pretty desperate place on how important it is to get this salary cap because he’s floating the word ‘lockout’ two years in advance of our collective bargaining agreement [expiration],” Castellanos said. “That’s nothing to throw around. That’s the same thing as me saying in a marriage, ‘I think divorce is a possibility. It’s probably going to happen.’ You don’t just say those things.”

Though Manfred has not committed to pursuing a salary cap, multiple owners have criticized MLB’s current economic system and alluded to a cap as a panacea directly (Baltimore‘s David Rubenstein) or indirectly (Boston‘s John Henry, Pittsburgh‘s Bob Nutting and the New York Yankees‘ Hal Steinbrenner). Manfred’s regard of lockouts as a tool in negotiations further agitates players.

“It was pretty intense, definitely passionate. Both of ’em. The commissioner giving it back to Bryce [Harper] and Bryce giving it back to the commissioner. That’s Harp. He’s been doing this since he was 15 years old. It’s just another day. I wasn’t surprised.”

Phillies outfielder Nick Castellanos

Manfred began holding regular meetings with teams in the aftermath of the 2022 negotiations, having said that “one of the things I’m supposed to do is promote a good relationship with our players. I’ve tried to do that. I have not been successful in that.”

Despite the efforts, distrust in Manfred among players remains — particularly when discussing economic issues.

MLB’s desire for a salary cap dates back decades. The players’ strike in 1994 that canceled the World Series was in direct response to the league’s efforts to move to a capped system. Some of the same talking points used by MLB in the 1990s — particularly about the lack of profitability of teams amid an environment that has seen immense growth in franchise value and revenue — have reemerged in recent years.

“In the back of our heads, we’re like, ‘Why are you talking to us like owning a baseball team is like owning a nail salon?'” Castellanos said. “That you’re only going to be a functional business if you can make up the money that you put in this year?”

Players on multiple teams told ESPN they have used meetings with Manfred to press him on the lack of payroll spending by certain teams. Going into this season, the gap between luxury tax payrolls of the highest-spending team (the Los Angeles Dodgers at more than $400 million) and lowest spenders (the Miami Marlins at just under $86 million) raised ire among fans and made salary caps a far bigger part of the rhetoric surrounding the game than in previous years.

Public discussion has done little to alter the opinions of players on a cap. The benefit of meeting with Manfred, Castellanos said, is to better understand the league’s perspective on a business that made more than $12 billion in revenue last year. With the league aiming to nationalize local television rights by 2028 and the growth of gambling and other ancillary businesses, Castellanos believes education is vital to ensuring a well-informed player population.

“We don’t really know that much about it,” Castellanos said. “It’s not like somebody is teaching us about this conglomerate of Major League Baseball that we, the players, make up, make possible. There’s no players, there’s no Major League Baseball. I don’t believe Rob Manfred is evil. I don’t believe the owners are evil. I don’t believe any of that.

“Nobody wants a work stoppage in baseball. Not the players, not the league.”