Bill Belichick was presented the game ball Saturday following North Carolina’s 20-3 triumph over Charlotte. It marked his first victory as a collegiate coach after winning 333 games (playoffs included) in the NFL.

As good as the Tar Heels’ bounce-back performance must have felt, it’s certainly possible he enjoyed a different result from the weekend even more: Las Vegas 20, New England 13.

Belichick is an all-time great at two things: winning football games and carrying grudges to the pettiest of levels. One tends to fuel the other. Belichick is often at his best when he has some villain, real or imagined, to prove wrong.

It is why UNC fans should be encouraged that Belichick is still so dripping with anger against his old NFL franchise that he would resort to juvenile antics such as banning Patriots scouts from the Heels’ football building.

“It’s obvious I’m not welcome at their facility,” Belichick said Saturday. “So, they’re not welcome at ours.”

This, to be clear, is comically ridiculous. The easy joke, based on UNC’s 48-10 humiliation against TCU in the season opener, is that if Belichick really wanted to doom the Pats, he would get them to draft a bunch of his guys.

Really, though, it’s just another sign that Belichick has not forgiven New England owner Robert Kraft for their split following a 4-13 campaign in 2023. It’s possible that he blames some of the NFL’s lack of interest in hiring him to Kraft talking him down to fellow owners.

In fact, it is not obvious that Belichick is banned from the Patriots facility.

Current New England coach Mike Vrabel, a former player under Belichick, said Monday that Belichick is always welcome and pointed to Belichick’s presence at a June 2024 ceremony honoring Tom Brady.

“Since his departure as the head coach here, he’s been back,” Vrabel said. “I’ll leave it at that.”

UNC hired Belichick to breathe life into its often decent, but rarely great, program. In doing so, it is getting the full BB experience: the good, the bad, the soap opera. Maybe even a winning team.

There’ll be no dull moments. Carolina should understand this, though, about its new coach. Belichick tends to feed off feuds.

Belichick’s motivation to build the Patriots came, in part, to show he was more than Bill Parcells’ defensive coordinator. Battles with the league office over Spygate and Deflategate sharpened him to help win six Super Bowls.

He has always been about small gestures of defiance, cutting the sleeves off his sweatshirt after the NFL mandated coaches wear Reebok clothing on the sideline, for example. He’s counterculture, even as he became the culture — or unexpected fashion influencer.

His fight with Kraft is just the latest.

Beyond no longer being the Patriots coach, Belichick was often portrayed poorly in a 2024 Apple TV 10-part docuseries “The Dynasty,” the distribution rights of which are owned by Kraft, according to reporting by ESPN’s Don Van Natta Jr. The team has denied any editorial influence over the project.

The response has been classic Belichick.

His autobiography “The Art of Winning” released last summer contained not a single mention of Kraft, his boss of 24 years. He and partner Jordon Hudson have also engaged in a trademark war with the Patriots over certain phrases (“Do Your Job,” for example) that the team currently owns. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, per reporting by ESPN’s Mike Rothstein, has refused Belichick’s requests.

Then there were Belichick’s comments to the Boston Globe about the positives of being a college coach.

“There’s no owner, there’s no owner’s son, there’s no cap, everything that goes with the marketing and everything else, which I’m all for that,” Belichick said. “But it’s way less of what it was at that level. …

“I’d say when we had our best years in New England, we had fewer people and more of a direct vision. And as that expanded, it became harder to be successful.”

The palace intrigue over the NFL’s greatest dynasty will rage for years, particularly involving the triumvirate of Belichick, Brady and Kraft, the owner who has never been shy about trying to grab some spotlight. It’s always interesting. Blame can shift because of perspective. Credit as well.

Just last week, Kraft, at least publicly, tried to offer an olive branch when he told WBZ-TV that he wanted a Belichick statue outside Gillette Stadium, alongside Brady’s.

“When Bill’s coaching career ends, we look forward to sitting down with him and having a statue made to be right next to Tommy,” Kraft said.

Apparently, Belichick was unmoved.

None of this has any obvious impact on winning the ACC, which is the goal of Belichick’s current job. That said, it doesn’t necessarily hurt the cause.

One of the risks in hiring a 73-year-old as a first-time college coach is that he would view the job as something to occupy his time, work with his kids and have some fun. That has mostly been the case for former NFL coaches landing in the NCAA, and it rarely works.

Belichick’s bitterness toward the Patriots to the extent that their scouts are barred from Chapel Hill is at least a sign of something different. Belichick knows the shots back at Foxborough don’t carry much weight if UNC is losing. Living well, after all, is the best revenge.

Belichick might be relentlessly focused on actually reaching the College Football Playoff … if only to show up Kraft.

Who cares about the motivation? The results are what matter.

And just imagine if, along the way, he learns to hate Duke or Dabo as much.

Missouri quarterback Sam Horn underwent surgery to repair a fractured tibia in his right leg, sources told ESPN’s Pete Thamel on Wednesday.

Horn, a fourth-year passer from Lawrenceville, Georgia, was injured on the first snap of the 25th-ranked Tigers’ season opener on Aug. 28. Per ESPN sources, he is expected to make a complete recovery but will miss the remainder of the 2025 football season.

Horn has appeared in five games for Missouri since arriving as the No. 6 pocket passer in the 2022 recruiting cycle. A well-regarded pitching prospect, he was selected by the Los Angeles Dodgers in the 17th round of the 2025 MLB draft this summer and signed a contract with the team in July.

Horn missed the entire 2024 season following Tommy John surgery. He returned for his redshirt junior campaign this fall to compete with Penn State transfer quarterback Beau Pribula for the Tigers’ starting job following the departure of three-year starter Brady Cook. The pair of passers were set to split snaps under center in Week 1 before Horn exited after a 6-yard carry on a designed run in the first quarter of Missouri’s 61-6 win over Central Arkansas.

Pribula, who joined the program this offseason after three seasons with the Nittany Lions, was named the Maxwell Player of the Week after completing 30 of his 39 for 334 yards and three passing touchdowns in the Tigers’ Week 2 victory against rivals Kansas. Through two games, Pribula ranks first in completion percentage (79.1%), second in passing yards (617) and third in passing scores (five) among SEC quarterbacks.

Freshman quarterback Matt Zollers, ESPN’s No. 86 overall recruit in the 2025 class, is expected to serve as Pribula’s backup for the remainder of the season. Missouri (2-0) hosts Louisiana on Saturday (4 p.m. ET, ESPN) before opening SEC play in Week 4 with a visit from No. 11 South Carolina.

SEC coaches expressed support Wednesday for the proposed move of college football’s transfer portal window from December to January, arguing it’s the best option even if it conflicts with the College Football Playoff schedule.

“I’m sorry, there’s no crying on the yacht,” LSU coach Brian Kelly said Wednesday during the weekly SEC teleconference. “I mean, we gotta get this thing set and [in] its best position at this time to allow us to set our rosters moving forward.”

Ohio State coach Ryan Day said Tuesday that he was not a fan of the proposal to open the transfer portal window on Jan. 2, 2026, for a 10-day period immediately following the CFP quarterfinals. Day is concerned about the difficulty of assembling a roster for next season while still competing in the playoff.

He said he believes a majority of Big Ten coaches and Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti agree with him. Kelly said his fellow SEC coaches are unanimous in their support of shifting to a January portal period.

“I’ve talked to many that believe across the country this is the progress that we need to make,” Kelly said.

The FBS oversight committee voted last week to move the portal window to Jan. 2-11, 2026, giving FBS graduate and underclassman players 10 days to decide whether they will enter their names into the NCAA transfer portal, and eliminate the April transfer window. The reform still needs to be approved by the Division I administrative committee, with a vote expected to occur before Oct. 1.

Georgia coach Kirby Smart acknowledged roster management could be “nightmarish” for the last four teams still competing for the national championship, but said he agrees moving transfer recruiting to January is the best option and said several Big Ten coaches agree with him.

FBS head coaches held their annual meeting at the AFCA convention in January and emerged with unanimous support for a Jan. 2 portal window, according to AFCA director Craig Bohl, believing it helped to stabilize rosters and ensure more players finish the season with their current team. Several playoff teams in the 2024 season had their depth charts affected by players departing when the winter portal window opened Dec. 9, and Marshall pulled out of its bowl game due to heavy roster attrition.

“I don’t think there’s any perfect place by any stretch,” Oklahoma coach Brent Venables said. “But being able to get guys in school the end of the season for 95% of college football is there. The kids have made decisions anyway. Let’s get a window that makes sense for everybody to both recruit, evaluate and still be able to get them into school.”

If approved, the transfer window would begin one day after the CFP quarterfinals are completed. This season’s CFP semifinals, the Vrbo Fiesta Bowl and Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl, are scheduled for Jan. 8 and 9, respectively.

“I just don’t quite understand how teams that are playing in the playoffs are expected to make the decisions and sign their upcoming players while they’re still getting ready to play for games,” Day said Tuesday. “It doesn’t make any sense to me.”

“I’m sorry, there’s no crying on the yacht. I mean, we gotta get this thing set and its best position at this time to allow us to set our rosters moving forward.””

LSU coach Brian Kelly, dismissing concerns over an overlapping transfer portal and CFP

Texas coach Steve Sarkisian has led the Longhorns to the College Football Playoff in back-to-back seasons, including a semifinal showdown with Day’s Buckeyes last season, and has gone through the difficulties of recruiting the transfer portal while also preparing for playoff games.

“Those are champagne problems,” Sarkisian said Monday. “That means you’ve got a pretty good team — you’re in the semifinals. But I think for the betterment of the sport, that’s the right window for the players to have a chance to go in and decide where they want to go so they can enroll in their next institution for spring and be there for spring ball and then into summer. It’s fair for the school so they can build their rosters predicated on who leaves and what they’re trying to do.

“Like I said, if you are one of the four, you figure it out. We’ve all hired big enough personnel departments.”

Opponents of the January transfer window have suggested moving to a single transfer window that opens in the spring, like the NFL does with free agency, after the season and coaching carousel are over. A portal window in February, for example, might mean players and coaches no longer feel as pressured to make rushed decisions about their moves for the next season.

But many general managers acknowledge that concept would likely have to be paired with a complete overhaul of the offseason calendar in college football, toward more of an NFL model with spring and summer OTAs.

SEC coaches say they don’t think it would work with the current calendar. Sarkisian said he still thinks it’s important to assemble next year’s team as quickly as possible, getting newcomers on campus in January to start building camaraderie and finding out who they are working with.

“I think some in the Big Ten thought if we have the portal later, kids will have to stay and you’ll have the team ’til the end of the semester,” Smart said. “That’s not realistic. The kids and players that want to leave, that are not happy, I don’t know that they should be staying on campus an extra semester. It’s not a great situation either way, but the better way is the way it out came out, in my opinion.”