If you even remotely keep up with boxing, you probably remember the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight.
Billed as the “Fight of the Century,” it was a long-awaited meeting between two legends, with a unified world championship and Mayweather’s undefeated record on the line. It drew 4.6 million pay-per-view buys (nearly double the previous record) and generated over $410 million in revenue (more than that year’s Super Bowl).
The fight itself, a unanimous decision victory for Mayweather, unanimously didn’t live
up to the hype. At 38 and 36 years old, Mayweather and Pacquiao were both past their prime, and it showed, leaving everyone to wonder how much better the matchup would have been if it had happened even five years earlier.
The parallels aren’t perfect, but there’s a case to be made that today’s game represents the Mayweather-Pacquiao of coaching matchups. When the ACC schedule was announced in January, UNC-Clemson was immediately tabbed as a likely College GameDay destination. It was set to be one of the marquee games of the season for the conference, if not for all of college football–a matchup between potentially undefeated teams led by generational coaches.
Instead, we’re getting a matchup between floundering programs led by coaches who seem to be losing their grip on the sport. Four games into the season, Bill Belichick’s Tar Heels have gotten it handed to them by two mid-table Big 12 teams, while Syracuse had an easier time on the road against Dabo Swinney’s Tigers than they did at home against UConn.
It’s wild to think we’ve gotten to this point with two coaches who seemed almost unbeatable not too long ago. Seriously, imagine finding out in early 2019–when Belichick and Swinney had just won a Super Bowl and a national championship respectively–that they would one day face each other with the headline pregame event being a 10:00 AM Ludacris concert (no disrespect to Luda whatsoever, but if we’re talking about guys who are past their prime…)
Here’s how to watch today’s game:
- Time: 12:00 PM ET
- Location: Kenan Memorial Stadium – Chapel Hill, NC
- TV: ESPN with Mark Jones, Roddy Jones and Quint Kessenich
- Radio: Tar Heel Sports Network with Jones Angell, Joe Jauch, and Lee Pace. Here’s a list of affiliates airing the THSN broadcast. You can also listen to them on GoHeels.com, The Varsity Network, Tune In, and Sirius XM on channel 82.
- Streaming: ESPN’s broadcast of the game can be seen on their app and/or website
- Lines: Clemson -14.5, Moneyline Clemson -700/UNC +450, O/U 46.5
