CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — Grant Govel was good, but Jason DeCaro was almost perfect.

USC baseball lost 4-0 in Game 2 of the NCAA Chapel Hill Super Regional, meaning its quest to break a 25-year College World Series drought will come down to a single game on Sunday.

North Carolina (49-12-1) turned to DeCaro with its season on the line, the seventh career NCAA tournament start for the veteran right-hander. DeCaro delivered a complete-game masterpiece, allowing just two hits — singles in the first and fifth innings — with eight strikeouts and one walk on a career-high 117 pitches.

“Obviously it was all about Jason DeCaro,” USC coach Andy Stankiewicz said. “He threw a heck of a game. He spotted his fastball and his breaking ball, we couldn’t get inside of it and couldn’t get through it. A very nice performance obviously by him, but the good thing is, we have tomorrow.”

Outside of giving up a solo home run to Colin Hynek in the second inning, Govel had a strong performance for USC (48-17). After throwing 153 pitches across two appearances in the NCAA regionals, including 64 pitches in Monday’s clinching win over Texas A&M, he gave up just five hits and struck out three over five innings and 83 pitches.

His final pitch was a crucial one, inducing an inning-ending double play with runners on the corners to hold the game at 1-0.

“Physically good,” Govel said when asked how he felt after making 236 pitches over a nine-day span. “I think having a good defense around me the entire time was very helpful. The solo shot didn’t really affect me. I’ve had a lot of homers hit off me this whole entire year. Competing with their guy — hats off to him, he pitched a hell of a game — felt good. The game just didn’t fall where we wanted it to.”

But for all of Govel’s great work, the day was all about DeCaro’s dominance.

North Carolina found success against the Trojans’ bullpen in the sixth. Erik Paulsen hit a 339-foot home run over the left-field corner wall to double the Tar Heels’ lead, just the second home run given up by USC’s Sax Matson all season. The Tar Heels added two more on sacrifice flies in the sixth and seventh innings, but failed to drive in more with the bases loaded in the seventh and ninth innings.

“We pitched well enough to keep ourselves close and give ourselves a shot,” Stankiewicz said. “But at the end of the day, it was just all about DeCaro.”

DeCaro got better as the game continued, retiring the final 10 USC batters. It was a dominant pitching performance, but thanks to USC’s comeback win Friday, the Trojans still have life.

North Carolina coach Scott Forbes confirmed either Folger Boaz or relief ace and National Collegiate Baseball Writers Assn. Stopper of the Year Award finalist Caden Glauber will start Game 3. Stankiewicz did not name a starting pitcher for the decisive game.

Regardless, it will be all hands on deck.

“We’ll need everybody,” Stankiewicz said. “We can’t go too long with too many.”

The game will start at noon PT on ESPN. The Trojans won four elimination games last weekend and they’ll need one more to complete its mission to Omaha.

“We tell our guys Sundays are always important,” Stankiewicz said. “This is probably the most important Sunday that they’ll ever play.”

The biggest afternoon of Trojans baseball in a quarter of a century awaits.

Las Vegas Raiders star Maxx Crosby told Fox News Digital he plans on attending the UFC fight at the White House on June 14 to celebrate America’s 250th anniversary.

“I’ve never been to the White House,” Crosby said. “I’m excited, I like history…

“It’s incredible that we all have an opportunity to celebrate our country and just be part of a historic event… we live in the greatest country in the world and it should be celebrated.”

For Crosby, as a highly successful NFL star, the celebration represents an opportunity to recognize the freedoms and opportunities he appreciates most as an American.

“You have an opportunity every day to chase your passion,” Crosby said. “Everyone comes from different backgrounds, but in this country you have a choice every day to chase what you love and what you aspire to do. People don’t say the American Dream for no reason. It’s the greatest country because it’s opportunity. It’s a land of opportunity.”

Crosby also revealed who he’s rooting for at the event.

“I think everyone knows how much I love Justin Gaethje,” Crosby said. “Justin Gaethje is one of the greatest fighters to ever do it, and he’s an absolute legend. He’s also a great friend, so I’ll definitely be biased for him. I want to see him go to the White House and do his thing for sure.”

The fight, slated for the South Lawn, came about after Donald Trump casually leaned over to Dana White during a live UFC match and suggested they “do a fight at the White House”. White immediately agreed, and logistics were set in motion days later.

“Dana White is like family to me. He always does it big, and he always does it the biggest and best way. He’s always going to put on an incredible show,” Crosby said.

“I’ve met Trump a couple times, and he’s been incredible to me,” Crosby later added. “I know Dana [White] thinks nothing but the world of him and has a lot of respect for him. But you know we’ve met a couple times, and he’s always been great to me. So, going to the White House, and being there, is going to be a lot of fun for sure.”

Playing flag football for Team USA at the 2028 LA Olympics

Crosby also said he would welcome the opportunity to represent the United States in flag football when the sport makes its Olympic debut at the 2028 Los Angeles Games.

“Oh, no doubt,” Crosby said when asked whether he would consider playing. “I think it’d be incredible.”

While Crosby noted that his family has roots in the Balkans, he made clear where his allegiance would lie if given the opportunity to compete on the international stage.

TEAM USA FLAG FOOTBALL STAR WANTS OPPORTUNITY TO MAKE OLYMPIC TEAM AMID NFL PARTICIPATION

“My mom’s side, I’ve got a Yugoslavian background, so I’ve got some Serbian and Albanian in me over there,” Crosby said. “I’m sure they’d give me a call as well, so it’d be an interesting decision.”

Still, the Raiders star said his heart remains with the country where he was born and raised.

“Everyone knows my heart’s here,” Crosby said. “This is the country I’ve been raised in, born and raised, so yeah, it would definitely be special.”

Crosby was also asked whether he would try to recruit Raiders minority owner Tom Brady to play quarterback for Team USA if he joined the Olympic squad.

“I don’t think he would do that,” Crosby said with a laugh. “I think he’s retired and there’s a lot of great quarterbacks right now. But I wouldn’t be mad at Tom Brady coming back. It’s a great time.”

Getting Fernando Mendoza ready for the NFL

Crosby also had high praise for quarterback Fernando Mendoza, who is adjusting to life at the NFL level after a successful college career.

“He’s a young guy and he’s coming in off an incredible season and an incredible college career,” Crosby said. “But when you get to the NFL, you’ve got to start from square one.”

The veteran defensive end said Mendoza has impressed him with his willingness to learn and fit into the locker room.

“I think he’s done an incredible job of just being one of the guys, being humble, being a sponge, just learning from everybody and asking questions,” Crosby said.

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But Crosby won’t be taking it easy on the fresh-faced rookie in practice.

“There’s no taking it easy,” Crosby said with a laugh. “We play this game one way, and I’m going to go out there and do what I do. It’s going to help him in the long run and making him better. I want to push all my teammates. That’s how teams improve — by pushing each other and making each other better on a daily basis.”

While many young quarterbacks are immediately compared to established NFL stars, Crosby said Mendoza should be given the opportunity to carve out his own identity.

“A lot of times people try to make comparisons,” Crosby said. “People just need to allow Fernando to be Fernando. I think he’s going to be a really special player.”

Playing for Tom Brady

Crosby also spoke about the unique opportunity to play for an organization that includes NFL legend Tom Brady as a minority owner.

“Tom has had one of the greatest careers, if not the greatest career, of anybody,” Crosby said. “He’s an incredible player and won at the highest level.”

While Brady isn’t involved in the day-to-day operations of the franchise, Crosby said having someone with his experience around the organization is a valuable resource.

“Anybody you get around an organization that has done it at that level, I think is a positive,” Crosby said. “He’s not there all the time, but he is a resource for people in that building. I think his winning mindset is only a plus.”

Crosby only played Brady once before Brady retired.

“I wish we could have had a couple more swings at it,” Crosby said.

A big partnership

Crosby’s appearance with Fox News Digital came as part of a partnership with SAXX Underwear, a brand he said immediately caught his attention for more than one reason.

“Obviously, everyone knows I make a living sacking quarterbacks, so the name alone drew me in,” Crosby joked. “The double X was a bonus, too.”

But beyond the name, Crosby said he became a fan of the product itself. Crosby said the product has become part of his everyday routine.

“I literally wear it every single day,” Crosby said. “I wear it during workouts, I wear it around the house, I literally wear it everywhere I go.”

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Still, while Crosby wears it to workouts, he won’t be wearing it during games.

“It’s not NFL certified yet,” he said. “But I wear it to the games, for sure.”

A few hours after Lionel Messi and the Argentine World Cup team checked into their training base in Kansas City, a series of thunderstorms pounded the area, knocking out power, felling trees and bringing flood and tornado warnings.

Hardly ideal conditions for the world’s biggest soccer tournament. Yet that’s likely just the opening salvo of a disruptive weather system that could affect the 38-day competition, which kicks off next week with games in Mexico, Canada and the U.S.

“It’s pretty safe to say climate change is going to have a mark on this World Cup,” said Kaitlyn Trudeau, a senior research associate of climate science for Sacramento-based Climate Central. “With climate change we know it’s not just going to be hotter, but it’s also going to increase the humidity as well.”

And that could make this summer’s World Cup one of the last of its kind. Tournament soccer in June and July has been a tradition dating to the first World Cup in 1930, but since then global temperatures in June have warmed by 1.89 degrees, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. That may not sound like a lot, but it takes many days and nights of extreme heat to move the needle that much.

“It can be a very dangerous situation,” Trudeau said.

As a result, FIFA President Gianni Infantino has already begun discussions on moving the start of the tournament from June to March or October after 2030. In the meantime, early kickoffs, cooling breaks, air-conditioned stadiums and regular weather-related delays will necessarily become common features of the tournament, according to “Pitches in Peril,” a detailed report on the impact of climate change on global soccer, released in the run-up to the World Cup.

“Football’s all of a sudden starting to reckon with the new climate realities,” said Elliot Arthur-Worsop, founding director of Football For Future, a pioneering U.K. nonprofit and co-publisher of “Pitches in Peril.”

“Extreme weather events are becoming more unpredictable,” he said. “The players, the spectators and the officials, they’re all at risk here, especially when it comes to extreme heat. How can we future-proof the game?

“Adaptation looks like moving the entire tournament to another time of year to deal with the extreme weather. Short term it could be moving the kickoff times, it could be introducing more drink breaks, having more heat protocols and safety regulations.”

Some climatologists fear summer events like the World Cup and Olympic Games are just one heatwave away from a major weather-related tragedy. In fact, Arthur-Worsop said his group’s study found that this men’s World Cup, the first held in North America in 32 years, will likely be the last played here.

“By the time the cycle of awarding the hosting rights would possibly come back, our climate projections show that the tournament in its current form would be unplayable due to extreme weather events,” he said. “Not only heat, but other compounding threats such as extreme wind and flooding and wildfires.”

Trudeau worries that whatever adaptations are eventually adopted won’t keep pace with a rapidly warming planet.

“We are basically pushing ourselves to a limit,” she said. “I’m not saying we’re going to absolutely lose the World Cup. But we are making it so much harder to find time to safely enjoy these kinds of events.

“This is not a safe environment and we should not be putting people’s lives at risk just to watch a game.”

FIFA did move the 2022 World Cup, pushing the start of the tournament in Qatar from June to November. Even then the games had to be played in air-conditioned stadiums, though. Three of the 16 venues to be used this summer — in Atlanta, Houston and Arlington, Texas — are domed and climate-controlled.

But the next World Cup, to be held in 2030, will be played mostly in Spain, Portugal and Morocco, where June and July temperatures frequently top 95 degrees. And just one of the likely venues is climate-controlled.

As for this summer’s tournament, a 2025 study published in the International Journal of Biometeorology found that conditions in 14 of the 16 World Cup host cities are likely to exceed the extreme Wet Bulb Globe Temperature (WBGT) threshold, an advanced index used to measure how the human body experiences heat stress.

But you don’t have to do complicated math to know it’s hot because there’s also the “feels like” index, which registers how your body feels the heat. That can be vastly different from the reading on a thermometer. In Miami, for example, where seven World Cup games will be played, humidity will make an air temperature of 90 degrees “feel like” 109 degrees.

Under those conditions, it becomes more difficult for the body to cool itself.

“We talk about temperatures all the time, but that is only one part of the equation. It’s not including the amount of heat that you might feel from humidity,” Trudeau said. “It’s so important because once it gets too humid, then our body’s main cooling mechanism, sweating, is no longer possible.

“These are the kinds of situations where you have to be really careful. Not just players, but also people who maybe work at the stadiums, people who are watching the matches. It can be a very dangerous situation.”

Playing games in the cooler evening hours could alleviate that but FIFA, in a nod to TV viewers in Europe, scheduled 40 of the tournament’s 104 games, including the majority of games in the knockout rounds, to kick off at 3 p.m. or earlier local time. And though mandatory three-minute hydration breaks midway through each half have been added, Trudeau questions their impact.

“That’s kind of silly to be like, ‘Oh, we’re going to give an extra water break. But we’re going to be doing it at the hottest time of the day,’” she said. “It kind of sends mixed messages, right? What is the main priority of FIFA here? Is it to get the most views and the most revenue and the most whatever? Or is it to actually protect these players?

“We should not be having these in the hottest parts of the world at the hottest times of day,” she continued. “It’s just common sense.”

Chelsea’s Benoit Badiashile puts water on his face before a Club World Cup match against Esperance de Tunis in Philadelphia in June 2025.

(Francois Nel / Getty Images)

FIFA defended the schedule, saying in a statement that climate-related risks are assessed as part of overall tournament planning and managed in close coordination with the host cities, stadium authorities and national agencies.

“Building on experience from recent tournaments, a tiered heat-mitigation model will apply,” the statement continued. “When forecasts indicate elevated temperatures, venues will activate additional cooling capacity, including shaded areas, misting systems, cooling buses and expanded water distribution. Work-rest cycles for staff and volunteers are adapted accordingly, and first-aid readiness is reinforced with clear triage and escalation pathways for suspected heat illness. These measures scale dynamically based on real-time conditions before and during each event.”

Last summer’s FIFA Club World Cup, a 63-game tournament played in the U.S. as a kind of dress rehearsal for this year’s event, gives an indication of the problems ahead. That tournament was plagued not just by high heat and humidity, but also by thunderstorms and lightning that paused or delayed a half-dozen matches in Orlando, Fla.; Nashville; Cincinnati; Charlotte, N.C.; and East Rutherford, N.J.

“The heat is incredible,” said Argentine midfielder Enzo Fernandez, who played in last summer’s tournament with Chelsea. “I got a bit dizzy during a play. I had to lie down on the ground because I was really dizzy.

“Playing in this temperature is very dangerous.”

But if health risks are the primary concern of summer sporting events on a warming planet, they aren’t the only ones. The weather also affects the quality of play, said Norwegian defender Julian Ryerson, who played for Borussia Dortmund in last summer’s club tournament.

“Football is different when you play in this humidity and heat,” he said. “It is really tough. You take some precautions. That’s the only way to go about it.”

As the planet continues to bake, there are also increasingly fewer ways of going about staging a World Cup. You can play it nontraditional times and in nontraditional places. You can play it indoors in air-conditioned stadiums.

Or you can not play it at all.

“We’re running out of options,” Trudeau said. “We have to understand that unless we are going to address human-caused climate change, you’re going to start losing these things that are culturally important to us or economically important.

“We cannot keep doing these things at the rate we’re doing them and the times that we’re doing them in the ways that we’re doing them while we also continue to warm the planet.”