Off the wire

LITTLE ROCK — FOOTBALL

Jones shares blame

Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones is sharing responsibility with the NFL for the Super Bowl seating fiasco at Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas. Just hours before the Green Bay Packers played the Pittsburgh Steelers Feb. 6, the league announced that 1,250 temporary seats were deemed unsafe and moved 850 people to new seats.Still, 400 fans were forced to watch the game from standing-room-only locations around the stadium. Jones told ESPNDallas.com on Friday that he would look at ways to improve seating issues and the way they are handled. “I do, along with theNFL, take responsibility for the seating issue and some of the things that we would like to improve on regarding the seating issues,” Jones said. “The informing of the fans that were involved, the NFL and I take responsibility for. You always like to look at areas you can do better, get better. We certainly intend to and will get much better in terms of the seating and how that is handled.” The seating issue combined with cold, icy weather took some of the shine off the event, but Jones said he was still proud of the North Texas Super Bowl committee’s efforts. In the days after the Packers’ 31-25 victory over the Steelers, the league gave the displaced fans two options: $2,400 - triple the face value of the ticket - and a ticket to next year’s Super Bowl, or a ticket to any Super Bowl with round-trip airfare and hotel accommodations. The NFL said an additional 2,000 fans forced to sit in temporary seats will receive a face-value ticket refund or a free ticket to a future Super Bowl. “One thing I would point out is that our stadium is certainly, theconcept of the stadium, it was designed for the flexibility of temporary seating,” Jones said. “You can note those, but we have had several world-class events that were very much enhanced by the way our stadium is designed to increase our capacity by our temporary seating. So that is not an issue as much as it is evaluating what we did to create the criticism, to create the issue, and to do better in the future.”

The Chicago Bears gave Coach Lovie Smith a two-year contractextension Friday, keeping him through the 2013 season after a year in which his team won the NFC North and made it to the conference championship game. Smith, who led the Bears to the Super Bowl after the 2006 season, is 66-52 over seven seasons. His team came within one victory of making it to the Super Bowl last season, losing at home to Green Bay last month. General Manager Jerry Angelo said last month that the Bears planned to sign Smith to an extension. Smith said Friday at the NFL Combine that he was happy to get the deal done. He gave his coaching staff credit for helping him get the new deal. Smith said he expects quarterback Jay Cutler to lead the way into next season. Cutler was criticized for sitting out most of the second half of the playoff loss to Green Bay, but doctors later found he had a medial collateral ligament strain in his left knee. The Bears hired Mike Martz as the team’s offensive coordinator last season, and Smith said it was a success, even though the team ranked 21stin scoring and 30th in yards per game.

The SEC has agreed to keep its football championship game at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta through the 2017 season. SEC Commissioner Mike Slive announced the deal Friday, adding two years to the existing five-year contract. The game was held for two years in Birmingham, Ala., before moving to Atlanta since 1994. All but one of the games held at the 70,000-seat Georgia Dome has been a sellout, and the last five conference champions have gone on to win the national title.

North Carolina has hired LSU’s Joe Robinson as its defensive line coach. Robinson spent the past three seasons with the Tigers coaching the defensive line and serving as special teams coordinator. Robinson worked previously with Tar Heels defensive coordinator Everett Withers at Southern Mississippi in the 1990s. Robinson replaces Brian Baker, who left after a month to become an assistant coach with the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys.

The Seattle Seahawks have hired Carl Smith to be their new quarterbacks coach. The team confirmed Smith’s hiring on Friday. Smith will replace Jedd Fisch, who left Seattle after just one season to become the offensive coordinator at the University of Miami. Smith will be reunited with Coach Pete Carroll in Seattle. The two worked togetherat New England in the late 1990s and again at USC. Smith was the offensive coordinator in Jacksonville from 2005 to 2007 and spent last year as the quarterbacks coach of the Cleveland Browns.

BASKETBALL

California on probation

The NCAA has placed the California men’s basketball program on two years probation for making more than 300 impermissible recruiting phone calls. The sanctions announced Friday add only a few small penalties on top of what the school had already selfimposed after reporting the 365 calls. Coach Mike Montgomery and three assistants already have served penalties limiting contact with recruits. One unidentified assistant will also not be allowed to make phone calls to recruits from March 12 to June 11. The only other additional penalties handed out Friday were a limit of five official paid visits for the next two academic years, a public reprimand and a requirement that Montgomery and two assistantsmust attend a rules seminar.

ATHLETICS

Texas Tech hires new AD

Kirby Hocutt resigned as Miami’s athletic director to take the same job at Texas Tech, barely two months after hiring a new football coach and speaking about his desire to see the Hurricanes chase national prominence in all sports. Hocutt told Miami officials of the decision Friday. University President Donna Shalala announced the move in a one-paragraph statement, doing so even before Texas Tech officials or Hocutt himself chose to make the decision public. “I am deeply disappointed,” Shalala said. Texas Tech later said shortly after Shalala released her statement that it has an “agreement in principle” with Hocutt, noting that some small details still need to be worked out. At Texas Tech, he’ll replace the retiring Gerald Myers. Hocutt, 38, was at Miami for 2 1/2 years.

MOTOR SPORTS

Busch earns victory

Kyle Busch was fastest out of the pits on the opening stop and on the track the rest of the night, leading the final 107 laps to win a wreck-filled NASCAR Camping World Truck series race at PhoenixInternational Raceway in Avondale, Ariz. NASCAR voted in the offseason that drivers must declare which series they’re racing for a championship to prevent Sprint Cup drivers from driving for titles in the Nationwide and truck series. Michael Waltrip won the opener at Daytona and Busch made it two Sprint Cup drivers in a row to win trucks races. Busch was rarely challenged after taking the lead in the 150-lap race. Pole sitter Clint Bowyer finished second and Ron Hornaday was third in the first winter trucks race at Phoenix in 11 years. Bowyer led the first 43 laps under the lights on Friday night, but a pit stop cost him the spot up front. The caution flag came out on Lap 43 after Chase Mattioli slid up into the wall, sending the trucks in for the first round of pit stops.Busch, who won a series-high eight races in 13 starts last season, barely beat Bowyer at the line coming out and maintained the lead even after the race got ugly over the final 50 laps. A series of wrecks and spinouts sent the yellow flag flying seemingly every other lap, with six of the race’s eight cautions coming in a 32-lap stretch. Busch was fastest on each of the restarts and kept Bowyer and Hornaday well back in his mirror for the rest of the way for his 25th victory in 87 career trucks starts - the fastest to reach that mark in any of NASCAR’s top three series.

TENNIS

Federer, Djokovic in final

Roger Federer will face Novak Djokovic in the final of the Dubai (United Arab Emirates) Championships after defeating Richard Gasquet 6-2, 7-5 on Friday. Djokovic advanced when Tomas Berdych of the Czech Republic retired because of a leg injury while trailing 6-7 (5), 6-2, 4-2. Djokovic beat Federer in the Australian Open semifinals lastmonth. The Serb went on to win his second Grand Slam title. The third-ranked Djokovic is on a 13-match winning streak. Scores, 7C

Second-seeded Vera Zvonareva rallied to defeat Jelena Jankovic 6-1, 2-6, 6-4 to set up a final against top-ranked Caroline Wozniacki in the Qatar Ladies Open in Doha. Wozniacki cruised into the final with a 6-1, 6-1 victory over Marion Bartoli of France. She will be aiming for her 14th career title after winning the trophy in Dubai last week.