Off the wire

Friday, September 27, 2013

FOOTBALL NCAA: Throw out suit

The NCAA said a lawsuit against it by the family of late Penn State football coach Joe Paterno and others is flawed and should be thrown out. An NCAA filing Thursday in Centre County, Pa., court says the lawsuit contains “sundry misdirected complaints.” It argues the plaintiffs don’t have standing to challenge the consent agreement between the NCAA and Penn State over the child molestation scandal involving former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky. It says Paterno’s estate and Penn State trustees, faculty, former players and former coaches are “the wrong plaintiffs” and “have sued the wrong defendant.” NCAA lawyers say Paterno’s estate was unable to say how its commercial interest in his reputation has lost value. A filing by the plaintiffs had said the scandal branded Penn State coaches with a “scarlet letter.”

Michigan State has granted Alabama’s request to drop two future games from the schedule.The Crimson Tide asked to cancel the football games scheduled for 2016 and 2017. Alabama Athletic Director Bill Battle said Thursday the school made the request because of “the uncertainty of the conference football schedule in those years.” The SEC hasn’t ruled out a move to a nine-game league schedule since the expansion to 14 teams. The games would have pitted Alabama Coach Nick Saban against his former school. He was Michigan State’s head coach from 1995-99.

EA Sports and the Collegiate Licensing Co., two defendants in a lawsuit filed by student-athletes seeking to be paid, have settled their roles in the case, according to a federal court filing Thursday. The filing came just after EA Sports announced on its website that it would not publish its popular college football video game in 2014 and that it was working to settle the lawsuit with the athletes. The terms of the settlement were not disclosed in the filing, but if approved, the settlement would appear to leave the NCAA as the lone remaining defendant in the high-profile litigation. EA Sports’ decision not to make the college football video game came after the NCAA and the Southeastern, the Big Ten and Pacific-12 conferences cut ties with the game over the summer and after calls for college athletes to share in the proceeds of big-time university athletics had grown louder. EA Sports’ decision to move away from the game signifies a departure from its earlier position: The company had publicly said that it would move forward with a game next year, even after the NCAA said in mid-July that it was backing out. The NCAA has defended itself, saying that it “has never licensed the use of current student-athlete names, images or likenesses to EA.”

The city of Atlanta said Thursday it will bid for college football’s 2018 national championship game, which would be held in its new downtown retractable roof stadium. Construction on the stadium is scheduled to begin shortly after deals were reached with two historic churches that must be moved. It will open in the spring of 2017. The Chick-fil-A Bowl is one of six bowls that will rotate as sites of the national semifinal games under the new playoff system, which begins with the 2014 season. Atlanta will host its first semifinal during the 2016 season. AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, has been selected to host the first national title game Jan. 12, 2015. The next two championship sites have yet to be picked, and Atlanta is not eligible to bid for the 2016-17 game because it will be a semifinal site that season. The 2018 bid will allow the city to push its new stadium as a major selling point. The $1 billion stadium will be constructed next to the 21-year-old Georgia Dome, which will be demolished once the new facility is completed. The Atlanta Falcons will be the new stadium’s main tenant, but city officials have said it will enhance the chances of landing major events such as the Super Bowl and the Final Four.

BASKETBALL Whalen, Moore pace Lynx Lindsay Whalen and Maya Moore scored 20 points apiece and Seimone Augustus added 18 to lead the Minnesota Lynx to an 85-62 victory in Game 1 of the Western Conference finals on Thursday night at Minneapolis. Diana Taurasi scored 15 and Brittney Griner had 13 points and six rebounds for the Mercury, who now face a must win situation in Game 2 in Phoenix on Sunday. Both teams started out cold, but Minnesota recovered quickly and turned the first half into a mismatch. After hitting just one of their first six field-goal attempts, the Lynx made 16 of their next 23 shots, while Phoenix was just 9 for 37 (24.3 percent) for the half.

Guard Tiffany Hayes scored a playoff career-high 23 points to lead the Atlanta Dream to an 84-79 victory over the Indiana Fever on Thursday night for a 1-0 lead in the Eastern Conference finals. The Dream are one victory away from reaching the WNBA finals for the third time in the past four years. Angel McCoughtry finished with 18 points for Atlanta. Armintie Herrington also had a playoff career high with 16 points. She grabbed seven rebounds and had five assists for the Dream.

GOLF Wilson shoots 64

Former Ryder Cup player Oliver Wilson boosted his chances of regaining his European Tour card by shooting an 8-under 64 Thursday to sit in a five-way tie for the lead after the first round of the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship at St. Andrews, Scotland. Wilson made the most of his sponsor’s invitation by making one eagle and six birdies in bright but windy conditions on Kingsbarns. Fellow Englishmen Tom Lewis and Richard McEvoy also shot 64, along with Chile’s Mark Tullo and Frenchman Alexandre Kaleka. The players alternate between Kingsbarns, St. Andrews and Carnoustie over the first three rounds. Wilson competed in the 2008 Ryder Cup at Valhalla but lost his tour card at the end of the 2011 season and has been playing on the secondary Challenge Tour since. Ken Duke (Arkadelphia,Henderson State) had five birdies and two bogeys for a 3-under 69, placing him in a pack tied for 47th.

Down to his last chance to earn a PGA Tour card, Ashley Hall opened with his second-best score of the year. Hall birdied two of his last three holes for a 7-under 63 on the Valley Course at the TPC Sawgrass to take a one-shot lead Thursday after the first round of the Web.com Tour Championship at Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla. Robert Karlsson, the former Ryder Cup player from Sweden, shot a 66 and needs a big week to get his PGA Tour card. The Web.com Tour Championship is the last of four tournaments for 25 players to earn PGA Tour cards based on a money list from those events. Hall, a 29-year-old from Australia, missed the cuts in the previous three events and needs a top finish.

Doug Hanzel won the USGA Senior Amateur on Thursday, beating Pat O’Donnell 3 and 2 in the championship match at Wade Hampton Golf Club at Cashiers, N.C. The 56-year-old Hanzel, from Savannah, Ga., opened a threehole lead with a par on the par-4 15th and matched O’Donnell’s birdie on the par-4 16th to end the match. A physician specializing in pulmonary critical care at Southeast Medical Group, Hanzel uses an insulin pump to control his diabetes. The 59-year-old O’Donnell, from Happy Valley, Ore., is a reinstated amateur who works as a maintenance analyst for Boeing. In the morning during the rain-delayed semifinals, Hanzel beat Chip Lutz of Reading, Pa., 3 and 2, and O’Donnell edged Buzz Fly of Memphis 2 and 1.

Ellen Port defended her Senior Women’s Amateur title for her sixth U.S. Golf Association victory. The 52-year-old Port, a high school teacher and coach in St. Louis, beat 50-year-old Susan Cohn of Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., 3 and 2 on Thursday at CordeValle at San Martin, Calif. Port won the first three holes, taking Nos. 1 and 2 with pars and the par-3 third with a bogey. A 10-time Palm Beach County Amateur winner, Cohn was playing her first USGA event since 1992.

Sports, Pages 18 on 09/27/2013