Ohio State safety Caleb Downs and three of his teammates were selected to The Associated Press preseason All-America team on Monday.
Why Malachi Moreno’s pledge to Kentucky basketball was so important for the Mark Pope recruiting era
LEXINGTON, Ky. — It’s not often that the men’s basketball coach at the University of Kentucky has the luxury of a player anywhere close to five-star recruiting status playing in his own backyard. It’s unbelievably rare, in fact. Mark Pope found such a scenario waiting for him when he took ov…
DETROIT — Connor Stalions, the former low-level Michigan football staffer at the center of an NCAA investigation into the Wolverines over an alleged sign-stealing scheme, is returning to the sidelines. Stalions is the new defensive coordinator at Detroit Mumford, new Mumford head football co…
In comes Tom Brady, Bill Belichick and Nick Saban. Out goes the Southeastern Conference on CBS.
ATHENS, Ga. — The College Football Playoff management committee is doing what it can to make sure conference championship games remain relevant. That group met in Texas this week for the first time in advance of the 2024 season and immediately set about tweaking its formula for the expanded …
LEXINGTON, Ky. — When Kentucky Wildcats athletes, current and former, combined three years ago to win 10 medals in the Tokyo Olympics, it stood as one of the proudest moments in University of Kentucky sports history. With that very high bar to clear entering the 2024 Paris Olympics, ex-Cats …
ORLANDO, Fla. — When David Parks looks at people, that’s all he sees. People. He sees human beings. That’s why it wasn’t difficult for the Sanford Seminole High senior to commit to playing football at Howard, one of 107 Historically Black Colleges and Universities in the United States. Parks…
Georgia is No. 1 in the AP preseason college football poll for the second straight year, receiving 46 first-place votes. Ohio State is second with 15 top votes.
ATLANTA — For the fourth year running, yours truly is picking Georgia to win the national championship. Even I — Bark Madly to non-UGA fans — concede that such a run might seem excessive, but it’s not as if I’ve been way wrong. The Bulldogs have won 66.7% of the past three titles, meaning I’m batting .667. Georgia over the past three seasons: 42-2. Georgia in regular-season games: 36-0. ...
Former Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh, who on Wednesday was slapped with a four-year show cause and a one-year suspension from the NCAA, will be back in Michigan Stadium for the season opener as an honorary captain. Michigan athletic director Warde Manuel revealed on the “1 Star Recruits” podcast that posted Wednesday that Harbaugh, now the Los Angeles Chargers' head coach, will return as ...
LEXINGTON, Ky. — In a couple of weeks we will embark on one of if not the craziest football seasons in the history of football seasons. The Big Ten consists of 18 teams; the Big 12 has 16. USC and UCLA are in the same conference with Rutgers and Penn State. California and Stanford are in the same conference with Syracuse and Florida State. The College Football Playoff has tripled in size from ...
MIAMI — Armando Christian Perez always considered himself an underdog, with reason. He was Miami-born to Cuban immigrants, his father seldom around and both parents dealing with substance abuse that ensnared him for a time. He got kicked out of the family home, got raised by Miami, by music, by a belief in himself. And became Pitbull, global music superstar, businessman and one of the great ...
ATLANTA — On Tuesday, Volley’s Word of the Day – it’s part of my Alexa-collated morning briefing – was “neophobia.” It means, as wordsmiths might guess, fear of the new. Having reached a certain age, I try not to put myself in a position to be labeled a neophobe, which seems a polite way of saying “old coot.” Honesty, alas, compels me to state the following: I’m having a hard time with college ...
ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Former Michigan football head coach Jim Harbaugh has been punished by the NCAA with a four-year show-cause order and a one-year suspension for violating head-coach responsibility obligations, “unethical conduct” and a failure to promote “an atmosphere of compliance” for his role in an investigation into impermissible recruiting in 2021 during a COVID-19 dead period. The NCAA ...
LEXINGTON, Ky. — Missouri was SEC football’s 2023 surprise. Picked to finish fifth in the East Division, the Tigers finished 11-2. Their only losses were to LSU and Georgia. They defeated Kentucky 38-21, whipped Tennessee 36-7 and toppled Ohio State 14-3 in the Cotton Bowl. Eli Drinkwitz was voted SEC Coach of the Year. What would Kentucky have to do to be SEC football’s surprise team of 2024? ...
Aside from his speed, athleticism and that whole playing-professional-football-for-a-living thing, there’s another reason to be jealous of Calvin Austin III these days. “I’m not on Twitter,” the Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver was telling me after practice on Tuesday at Saint Vincent College. “So, I haven’t seen it.” Austin might be the one person in our little corner of the world who has ...
RENTON, Wash. — Midway through Monday's practice, Geno Smith took a shotgun snap and assessed his options as left tackle Charles Cross swallowed blitzing Seahawks safety Rayshawn Jenkins. Smith cooly climbed the pocket and delivered a dart to crossing wide receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba, who bolted down the left sideline for a 50-yard gain. Unsurprisingly, the berm bordering the same sideline ...
With hair sprouting from the top of his visor, gold glinting from his ears and Squidward socks on his feet, Joseph Brown is fairly recognizable from the discus ring. But for the U.S. Olympic Track and Field Trials in June, the Mansfield, Texas, thrower wore an item he knew would make people remember him: a custom Pokémon-inspired singlet featuring the words, “Who’s that thrower?” Brown, one of ...
ANN ARBOR, Mich. — According to a draft of an NCAA Notice of Allegations, current Michigan football head coach Sherrone Moore is potentially facing punishment from the NCAA for a violation of rules stemming from an investigation into an illegal scouting/sign-stealing scheme, including allegedly deleting numerous text messages with former football staffer Connor Stalions, who is at the center ...
PHILADELPHIA — Tommy McCarthy turned down a broadcasting gig last winter, opting instead to give his baseball career one last swing. He played professional baseball for four seasons after graduating from The College of New Jersey. Reaching the majors remained his dream. McCarthy latched on with another independent ball team, had a strong spring training, and felt like he made the right choice. ...
LOS ANGELES — UCLA is no longer on its way to the Big Ten. It's arrived. What started as an exploratory conversation between Bruins athletic director Martin Jarmond and Chancellor Gene Block in the fall of 2021 is no longer just a hypothetical solution to solidifying the school's athletic future. After more than two years of intense preparation, the school on Friday will celebrate its first ...
SEATTLE — Pat Chun understands the frustrations. He's heard the complaints about the direction college athletics — and specifically football — is headed. The college athletics of 2024 are a far cry from what Chun watched growing up as a kid in Northeastern Ohio, Washington's new athletic director admitted. It's more transient now. The move he just made across the Cascades from the Palouse to ...
LEXINGTON, Ky. — The NCAA has placed the University of Kentucky football and swimming and diving programs on two years of probation as a result of separate rules violations. As part of the agreement between UK and the NCAA, the football program will vacate any wins from the 2021 season in which 11 players who accepted payment for hours they did not work in jobs at the UK hospital during the ...
LEXINGTON, Ky. — By the end of John Calipari’s 15-year run as Kentucky men’s basketball coach, his “messaging” was no longer effectively shaping public opinion in the Big Blue Nation. While the biggest issue that created the environment that led to Calipari self-exiling himself to “Hog-town” this spring was a lack of positive on-court results, a major secondary problem was that many UK fans ...
Veronica Fraley is scheduled to compete at the Paris Olympics for the first time Friday. So now probably is not a good time for distractions — like, say, rent being due back home in Nashville, Tenn., and not having the funds to cover it. Luckily, hip-hop pioneer Flavor Flav, billionaire Alexis Ohanian and others have Fraley covered. Fraley was a second-year graduate student at Vanderbilt ...
ATHENS, Ga. — This is Dan Jackson’s sixth college football season. So, Thursday represented his sixth preseason camp with the Georgia Bulldogs. For at least 50 Georgia players, Thursday’s practice was their first exposure to a Kirby Smart preseason. Fittingly, perhaps, there was a heat advisory posted in Athens-Clarke County. The veteran Jackson was asked if he had offered any advice to all ...
ATHENS, Ga. — This is Dan Jackson’s sixth college football season. So, Thursday represented his sixth preseason camp with the Georgia Bulldogs. For at least 50 Georgia players, Thursday’s practice was their first exposure to a Kirby Smart preseason. Fittingly, perhaps, there was a heat advisory posted in Athens-Clarke County. The veteran Jackson was asked if he had offered any advice to all ...
MIAMI — Whenever I’m in the mood to incite an argument or invite a reaction of skepticism or scoffing, I tell Miami Hurricanes fans how good — no, really good — the Canes are going to be in football this season. They want to believe so much, but can’t quite let themselves. The hopes have been high before, then dashed. Their scars have hardened. So they remind me (again) how the run of five ...
CHICAGO — Juanita Brown ended every pregame prayer the same way, from the time her son made the varsity high school team as a freshman until the final game of his Hall of Fame NFL career. Even that late in his football journey, Devin Hester called, often from NFL locker rooms. “Mom, it’s time for us to pray,” he said. Brown, who witnessed Hester’s fervent passion for the game from the time he ...
New federal protections for transgender students at U.S. schools and colleges launch this week, but not everywhere.