Kurt Busch misses deadline for IndyCar Series race at Fontana

Kurt Busch said Thursday that he will not race in IndyCar’s season finale at Fontana.

Busch said the deadline has passed by which he and Andretti Autosport needed to notify Chevrolet they’d need an engine for the Oct. 19 race at Auto Club Speedway. Busch wanted to run the race as a possible warmup for next year’s Indianapolis 500.

He has not given up on trying to run Indy next season for Andretti.

“I was just hoping to have more of my homework done, more experience and more of an education, which would have meant to race Fontana this year and to be better prepared for Indianapolis next year,” Busch said.

Busch made the Chase for the Sprint Cup championship this year driving for Furniture Row Racing, the first time a single-car team has made the Chase in its 10-year history. He’s joining Stewart-Haas Racing next season.

COLLEGES

Story details drug use at Oklahoma St.

A handful of former Oklahoma State football players say they dealt marijuana while they were at the school and some claimed drugs were rampant in the program, Sports Illustrated reported.

The article was the third of five planned by Sports Illustrated looking at alleged misconduct in the Oklahoma State football program dating to 2001 under coaches Les Miles and Mike Gundy.

SI says it interviewed more than 60 former players and found evidence of potential NCAA violations, including boosters and assistant coaches paying players thousands of dollars for their play; sham jobs arranged by boosters; academic misconduct; and football program hostesses who had sex with recruits.

Oklahoma State said it has notified the NCAA about the allegations and started its own investigation.

ETC.

Armstrong returns Olympic medal

Lance Armstrong has returned his Olympic bronze cycling medal, the latest fallout from his confession to using performance-enhancing drugs.

Armstrong won the medal at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney. The International Olympic Committee in January vacated the medal Armstrong won in the road time trial. Armstrong tweeted Thursday that he gave it back and a U.S. Olympic Committee spokesman released a statement confirming its return.

Mark Higgins, who has been a manager and spokesman for Armstrong for several years, gave the medal to USOC Chief Executive Scott Blackmun at the Dallas-Fort Worth airport Thursday.

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Darren Clarke will return to the PGA Tour for the first time in seven years, taking advantage of the five-year exemption he earned by winning the 2011 British Open.

The 45-year-old Northern Irishman hasn’t won a tournament since that British Open. If he doesn’t qualify for the European Tour’s finals, he could rejoin the PGA Tour at the McGladrey Championship in Georgia on Nov. 7.

“I’ve decided I will be taking up my U.S. tour card next season, but that does not mean abandoning Europe,” Clarke said in a statement.

Clarke forfeited his PGA membership after his first wife, Heather, succumbed to cancer in 2006, choosing to concentrate on the European Tour to be closer to his two sons. He has since remarried and decided to take advantage of the remainder on his exemption.

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Frank Tripucka, who quarterbacked Notre Dame to a 9-0-1 record and a No. 2 ranking in 1948, has died. He was 85.

His son, Kelly Tripucka, a former Notre Dame basketball standout, said his father died of congestive heart failure at his home in Woodland Park, N.J. Obituary, AA5