Pro Football

Pro Bowl center Mark Stepnoski signed a one-year, $1.2-million contract with the Dallas Cowboys, giving the club 10 returning offensive starters from last season’s Super Bowl champions.

The deal includes a $500,000 signing bonus, and comes two days after a published report said the San Francisco 49ers were preparing to offer Stepnoski $1.3 million for a one-year contract.

Craig (Ironhead) Heyward was sent home by the Atlanta Falcons and told to stick to his diet after weighing in at 298 pounds.

Kansas City Chief wide receiver Tim Barnett has returned to jail to complete a 10-day sentence for disorderly conduct after withdrawing an appeal of the case, which involved a gun threat to his wife.

Miscellany

The NCAA Presidents Commission, in decisions that could anger many coaches and administrators, is refusing to go along with softened academic requirements and is forcing a football playoff committee to disband.

A special academic committee had recommended on Tuesday that toughened freshman eligibility standards, Prop. 16, be relaxed. The committee said an additional 500 minority athletes would graduate under its new proposal, which reduces the importance of standardized test scores many blacks label as racially discriminatory.

The 1996 venue for Olympic yachting and beach volleyball was in jeopardy after the developer who was to build athletic dorms and a marina withdrew from the project in Savanna, Ga.

Victory Dream, a favorite for the Hambletonian for 3-year-old trotters Aug. 6 at the Meadowlands, will go to stud in 1995 under a $1.2-million syndication.

Forty-four players were suspended and fined a total of $4,425 by the Class-A Florida State League after a benches-emptying brawl during a game between the Charlotte Rangers and the West Palm Beach Expos.

Yale’s junior varsity lightweight eight beat Nottingham and Union Boat Club in a tight race in the Thames Cup in the Henley Royal Regatta at Henley, England.

Names in the News

Texas A&M;’s athletic director, Wally Groff, faces misdemeanor criminal charges in the latest fallout from a 10-month state and FBI probe.