Appeals Court Grants NCAA a Stay; Prop. 16 Back in Place
The NCAA won a stay in court and can again use minimum test scores to determine eligibility of freshman athletes.
The three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals in Philadelphia granted the governing body a stay of a lower court ruling that struck down Proposal 16, the NCAA bylaw that dictated freshman eligibility requirements.
U.S. District Judge Ronald Buckwalter had ruled March 8 that the minimum test score requirement had an “unjustified disparate impact on African Americans.”
The ruling Tuesday put the requirements back in place, at least temporarily.
Olympics
A Salt Lake Organizing Committee panel is close to proposing a new conflict-of-interest and ethics code to clean up its scandal-tainted image.
One proposed rule would prohibit the SLOC from awarding contracts of $1 million or more to any company in which an SLOC trustee or employee had an interest of 5% or more.
The ad hoc panel also plans to propose new open meetings, open records and attendance policies at an April 8 meeting of the SLOC Board of Trustees Management Committee.
Juan Antonio Samaranch turned down a Senate invitation to testify about how his group is dealing with its worst scandal.
College Baseball
UCLA outfielder Bill Scott set Pacific 10 records with four home runs and 11 runs batted in, but the Bruins lost to Washington, 16-15, at Seattle. That completed a three-game sweep for the Huskies, their first over a team from California since 1911.
Scott, a sophomore from Granada Hills, hit two grand slams.
USC Coach Mike Gillespie earned his 500th victory as the Trojans routed San Diego State, 13-0. Gillespie is 500-283-2 in 13 seasons at USC.
Swimming
USC swimmer Lindsay Benko won the women’s 200-meter freestyle at the U.S. Championships at East Meadow, N.Y. Her time of 1:59.72 broke her school record of 2:02.07, set in the 1997 U.S. Open. Benko also anchored the winning 400-meter freestyle relay team.
USC’s Bela Szabados also set a school record by finishing third in the men’s 200 freestyle in 1:49.66. That race was won by Josh Davis, triple gold medalist in the Atlanta Olympics.
Tennis
Jana Novotna and Amanda Coetzer advanced in their second-round matchups, but Arantxa Sanchez Vicario and Amelie Mauresmo weren’t so lucky at the Family Circle Cup at Hilton Head Island, S.C.
Third-seeded Novotna downed Catalina Cristea, 6-4, 6-4, and Coetzer, the defending champion, defeated Elena Makarova of Russia, 6-3, 7-5.
Sanchez Vicario was upset by fellow Spaniard Gala Leon Garcia, 6-4, 6-3, and Mauresmo, the Australian Open runner-up, fell, 6-4, 0-6, 6-4, to fellow Frenchwoman Nathalie Dechy.
The Fed Cup women’s team matches between the United States and Croatia April 17-18 will be played at U.S. site yet to be determined, the U.S. Tennis Assn. announced. The Fed Cup committee had said last week that the matches would not be played in Zagreb because of bombing and political unrest in nearby Yugoslavia.
Boxing
Lennox Lewis may have to wait until November for a heavyweight title rematch with Evander Holyfield, Lewis’ promoter Panos Eliades said, with Las Vegas the most likely site. Eliades said Don King, Holyfield’s promoter, wants the fight to be held in America and is pushing for a November date.
A judge in Martinsville, Va., agreed to release former heavyweight champion Oliver McCall from the city jail May 1--almost six months early--if McCall remains in a drug rehabilitation program. McCall is serving a one-year sentence for resisting arrest and assault and battery of a law enforcement officer.
Volleyball
The world governing body of volleyball withdrew the Yugoslav team from this year’s World League tournament and replaced it with Portugal. Yugoslavia was to have played home matches in Belgrade and Novi Sad, two cities that have been targets of NATO airstrikes.
Miscellany
Investigators looking into possible academic cheating by University of Minnesota basketball players will be able to examine hundreds of documents from Jan Gangelhoff, who says she wrote papers for players. A lawyer for Gangelhoff said his firm has printed the papers from copies of computer disks. . . . Attorneys for Joe DiMaggio, known for guarding his privacy, asked that his will be locked in a safe, apparently to keep it out of the hands of collectors. The will was stored in the Broward County clerk’s office, near DiMaggio’s home in Hollywood, Fla., where the baseball great died March 8.
A tentative deal has been reached to sell the Denver Nuggets, the Colorado Avalanche and the Pepsi Center to a group headed by Bill Laurie, whose wife Nancy Walton is heir to the Wal-Mart Corp. fortune, the Denver Post reported. The $170-million Pepsi Center is under construction. . . . Six men, among them the convicted killer of Russian Ice Hockey Federation president Valentin Sych, were sentenced by a Moscow court. Vyacheslav Pchelintsev was given 19 years for killing Sych, the others terms of four to 15 years. . . . Linebacker Corey Miller, previously with the New York Giants, signed with the Minnesota Vikings.