Minnesota Stripped of Title

The Big Ten stripped Minnesota of its 1997 men’s basketball conference championship for an academic fraud scandal that already has cost the team five scholarships.

The Big Ten also vacated any individual and team records and conference honors of any player or coach cited in the NCAA report.

The NCAA report spanned the 1993-94 season through the 1998-99 season. The Big Ten reviewed the report by the governing body before issuing its penalties.

However, the Big Ten will not change its conference standings or awards for those seasons. But all references to Minnesota’s performances, the championship or other awards during those years will be removed in future Big Ten publications.

Last month, the NCAA put the men’s athletic department on four years’ probation and took away five basketball scholarships in what it said was one of the worst cases of academic fraud in 20 years.

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CBS will have a new voice for the NCAA tournament thanks to NBC’s decision to furlough NBA analyst Bill Walton for three weeks in March.

Walton will take the spot usually held by Al McGuire. The former Marquette coach will not work this season because of leukemia.

CBS Sports President Sean McManus called NBC Sports executives Dick Ebersol and Ken Schanzer when he realized he needed to replace McGuire.

Walton, a former UCLA All-American and Hall of Famer, worked college basketball for CBS in 1991-92.

Walton will team with Dick Enberg at courtside for the first two weeks of the tournament, which begins March 15. He will join Greg Gumbel and Clark Kellogg on the studio set for the Final Four in Minneapolis on March 31 and April 2.

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Texas Christian has rescheduled one of its basketball games to avoid a conflict with the football team’s bowl game.

Texas Arlington has agreed to move the date of its scheduled basketball game at TCU up one day, to Dec. 19.

The game was originally scheduled for Dec. 20, the same night that the 13th-ranked Horned Frog football team plays in the Mobile Alabama Bowl.