NASCAR Considers Format Change for Driving Title

NASCAR is considering a radical change to its point system that would create a 10-race championship chase between the top 10 drivers in the standings.

The plan would lock in the top 10 drivers after the 26th race of the 2004 season. They would then compete over the final 10 races -- with their standings possibly being reset to zero -- for the Nextel Cup championship.

“The goal is to cast a bigger spotlight on the drivers in the championship hunt, specifically in the top 10,” NASCAR spokesman Mike Zizzo said Tuesday. “This plan would let them battle it out and give us the drama of a playoff stretch like other sports.”

NASCAR hopes to make a decision concerning the points system by the middle of January, Zizzo said. The season-opening Daytona 500 is Feb. 15.

In studying the changes, NASCAR applied the system to the last 10 years and found it would have changed the champion six times. Jimmie Johnson would have won it this season year and Matt Kenseth, who was crowned champion last week, would have finished seventh.

There has been much debate over changing the points system this season because of the way Kenseth earned his first title. His Roush Racing team was consistent all season, racking up a series-high 25 top-10 finishes while winning only one race. Ryan Newman, meanwhile, won a series-best eight races but finished sixth in the points.

Tennis

The site for the first round of the Davis Cup meeting between the United States and Austria from Feb. 6-8 will be the Mohegan Sun Arena, and the Americans are expecting that U.S. Open champion and No. 1-ranked Andy Roddick will play in the 2004 opener.

The site announcement will be made today by the United States Tennis Assn. at a news conference at the casino complex in Uncasville, Conn. The matches come less than a week after the end of the Australian Open, but Roddick has always considered the Davis Cup a priority in his schedule. Among the other candidates considered for the team are Mardy Fish, Taylor Dent and James Blake, as well as the top-ranked doubles team of Bob and Mike Bryan.

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Wimbledon champion Roger Federer of Switzerland has parted ways with his longtime coach, Peter Lundgren, according to Federer’s Web site. The 22-year-old said he is looking for “reorientation in his environment.”

Miscellany

The NCAA could charge former St. Bonaventure men’s basketball coach Jan van Breda Kolff with unethical conduct for his role in a player eligibility scandal that led to his dismissal.

Interim school President Father Dominic Monti said in an interview with Associated Press that the NCAA is pursuing the charge against van Breda Kolff.

Monti said the NCAA made the allegation against van Breda Kolff after its investigation. He said it was in addition to the three infractions St. Bonaventure acknowledged it committed, and will be raised at a hearing in Indianapolis on Friday.

The hearing, before the NCAA’s committee on infractions, is the final step before the college governing body will determine whether to pursue further sanctions after forward Jamil Terrell was ruled ineligible last spring for failing to meet junior college transfer guidelines.

The NCAA could rule next month.

When the team was stripped of 12 victories and barred from the postseason, players boycotted their final two games.

If the NCAA sanctions van Breda Kolff, now an assistant with the New Orleans Hornets, he could be restricted from returning to coach at the college level for a set period of time. Any school considering hiring van Breda Kolff during that time would have to petition the NCAA for approval.

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Olympic figure skating silver medalist Tim Goebel, who trains in El Segundo, has withdrawn from this weekend’s Grand Prix Final in Colorado Springs, Colo., because of ongoing problems with his skates. A similar problem led him to withdraw from Skate America this season.

Passings

Peter Spivak, 70, interim commissioner of the U.S. Football League at its founding in 1981, died Monday in Detroit of heart complications.

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Chuck Noe, 79, who coached basketball at Virginia Military Institute, Virginia Tech, Virginia Commonwealth and South Carolina in the 1960s and 70s, died in Richmond, Va., after a brief illness.