Rutgers files suit against Big East

Rutgers University is suing the Big East Conference, trying to avoid paying an exit fee.

Rutgers is trying to avoid a $10-million hit for leaving to join the Big Ten. Big East bylaws state that a school must give 27 months’ notice and pay a $10-million withdrawal fee.

The suit says the Big East selectively enforced the rules. Rutgers claims some schools did and some did not have to give notice or pay the fee on their way out of the embattled conference. The Big East allowed Syracuse, Pittsburgh, West Virginia and Texas Christian to leave the league before the 27-month period had run its course.

The conference voted to increase its exit fee from $5 million to $10 million last month.

The ever-changing Western Athletic Conference is adding Chicago State University next July, meaning the league will keep its automatic qualifying berths for the NCAA men’s and women’s basketball tournaments for another year.

Chicago State joins Cal State Bakersfield, Grand Canyon, Idaho, New Mexico State, Seattle and Utah Valley in the WAC, which is losing the University of Denver to the Summit League next year.

ETC.

UCLA’s Savage gets contract extension

UCLA has signed baseball Coach John Savage to a contract extension through the 2017 season, the school announced. Savage has been UCLA’s coach for eight seasons and has led the Bruins to six NCAA tournament appearances, College World Series appearances in 2010 and 2012 and Pac-12 Conference championships the last two seasons. Terms of the deal were not announced.

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Phil Mickelson, who won the PGA Tour event then called the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic in 2002 and 2004, will open his 2013 season at the Humana Challenge in La Quinta, Jan. 17-20. Mickelson also began his 2012 season there, finishing tied for 49th.

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Eight years after winning Olympic medals in Athens, four track and field athletes from Eastern Europe were ordered to hand them back because of positive doping tests.

The International Olympic Committee executive board disqualified four athletes whose Athens doping samples were retested earlier this year and came back positive for steroids, including shotput gold medalist Yuriy Bilonog of Ukraine.

Also stripped were hammer throw silver medalist Ivan Tskikhan of Belarus and two bronze medalists — women’s shotputter Svetlana Krivelyova of Russia and discus thrower Irina Yatchenko of Belarus.

The IOC said it will ask the International Assn. of Athletics Federations to get the four medals back and readjust the results and rankings from the Athens Games.

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Formula One is set to have 20 races on its schedule for 2013 after an unconfirmed European event was included to fill a vacancy left by the removal of the Grand Prix of America.

At a meeting of the World Motor Sport Council in Istanbul, Turkey, the FIA moved the German GP forward from July 14 to July 7, creating a space for July 21 that is “reserved for another European event.”

The governing body says the race is subject to the “approval of the relevant national sporting authorities.”

The Grand Prix of America, originally scheduled to be held in New Jersey next year, was postponed in October until 2014.