Sports Briefs October 25, 2011
Baseball
Ben Cherington is set to become the new general manager of the Boston Red Sox today, replacing his former boss, Theo Epstein.
Cherington's promotion from assistant general manager will be announced at an afternoon news conference, the team said Monday. It had been expected for several weeks while the Chicago Cubs were working out details for Epstein to join them.
On Friday, both teams announced that Epstein had resigned from the Red Sox to become president of baseball operations for the Cubs.
The teams said then they would delay any news conference until today, a day off after Game 5 of the World Series.
Football
The Big 12 board of directors has expressed a "strong desire" for Missouri to remain in the conference.
The Big 12 says in a release that all 10 current members and TCU, which will join next season, participated in the Monday's meeting.
Three days ago the Missouri Board of Curators gave Chancellor Brady Deaton the authority to move the school out of the Big 12. Missouri is considering a move to the Southeastern Conference.
• Nevada running back Mike Ball, Louisiana Tech linebacker Adrien Cole were named the Western Athletic Conference offensive, defensive players of the week, respectively.
Ball, a junior, had 216 all-purpose yards and two touchdowns in Nevada's 45-38 win over Fresno State.
Cole, a senior, had 14 tackles (9 solo) including two for a loss of six yards and broke up a pass in Louisiana Tech's 24-17 win at Utah State.
• Defensive tackles from Montana and Montana State share this week's Big Sky Conference defensive player of the week honors.
Montana senior Bryan Waldhauser of Worden tallied 10 tackles, including eight solo tackles, 2.5 sacks and four tackles for a loss in UM's 28-24 win at Northern Arizona. His final sack clinched the win on a fourth-down play with one minute remaining.
Montana State junior Zach Minter of Glendale, Ariz., had seven solo tackles with three tackles for a loss and two sacks in MSU's 31-21 win at Northern Colorado.
Eastern Washington wide receiver Nicholas Edwards was named the offensive player of the week after catching four touchdown passes as the Eagles rallied for a 42-35 overtime win over Sacramento State.
Hockey
Flyers 4, Maple Leafs 2: Jaromir Jagr and Scott Hartnell each scored their first two goals of the season to lift host Philadelphia over Toronto.
Panthers 2, Canadiens 1: Scottie Upshall scored in the third period to help visiting Florida beat Montreal.
Rangers 2, Jets 1: Ryan Callahan scored in the third to lift New York past Winnipeg.
Auto racing
IndyCar drivers and officials debated how to make open-wheel racing safer at a meeting in Indianapolis. Now comes the hard part: turning talk into action.
More than a dozen IndyCar drivers met for three hours with series CEO Randy Bernard and Brian Barnhart, the series' president of competition, about preventing another fatal accident.
The meeting came eight days after two-time Indianapolis 500 winner Dan Wheldon was killed in a fiery, 15-car crash in the season finale at Las Vegas and less than 48 hours after he was buried in his adopted hometown of St. Petersburg, Florida.
"How we react to this is critical, and we're very encouraged with what happened today in terms of ideas," four-time IndyCar champ Dario Franchitti said. "Finger-pointing is not going to do any good at all, and we're all unified going forward in one direction."
- The Associated Press