Wednesday's Sports in Brief
NFL
NFL owners have delayed a decision on implementing a 17-game regular season for 2021.
During a teleconference call Wednesday that replaced the usual December gathering of owners in Dallas, they opted to push back any move on the expanded season until early in 2021. The NFL and the players’ union agreed during collective bargaining talks earlier this year to adding one regular-season game to the schedule, but not before next season.
“We had a lengthy discussion on this, obviously it’s an important decision for us,” Commissioner Roger Goodell said. “We did not take any votes with respect to committing to do it. In the collective bargaining agreement, we have that right to do it.”
Goodell said a scheduling formula for a 17th game was approved unanimously, but did not immediately provide details.
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Saints record-setting quarterback Drew Brees has been designated to return from the club’s injured reserve list.
Brees’ change in status means he could be placed on the active roster and eligible to play as soon Sunday against the defending Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs. Coach Sean Payton has not indicated when he intends to play Brees, who was diagnosed with fractured ribs and a punctured lung after a sack on Nov. 15 this week.
Brees may practice with the Saints up to 21 days before the club has to activate him. He has missed four games, with Taysom Hill starting in his place. New Orleans has gone 3-1 with Hill under center, the first loss coming last Sunday at Philadelphia.
The 41-year-old Brees is the NFL’s all-time leader in yards passing and was playing efficiently before his injury, completing 73.5% of his passes for 2,196 yards and 18 touchdowns with just three interceptions. The Saints were 7-2 with Brees as starter.
NBA
NEW YORK (AP) — The NBA said Wednesday that only one new case of coronavirus was found in test results from 549 players taken since Dec. 10.
The league now has reported 57 player positive tests since the week preceding the start of training camps. Of those, 48 came in the first week of testing, followed by eight the following week and now one more.
That means the positive test rate in the league has gone from 8.8%, to 1.5%, to now just under 0.2%.
Those who return a confirmed positive test are isolated until they are cleared in accordance with the policies agreed upon by the league and the National Basketball Players Association.
COLLEGE SPORTS
Virginia Tech is ending the nation’s longest bowl streak at 27 years.
Hokies coach Justin Fuente said Wednesday the players decided to bypass postseason, ending their pandemic-hit season at 5-6.
“We had a team meeting and our players have decided to not play, and I’m going to support them 100%,” Fuente said. “It speaks to the difficulty of the season they’ve been through. There were players who wanted to play, but we were going to do this all together or not, and it became evident that it was a very difficult situation. There’s kids that would like to go home for Christmas. This is ultimately about our kids. I think they’ve sacrificed enough.”
Virginia Tech is the fifth Atlantic Coast Conference team to opt out, joining Boston College, Pittsburgh, Virginia and Georgia Tech.
Kansas State also withdrew from bowl consideration Wednesday, saying it paused all football activities indefinitely amid an outbreak of positive COVID-19 tests and contact tracing that would have prevented it from fielding enough players to play.
VILLANOVA, Pa. (AP) — Collin Gillespie and Jeremiah Robinson-Earl each scored 18 points for No. 7 Villanova, and coach Jay Wright won his 600th career game in an 85-66 victory over Butler on Wednesday night.
Wright (600-268) was already Villanova’s winningest coach and he became the 39th coach in Division I history to reach 600 wins. Wright is 478-183 since he was hired in 2001 and he has built the Wildcats into one of the elite programs in college basketball. Wright won national championships in 2016 and 2018 and again has the preseason favorite to win the Big East — a team expected to contend for another national title.
Wright earned the milestone in the latest home opener for Villanova since Dec. 22, 1992, against Vermont. The pandemic wreaked havoc on the schedule and Villanova had home games against Temple, Saint Joseph’s and DePaul canceled or postponed. So the Wildcats hit the road and went 4-1 in Connecticut’s “Bubbleville” and won at Texas and Georgetown.
The Pavilion was empty, and fans might have stayed home anyway in a normal year on a night when a major winter storm dumped several inches of snow on campus.
BASEBALL
NEW YORK (AP) — Major League Baseball has reclassified the Negro Leagues as a major league and will count the statistics and records of its 3,400 players as part of its history.
The league said Wednesday it was “correcting a longtime oversight in the game’s history” by elevating the Negro Leagues on the centennial of its founding. The Negro Leagues consisted of seven leagues, and MLB will include records from those circuits between 1920-48. The Negro Leagues began to dissolve one year after Jackie Robinson became MLB’s first Black player with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947.
Those leagues were excluded in 1969 when the Special Committee on Baseball Records identified six official “major leagues” dating to 1876.