NewsOK.com (subscription) - Oklahoma City, OK, USA - Oklahoma State defensive line coach Glenn Spencer wasn't around last season when Richetti Jones redshirted, a year removed from a major high school hip injury.

So when Spencer uses terms like "fast” and "elusive” to describe Jones, it's a sign Jones might still fulfill expectations after being touted one of the nation's best pass rushers in the 2007 recruiting class.

"He's got some natural pass-rush skills,” Spencer said. "He's very fast, very elusive. The biggest part now is he has to get used to the physical grind of the Big 12.”

OSU coach Mike Gundy has been guarded in forecasting Jones' role for

Daily American Online (subscription) - Somerset, PA, USA - NASCAR Sprint Cup driver Clint Bowyer has been named as the third driver for the Race of Champions at Jennerstown Speedway.

Bowyer, the driver of the Richard Childress Racing No. 7 Jack Daniels Chevrolet, joins Ken Schrader and Rusty Wallace at the May 31 event. Bowyer has raced in the Sprint Cup for three years.
“I like him because he is a new driver, just coming out of the weekly series program,” said track promoter Joe Dirienzo.

Bowyer, who has been racing since he was 5, raced in the NASCAR Midwest Series, winning the championship in 2002. He is currently ninth in the

Nascar - USA - Faced with an unfamiliar, adverse situation as a go-or-go-home driver sitting outside the top 35 in points, Jamie McMurray responded to the challenge Friday by qualifying his car fifth at Martinsville Speedway, and backed it up Saturday by being the fastest Ford on the track in final Sprint Cup practice.

McMurray, a winner at Daytona last season, has struggled to find much success this season. But the Roush Fenway Racing driver has always been fairly strong at Martinsville.

"It's always been a really good place for me," said McMurray, who was second-fastest in final practice at 95.256 mph. In 10 starts he

ESPN - USA - Baseball commissioner Bud Selig wants the players named in the Mitchell report to bear some accountability for their involvement in performance-enhancing drugs -- and that is slowing progress in talks with the players' union on implementing Mitchell's recommendations, The New York Times reported.

Selig, while willing to forgo suspensions for players named in the report, wants those players to be held responsible in some other way, the Times reported, citing two lawyers who had been briefed on the talks and spoke on condition of anonymity.

That accountability could include counseling or fines.

"He wants a small dose of action and that will satisfy

Dallas Morning News - Dallas, TX, USA - Earlier this month, legendary Green Bay Packers quarterback Brett Favre announced his retirement after seventeen years in the NFL. He walked away holding most of the major records at his position, and as much as any athlete of his time he attracted not just admiration but veneration, inspiring even a "Packers Prayer" ("Our Favre . . . Hallowed be thine arm"). Favre has become a football deity, but he has also achieved the status of an exemplary American Catholic. Indeed, the website Catholic Online (www.catholic.org) names him second among the "Top 10 Catholic Heroes of the Super Bowl." For many

Bleacher Report - Menlo Park, CA, USA - It's no secret—in the confines of Gillette Stadium—that the Patriots' four linebackers are getting older.

The older age has been showing since 2001, and they have only added aging stars.

Many fans would like to see Darren McFadden in Patriot blue, but true fans want a young linebacker who can learn from what is possibly the best group of linebackers in the game.

I would love to see either Chris Long or Gholston holding up a Patriots jersey in April, from the stage of the NFL draft.

Coach Bill Belichick loves a defensive end that can step up and play linebacker when the need

OCRegister - Santa Ana, CA, USA - Rey Maualuga was becoming a popular man with a crowd he didn't want to be associated with after the Rose Bowl.

He had clearly stated his intention to return for his senior season, but that didn't stop prospective agents from filling his head with ideas as the Jan. 15 date to declare for the NFL draft approached.

"There were things thrown at me, things going in and out my ear like, 'You should go,' 'It's a mistake,' 'I don't want to say it, but you're going to come back and get hurt,'" Maualuga said.

"I just gambled with it and I stuck to

OCRegister - Santa Ana, CA, USA - With whoever is holding that purple and gold voodoo doll having pricked Derek Fisher's foot to make for the latest malady, the Lakers gave in to the negative energy Friday night. With a 114-111 loss to the Memphis Grizzlies — the worst road team in the NBA and team supposedly left with nothing after giving Pau Gasol to the Lakers two months ago — the Lakers dropped their third consecutive home game despite Kobe Bryant's 53 points.

Fisher played an unsteady and limited game with a partial tear of the peroneus longus tendon in his right foot, an injury that he

AFP - - Scott Sharp and Indy-car's Rahal Letterman Racing announced Friday they had reached a settlement in a legal dispute over where the American racer would compete this season.

Each side had brought a breach of contract lawsuit against the other following Sharp's racing for the team during the 2007 Indy-car season but those were wiped out by the settlement, the terms of which were not made public.

"We are pleased to put this mutually unpleasant matter behind us," said former Indianapolis 500 winner Bobby Rahal, who co-owns the team with US television talk show host David Letterman.

"We now can look forward to the