College Sports

ROY STEINFORT, 88 Former Associated Press executive Roy Steinfort, a veteran newsman and former vice president of the Associated Press who turned the agency's radio operations into a service providing news to millions of listeners worldwide, died Sunday at age 88. Steinfort died after a short battle with cancer, said his wife, Patricia Milton. In 2005, he had been seriously injured in an auto accident near his Leesburg, Va., home. In a career spanning some 40 years, Steinfort went from covering sports in his native Kentucky to running a weekly paper to chief of all broadcast operations for the AP. In 1951, Steinfort joined the AP in New Orleans, where he became state editor, covering legislative affairs, hearings into Louisiana organized crime and college sports.

Texas Christian@Utah 8 p.m. [CBS College Sports] Utah is eighth in the latest Bowl Championship Series rankings, and the undefeated Utes (right) are trying to become the latest team to crash a BCS bowl from outside the power conferences. Plus, you can't say "Utes" without thinking of My Cousin Vinny.

College basketball Indiana@Michigan 7 p.m. [ESPN] What, no bowl game? Well, apart from some all-star football, college sports can turn its attention to basketball. This Big Ten game features the No. 10 Hoosiers vs. the Wolverines, who are adjusting to a new coach. Indiana (12-1, 1-0) is led by guard Eric Gordon (averaging 23.5 points) and forward D.J. White (16.4 points, 10.1 rebounds). Michigan is just 4-10, 0-2 under first-year coach John Beilein.

It's no snap playing quarterback for Towson this season, even if you're Sean Schaefer. In five games, the Tigers' precocious junior has already thrown 11 interceptions - two more than he threw in 10 games last season - and been sacked 17 times. A run of errant snaps out of the shotgun formation and an injury-depleted offensive line have helped wreck Towson's precision pass game. Schaefer averaged 303.3 passing yards a game in 2006 to lead NCAA Division I-AA, but is averaging just 223.8 this year.

COLLEGE PARK -- Paul Nisenson was one of the 20 or so students who waited in line last night to talk some more to Sonny Vaccaro. Vaccaro spent a lifetime, made a nice living and a far-less-nice reputation talking to young men Nisenson's age, on the cusp of adulthood, eager for riches and immersed in sports. For nearly all of those years, those kids were basketball players. Now, because he has something else to sell besides shoes, Vaccaro's audience is students such as Nisenson, a freshman from New Jersey, and some 200 of his classmates at the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business.

James C. Elliot, a retired sportswriter and copy editor for The Sun who covered the Orioles for nearly two decades and was awarded a World Series ring in the process, died of cancer Sunday at St. Joseph Medical Center. The longtime Lutherville resident was 84. Born and raised in Taneytown, the son of a physician, Mr. Elliot was a 1938 graduate of Taneytown High School. He interrupted his studies at what was then Western Maryland College to enlist in the Army Air Forces during World War II and was assigned as a technical instructor.

We're inundated with roaring headlines about athletes using performance-enhancing drugs in the major leagues, the NFL, the Olympics, the Tour de France and even high school sports, but what about college football? There's barely a whisper, much less a roar. Something is wrong with that. Are we supposed to believe that football jocks inclined to juicing do so before they get to college and after they reach the pros, but not while on campus? Please. Rumors of widespread steroid use have dogged the college game for years.

There's a man who runs a nonprofit organization. He has righteous goals and thus receives generous assistance from the government, which helps fund his noble calling. This man earned $870,000 in a single year for his nonprofit work, wears nice suits, travels to nice places. It's difficult to tell whether this man - NCAA president Myles Brand - is fooling himself or trying to fool everyone else. We could know soon enough, though. Purporting to educate college students, the big business of college sports has taken hundreds of millions of dollars from the federal government, moving huge sums of money - enough to feed entire nations - without the worry of having to pay taxes.

Aweek ago, when people were taking turns bashing Duke University and the sport of lacrosse over assault and rape accusations, they overlooked something. The problems at Duke aren't just a lacrosse issue, but a college sports issue. And instead of being patient and waiting for the judicial process to run its due course, everyone was in a rush to judgment. That's the way our society operates, especially the media. We overhype everything. Geraldo Rivera from Fox was on the Duke campus, and so was CBS News.

Mike Hermann, who has served as director of athletics at Niagara University for the past eight years, was today named director of athletics at Towson University. He succeeds Dr. Wayne Edwards who is retiring at the end of June after 11 years at Towson. The appointment becomes effective July 1. "Towson University is focused on its future, and a very competitive athletic program is a big part of that future," Towson University President Dr. Robert L. Caret said in a release. "I know that Mike Hermann has the background, skills and vision to build on what we have accomplished and help make that future a reality."