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1 hour ago • By STEVE BATTERSON, sbatterson@qctimes.com (0) Comments IOWA CITY --- When two-time defending NCAA champion Penn State rides into Carver-Hawkeye Arena tonight, Tom Brands is looking for a different type of rodeo. The top-ranked Nittany Lions handled the third-ranked Hawkeyes a year ago, winning 22-12 at home and the Iowa wrestling coach expects an improved approach from his team in today’s 8 p.m. clash between the only remaining unbeaten teams in Big Ten action. “The number one thing we need to do is fight,” Brands said. As an example, Brands points to a 174-pound match in last...

What made Wayne Gretzky a hockey legend or Ronaldo a soccer star may have had more to do with brains than brawn. Professional athletes process complex visual scenes faster than other people, a new study finds.

Fauja Singh, an Indian-born British citizen, was dubbed the 'Turbaned Tornado' after taking up running at the age of 89. He says this year's Hong Kong Marathon will be his last.A 101-year-old Sikh regarded as the world's oldest marathon runner will quit after one final run at next month's Hong Kong race, media reports said on Thursday. Indian-born British national Fauja Singh admitted age was finally catching up with him and he had decided not to compete after the Hong Kong Marathon on February 24, five weeks before his 102nd birthday on April 1. "But I will keep running for...

Garrett McNamara of Hawaii rode a giant wave in Nazaré, Portugal yesterday. It was claimed to be 100 feet high, although the Guinness Book of World Records has not yet confirmed the measurement (the official measurement is usually smaller than initial estimates). Nazaré has unusual conditions for making huge waves … an undersea trench narrows right before the shore, shooting the sea up to the sky at the last minute.

Legendary quarterback Dan Marino fathered a secret lovechild with a junior network employee and paid her millions of dollars to keep it quiet, it emerged today. The former Miami Dolphins star cheated on Claire, his wife of 28 years, with Donna Savattere, a production assistant at CBS Sports.

Kwame Harris has responded to Chris Culliver’s comments on gays in the NFL. The former 49er and openly gay football player is responding to Culliver’s suggestion that gay players would not be welcome in the team's locker room. “It’s surprising that in 2013 Chris Culliver would use his 15 minutes to spread vitriol and hate. I recognize that these are comments that he may come to regret and that he may come to see that gay people are not so different than straight people,” Harris told NBC Bay Area exclusively. Harris was outed as a gay man just this week....

What happens when the guy in the costume stops being cute and starts getting real.

Derek Brown quietly walked into Auburn Riverside's gym last summer preceded by a swirl of hype. Friends and basketball players who knew Derek had slipped first-year Riverside coach Jason Brown reports on the high school team's new transfer. He attacks the basket like a madman. He can shoot. He's going to take somebody's spot. "Of course," Jason says now, "you always have to take that with a grain of salt." Jason had yet to see the mysterious transfer who spent much of the previous year on Beamer's bench. All he knew was hearsay: Derek could play and his mom died...

Ray Lewis’ final season and Baltimore’s run through the AFC to the Super Bowl has been described as destiny or a fateful miracle, but it appears as though Lewis’ recovery from a torn triceps was aided by the use of a banned substance. Sports Illustrated reported that among Lewis’ many treatments for his torn triceps, suffered Oct. 14, was a deer-antler spray, which is banned by the NFL. Philly.com published quotes from the SI article from phone conversations between Lewis and Mitch Ross, the owner of “Sports with Alternatives to Steroids” (S.W.A.T.S.).

Baltimore Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis may have used a banned substance to recover from his torn triceps in order to come back and play this season. According to a report in Sports Illustrated, Lewis contacted a company to obtain a "a deer-antler velvet extract after tearing his triceps in October."

Florentino Fernandez, whose entertaining brawling style helped him become one of the top middleweight contenders and popular local fighters of the 1960s, died of a heart attack Monday morning in Miami, his son, Florentino Jr., said. Fernandez was 76.

Just when you thought yoga couldn’t get any hotter – because it seems everyone is doing it – here comes a New York insider’s guide to the practice that is causing devotees to think again. In his investigation into Bikram, the most fashionable and extreme form of yoga, that is conducted in rooms of scorching heat, writer Benjamin Lorr warns that potential followers must go into it with eyes open: this is a fitness regime that should come with a health warning.

Denver Nuggets forward Kenneth Faried has breached protocol for most professional athletes, taking a stand on an issue still controversial throughout the United States. Appearing in a video posted Friday, Faried introduced the world to his two moms, his birth mother and her partner, and proceeded to make the case for same-sex civil unions. One excerpt: I support civil union because it gives…gays and lesbians the right to make decision on their own if they want to get married and let them choose who they want to be with. Even straight people have drama and stuff, but i really don’t...

Franco Harris doesn't believe the NCAA sanctions against Penn State will stand, nor is he convinced that the trials of former Penn State officials will occur. Further, the former Penn State running back said, he sees opinions shifting about his alma mater's role in the Jerry Sandusky scandal. "The narrative is starting to change," Harris said Friday. "The [grand jury] presentment and the Freeh Report are falling apart. The NCAA [sanctions], that will fall apart. There will be no trials for [Tim] Curley and [Gary] Schultz. There's no case. We're starting to find the truth." More than 200 turned...

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) — San Francisco city officials preparing for the 49ers’ Super Bowl game against the Baltimore Ravens are hoping to avoid a repeat of the violence and vandalism that marred World Series celebrations last year. A total of 36 people were arrested during post-game celebrations in October after the San Francisco Giants’ World Series victory against the Detroit Tigers, 23 of them for felonies. Celebrants lit a number of bonfires in the middle of Mission Street, broke windows and, in one notorious incident, set a Muni 8X-Bayshore Express bus on fire at Market and Kearny streets.

Former Viking Fred Smoot has come a long way since the 2005 Love Boat incident. Or maybe not. (Doug Pensinger/Getty Images) Related Fred Smoot played only two seasons with the Minnesota Vikings, but he'll never be forgotten thanks to his history-making role planning the team's 2005 sex cruise on Lake Minnetonka. The cornerback hasn't played in the NFL since 2009, but he's still making a splash. Smoot was arrested on drunken driving charges on Dec. 30 in Washington, D.C. That's bad. He then proceeded to wet his pants in the police station. That's worse. Police detected "a strong odor of...

When the Baltimore Ravens defeated the San Francisco 49ers on Thanksgiving night in 2011 – and John Harbaugh beat younger brother, Jim, in the first-ever NFL matchup of coaching brothers – Jack Harbaugh peeked into the Ravens’ locker room after the game. Jack Harbaugh, John and Jim’s father, was impressed by how ecstatic everyone was. There was nothing but celebration and smiling faces. “I thought to myself, we really aren’t needed here,” Jack Harbaugh recalled, speaking to local and national media during a Jan. 24 conference call. He walked across the hallway at the Baltimore football stadium. The mood in...

First it was bacon, now it's chicken wings. With less than two weeks to go before the big game, football fans may find it a bit harder to find their favorite Super Bowl snack. The National Chicken Council released a report that said the demand for wings this year is at “an all-time high” due to decreased wing production caused by the high cost of corn and feed prices. Wings are currently the highest priced portion of a chicken and cost $2.11 a pound in the Northeast, up 12 percent from last year.

During a teleconference on Wednesday to discuss an embarrassing breach of conduct in the NCAA enforcement department's investigation of Miami, a reporter prefaced his question to Mark Emmert with a courtesy: "Good afternoon, how are you?" "I've had better days," the NCAA president replied. For your sake, Mark, here's hoping you've had a better 26 months.

the Lingerie Football League has announced plans to rename itself the “Legends Football League.” As part of the move, the LFL will be ditching the thing that made the league noteworthy in the first place: lingerie. Other changes include new team logos absent of "sexy female figures," redesigned shoulder pads to increase protection, and changing their slogan from "True Fantasy Football" to "Women of the Gridiron." The players will no longer wear modified bras, panties, and garters while playing tackle football on turf (ouch!), instead favoring more traditional performance wear which will “replace all lingerie aspects” of the league’s uniforms....