Connect with us

Published

on

EVANSTON, Ill. — Mark Jackson had never visited Northwestern. By the time he first stepped on campus, he had already agreed to leave Villanova and take over as the school’s new athletic director.

“My wife, she was like, ‘Aren’t you going to go visit the campus?'” Jackson said Tuesday, less than a week after he left Villanova to take the job sight unseen. “I was like, I don’t need to, I’ve talked to enough people that said this place is just off the charts.”

Jackson, 51, had been athletic director at Villanova since 2015, overseeing a department that won 34 Big East championships in various sports and two men’s basketball NCAA tournament titles.

The Boston-area product was an administrator at the University of Southern California during the dominant run its football team had under coach Pete Carroll and at Syracuse before taking over at Villanova. He also worked in the NFL for the Oakland Raiders and New England Patriots, and has been around some of the most successful coaches from Bill Belichick to Carroll to Jay Wright.

Jackson wasn’t necessarily looking to leave Villanova. But Northwestern clearly has plenty going for it besides its Big Ten membership and sterling academic reputation.

The school just north of Chicago has in recent years invested heavily in its athletic facilities, building the sparkling $270 million Walter Athletics Center and Ryan Fieldhouse indoor practice facility located along Lake Michigan. The basketball arena got a major overhaul. The biggest project of all is happening at the moment, with a new Ryan Field being constructed on the site of the old football stadium.

The football team will play most of its home games the next two years at a temporary lakefront stadium that opened Saturday to rave reviews, with its views of the water and the Chicago skyline. The Wildcats broke in their temporary home by beating Miami (Ohio) 13-6.

The program was one of the country’s biggest surprises last year, winning eight games and a bowl berth in coach David Braun’s first season. The men’s basketball team made its second straight NCAA tournament.

There are also lingering scars. Besides helping Northwestern navigate a new landscape that includes NIL collectives and the possibility that schools will be able to directly compensate athletes while attempting to regulate payments from boosters, Jackson might also have to help the school heal.

“As I mentioned to my staff this morning, doing the right thing isn’t always easy, but it’s always right,” Jackson said. “We’re going to commit to that. Are we going to be perfect? Probably not. But we’re going to proactively educate around the pitfalls around everything, whether that’s academic integrity, you look at gambling, to what consent means on a college campus.”

Jackson takes over after former AD Derrick Gragg was moved into an advisory role with the university following a hazing and abuse scandal that engulfed the department.

The university initially suspended longtime football coach Pat Fitzgerald after allegations of hazing and abuse within the team. An investigation by attorney Maggie Hickey of law firm ArentFox Schiff did not find “sufficient” evidence that the coaching staff knew about ongoing hazing but concluded there were “significant opportunities” to find out about it.

With public pressure mounting, school president Michael Schill fired Fitzgerald. Gragg was on vacation at the time of the controversy and never addressed the team in person. Fitzgerald is suing the school for wrongful termination.

Later, the Chicago Tribune reported that a Northwestern investigation substantiated accusations of bullying behavior by baseball coach Jim Foster, who was hired by Gragg. Foster was not fired until after the investigation became public.

A separate investigation led by former U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch recommended Northwestern enhance its hazing-prevention training. The school has taken steps to help prevent hazing and report misconduct.

Jackson mentioned the “uncompromising philosophy” of “treating each other well” and vowed to examine how Northwestern oversees each team.

“When you’re a head coach overseeing 110 football players versus a lacrosse team that may have 26 women, the challenges are different,” Jackson said. “Each program, I think, requires nuances. We want somebody immersed in that program to work with the head coach. Whether that’s fundraising, whether that’s compliance, whether it’s ticketing, the academic piece.

“I want our administrators in the weeds and connected to each and every program.”

Continue Reading

Sports

Rays’ 8-run comeback largest in MLB this season

Published

on

By

Rays' 8-run comeback largest in MLB this season

TAMPA, Fla. — The Tampa Bay Rays overcame an eight-run deficit to beat the Baltimore Orioles 12-8 on Wednesday night in the largest comeback in the majors this season.

Tampa Bay matched the biggest comeback in franchise history. The Rays also rallied from eight down in a 10-8 victory over the Los Angeles Angels on Aug. 18, 2012, and in a 10-9 win over the Toronto Blue Jays on July 25, 2009.

It tied the Orioles’ largest blown lead over the past 50 seasons. Baltimore last gave away an eight-run lead on April 28, 2017, against the New York Yankees. The Orioles led that game 9-1 entering the bottom of the sixth inning before losing 14-11 in 10 innings.

Baltimore had an eight-run second inning on Wednesday. Colton Cowser smacked a three-run home run, Cedric Mullins added a solo shot, Gunnar Henderson had an RBI single and Ramón Laureano hit a three-run homer.

Tampa Bay’s Christopher Morel hit an RBI double in the third, and Jake Mangum‘s two-run single cut it to 8-3. Curtis Mead hit a two-out triple in the fourth and scored on a Junior Caminero single. Brandon Lowe‘s two-run homer in the fifth made it 8-8. And Jonathan Aranda had a two-run single in the Rays’ four-run seventh.

Lowe has at least a hit and a run in seven consecutive games, the longest active streak of its kind in the majors. He is batting .464 (13-of-28) with two home runs, five RBIs and eight runs during that span.

Caminero had four hits and two RBIs for the Rays.

Entering Wednesday, teams were 0-134 when trailing by eight or more runs at any point this season.

“It’s a tough game,” Orioles manager Tony Mansolino said. “It really hurts. But tomorrow, we’ll have to bounce back and try to figure out how to win a game.”

Three teams came back from eight runs behind last season in the majors. Pittsburgh was the most recent team to rally from more than that, erasing a nine-run deficit in a 13-12 victory over the Cincinnati Reds on Nov. 23, 2023.

ESPN Research and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Continue Reading

Sports

Yanks finally score, otherwise sputter in latest loss

Published

on

By

Yanks finally score, otherwise sputter in latest loss

NEW YORK — The good news for the Yankees on Wednesday was they scored a run after 30 consecutive scoreless innings. The bad news was they again didn’t score enough to win.

The Yankees fell to the Los Angeles Angels 3-2 to extend their season-high losing streak to six games. The Angels will look to complete a four-game sweep Thursday afternoon at Yankee Stadium. The Yankees, whose lead in the AL East has shrunk to 1½ games, will look to emerge from an offensive funk that has produced seven runs in seven games.

“That’s baseball,” Yankees right fielder Aaron Judge said. “We know what we signed up for. You’re going to play 162. You’re going to hit a little rut like this, but you can’t give up. You can’t mope about it. You just got to show up the next day and you got to be ready to play.”

Jazz Chisholm Jr. ended the Yankees’ scoreless innings streak in the second inning with a moonshot solo home run down the right-field line, giving New York its first run since the ninth inning Saturday against the Boston Red Sox. Two innings later, Cody Bellinger launched another solo shot to give the Yankees their first lead since last Thursday when they defeated the Kansas City Royals 1-0.

But the Yankees mustered only one other hit — a ground ball from Bellinger in the sixth inning that was ruled a single after it bounced off Trent Grisham as he ran to second base for the inning’s second out. Yankees manager Aaron Boone said he believed his team’s at-bats Wednesday were better than they were Tuesday — when he said he noticed his players pressing — and pointed to four walks as progress.

But the Yankees went 0-for-3 with runners in scoring position and are 5-for-48 (.104) with 12 strikeouts, four walks and three RBIs in such situations over their past seven games.

“We just got to break through now like we’re capable of offensively,” Boone said.

Judge, the two-time AL MVP who is a heavy favorite to win a third this season, has gone 1-for-19 with 11 strikeouts, two intentional walks and a home run over the past five games. He went 0-for-4 on Wednesday with two strikeouts, a 94.7 mph groundout and 107.9 mph flyout.

“Guys are pitching, they’re doing their job,” Judge said. “Sometimes we’re faltering on doing our job. But it’s tough to say. I think it just comes down to us not executing, us not doing our job. Maybe a little passive in certain situations. But all we can do is show up tomorrow ready to go.”

The Angels broke through to retake the lead in the eighth inning Wednesday without a hit when, after three walks, shortstop Anthony Volpe mishandled a ground ball on what should’ve been a routine, inning-ending double play. Volpe, a Gold Glove winner in 2023, was charged with his ninth error of the season, the second most among shortstops across the majors.

“Right off the bat, I got to be aggressive, go get the ball, make the play,” Volpe said. “As far as that, that’s all it is. It’s the first read off the bat.”

The lack of execution trickled to the offensive side in the bottom of the inning. The Yankees appeared ready to mount a rally when Jasson Dominguez walked and Oswald Peraza was hit by a pitch to begin the inning. But they were left stranded as Grisham, who was given the green light to swing away with one strike after failing to drop down a bunt, popped out, before Judge flied out and Bellinger popped out to extinguish the threat.

“When we’re not scoring a lot of runs, we got to execute on the highest level on the little things,” Boone said. “And we haven’t done that this week a handful of times when we had some opportunities.”

Continue Reading

Sports

Singer defied Dodgers, belted anthem in Spanish

Published

on

By

Singer defied Dodgers, belted anthem in Spanish

Latin singer Nezza said that she is “super proud” of performing the national anthem in Spanish at Dodger Stadium on Saturday night and that she has “no regrets.”

Her surprising 90-second rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” before the Los Angeles Dodgers‘ game against the Giants — and a behind-the-scenes video she shared on social media of team representatives discouraging it beforehand — quickly went viral. It has become a flashpoint for Dodgers fans frustrated by the team’s lack of vocal support for immigrant communities impacted by the deportation raids across the U.S., including numerous neighborhoods in and around Los Angeles.

“This is my moment to show everyone that I am with them, that we have a voice and with everything that’s happening it’s not OK,” Nezza, 30, told The Associated Press. “I’m super proud that I did it. No regrets.”

Nezza said she hadn’t yet decided whether to sing in English or Spanish until she walked out onto the field and saw the stands filled with Latino families in Dodger Blue. Before that, as shown in the singer’s TikTok video, a Dodgers employee had told Nezza, “We are going to do the song in English today, so I’m not sure if that wasn’t transferred or if that wasn’t relayed.”

The Spanish-language version Nezza sang, “El Pendón Estrellado,” is the official translation of the national anthem and was commissioned in 1945 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt from Peruvian American composer Clotilde Arias.

Nezza says her manager immediately received a call from an unidentified Dodgers employee saying their clients were not welcome at the stadium again, but the team denied that in a statement to the AP.

“There were no consequences or hard feelings from the Dodgers regarding her performance,” the Dodgers said in the statement. “She was not asked to leave. We would be happy to have her back.”

Despite the Dodgers’ statement, Nezza said she does not think she will return to the stadium but said she hopes her performance will inspire others to use their voice and speak out.

“It’s just shown me, like, how much power there is in the Latin community,” Nezza said. “We’ve got to be the voice right now.”

The Dodgers have not gone on the record regarding the arrests and raids made by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in the areas just a short drive from Dodger Stadium, but player Enrique Hernández posted about it on Instagram over the weekend.

“I am saddened and infuriated by what’s happening in our country and our city,” Hernández posted in English and Spanish. “I cannot stand to see our community being violated, profiled, abused and ripped apart. ALL people deserve to be treated with respect, dignity and human rights.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Continue Reading

Trending