Ridder breaks Cincinnati TD record, No. 2 Bearcats beat USF

TAMPA, Fla. — Desmond Ridder threw two touchdown passes to break the Cincinnati career record and ran for a score to help the No. 2 Bearcats beat South Florida 45-28 on Friday night.

Cincinnati (10-0, 6-0 American Athletic, No. 5 CFP), one of four unbeaten FBS teams, has started the season with 10 consecutive wins for just the second time in school history. The Bearcats also did it in 2009, when they got off to a 12-0 start.

Ridder broke the school record with this 79th touchdown pass, a 21-yard strike to Josh Whyle early in the third that made it 31-7. Gino Guidugli, now Cincinnati’s quarterbacks coach and passing game coordinator, had 78 scoring passes from 2001-04.

Ridder completed 31 of 39 passes for 304 yards, and ran for 65 yards on 13 carries.

American Athletic Conference Commissioner Mike Aresco said

he will “vigorously” oppose a College Football Playoff expansion model that “protects” Power Five leagues with automatic access for only their champions plus one.

“I don’t want to see a system that would reward privilege for the sake of privilege,” Aresco said.

The CFP management committee, comprised of 10 Bowl Subdivision conference commissioners and Notre Dame’s athletic director, met last week in Dallas to again discuss growing the playoff from its current four-team field. The group needs to come to a unanimous consensus on a new format before expansion can move forward. While even one dissenter can hold up the process, Aresco is confident he is not alone.

A 12-team model was proposed in the summer that would include six guaranteed spots for the highest-ranked FBS conference champions and six at-large selections, with no limit on the number of teams a conference can have in the field.

Aresco confirmed a Sports Illustrated report that an alternative model was discussed last week that provided automatic access only to the champions of the Atlantic Coast Conference, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12 and Southeastern Conference, and only the highest-ranked champion from the socalled Group of Five conferences.

OLYMPICS

LAUSANNE, Switzerland — American high jumper Erik Kynard will finally get his gold medal from the 2012 London Olympics after the IOC approved reallocating some results from those games because of doping cases.

Kynard’s leap of 2.33 meters placed second in London behind Ivan Ukhov, who was proven years later to have taken part in the Russian statebacked steroid doping program.

Ukhov was banned for four years in 2019 at the Court of Arbitration for Sport. He went back to the same court last year for an appeal hearing but failed to overturn the ruling.

The International Olympic Committee executive board signed off on reallocating the medals and final results for five events from the London Olympics, including men’s and women’s high jump.

With Kynard upgraded to men’s gold, the three bronze medalists in 2012 will each now get silver medals: Derek Drouin of Canada, Robbie Grabarz of Britain and Mutaz Essa Barshim of Qatar. Barshim also tied for gold at the Tokyo Olympics in August.

The IOC also reallocated the bronze medal in women’s high jump from a Russian athlete. Svetlana Shkolina was disqualified for doping and Spain’s Ruth Beitia will get the bronze.

COLLEGE BASEBALL

SACRAMENTO — A Northern California state university said that its varsity baseball team engaged in “an annual initiation tradition” of hazing new players with challenges including “dangerously excessive drinking and other inappropriate activities,” leading to the team’s suspension last summer and the head coach’s resignation.

That included allegations that there were “threats of sodomy, drinking games that proceed until a team member vomits, lap dances by returning members and the presence of strippers,” among the team at the University of California, Davis, according to the 36-page partly redacted report.

The annual hazing dated at least to 2016 and alumni described it as far back as 2009 or 2010, according to the report by university investigations director Wendy Lilliedoll.

Beyond the hazing, and despite denials, the report found that there was a general team culture of alcohol use and “evidence strongly supported that certain players used cocaine, marijuana, and other drugs in recent years.”