Steelers waiting to hear from Brown

The Steelers aren’t ruling out the possible return of wayward wide receiver Antonio Brown.

Time, however, appears to be running out.

Steelers president Art Rooney II said Jan. 16 the team still hasn’t heard from Brown since he left Heinz Field following a victory over Cincinnati in the regular-season finale on Dec. 30. Brown did not play after failing to communicate with Pittsburgh coach Mike Tomlin in the 48 hours leading up to the game to provide an update on an apparent knee injury.

Brown didn’t show up when the Steelers cleaned out their lockers on New Year’s Eve after finishing 9-6-1 and has made repeated overtures on social media over the past few weeks to indicate he’d prefer to play elsewhere in 2019.

Rooney said the team has “left everything open” in terms of Brown’s future, including a potential reconciliation but added “there aren’t that many signs out there that that is going to happen.”

CHIEFS BACK AT PRACTICE >> Chiefs safety Eric Berry and running back Spencer Ware returned to practice, raising the possibility that both will be available for their AFC championship showdown with New England.

Berry missed most of the season with a heel injury that developed in training camp, then played parts of two games against the Chargers and Seahawks. The heel began to bother him again the next week, and he did not practice last week or play in the divisional round against Indianapolis.

Golf

WOODS TO PLAY >> Tiger Woods is starting another year at Torrey Pines, this time with higher expectations. Woods announced that he will play in the Farmers Insurance Open next week. He has won the tournament seven times, and Torrey Pines is where he won the U.S. Open in 2008.

Tennis

MATCH FIXING SUSPECTED >> The crooked tennis players knew him as “Maestro.” To European investigators, the Armenian based in Belgium is emerging as the suspected ringleader of an organized gambling syndicate suspected of fixing hundreds of matches and paying off more than 100 players from around Europe.

As Roger Federer and other stars at the top of tennis compete in the Australian Open, players far lower down the sport’s food chain are being questioned this week by police in France on suspicion of fixing matches for Grigor Sargsyan, 28-year-old known as the Maestro, investigators said. Sargsyan is being held in a Belgian jail.

The picture emerging from months of digging by police working across Europe is of a massive match-fixing scheme, organized via encrypted messaging, involving dozens of low-ranked players in small tournaments with little prize money. Police say Sargsyan employed mules, people hired for a few euros (dollars) to place bets for the syndicate that were small enough to slip under the radar of gambling watchdogs.