Blaney snares pole for Cup playoff race
AVONDALE, Ariz. — Ryan Blaney won the pole in his final chance to qualify for NASCAR’s championship race.
Blaney turned a lap at 137.942 mph around Phoenix Raceway on Friday in a Ford fielded by the Wood Brothers to take the top starting spot for Sunday’s penultimate race of the Monster Energy Cup playoffs. There is one slot available in the field of four that will race for the championship next week, and Blaney is one of five drivers chasing that spot.
Blaney bettered Denny Hamlin qualifying. Both playoff drivers need to win to grab the final spot in the finale, and Hamlin waited until the third and final round to cut a corner on the track in an attempt to better his time.
Hamlin’s lap at 137.936 briefly put his Toyota on top of the leader board, but Blaney bumped him moments later.
Kyle Larson, who has been eliminated from the playoffs, qualified third. He was followed in qualifying by playoff drivers Chase Elliott, Martin Truex Jr. and Kevin Harvick.
Wedge makes pitch to Yankees
Former Cleveland and Seattle manager Eric Wedge met with the New York Yankees, becoming the second person to interview for the managerial vacancy.
Yankees bench coach Rob Thomson interviewed Wednesday as a possible successor to manager Joe Girardi.
Wedge managed in Cleveland’s minor league system in 1998 and was promoted to big league manager before the 2003 season. He was voted AL Manager in the Year in 2007, when the Indians won the AL Central, beat the Yankees in the Division Series and lost to Boston in a seven-game Championship Series. He was fired in 2009 after seven seasons with a 561573 record.
Wedge was hired as Seattle’s manager before the 2011 season. The Mariners went 213-273 over three seasons before he turned down a one-year contract, leaving his overall record at 774-846. In other news: • Former Colorado manager Walt Weiss, who completed his playing career with Atlanta in 2000, is returning to the Braves as a bench coach. Weiss led the Rockies to a 283-365 record as manager from 2013-16.
Senegal makes most of rematch
Senegal seized the second chance it was given by FIFA to qualify for the World Cupy, beating South Africa 2-0 in a replay of a game it lost first time round last year in the same stadium at Polokwane, South Africa.
FIFA ordered the qualifier to be played again because of match-fixing by the referee in the initial match in November 2016. At the center of FIFA’s decision was a penalty given against Senegal for a non-existent handball that helped South Africa win 2-1.
Senegal used the contentious replay at the same stadium in Polokwane in northern South Africa as the annulled game to seal its place at the World Cup for the first time since 2002.
In other news:
• Four-time champion Italy is in danger of failing to qualify for the World Cup for the first time in six decades after losing to Sweden 1-0 at Solna, Sweden in the opening leg of their playoff.
3 share Schwab lead after 64s
Defending champion Paul Goydos, Vijay Singh and Lee Janzen each shot 7-under-par 64 to share the firstround lead in the Charles Schwab Cup Championship.
Bernhard Langer, trying to sweep the PGA Tour Champions’ three playoff events and win the Charles Schwab Cup season points title for the fourth consecutive year and fifth overall, was tied for 28th at even-par 71 at Phoenix Country Club. The points leader is one of five players who needs only to win the seasonending tournament to top the yearlong points competition.
Jerry Smith and Glen Day were a stroke back at 65. In other news:
• Patrick Rodgers kept making birdies until his name was atop the leaderboard and it was too dark to play any longer. Rodgers ran off four consecutive birdies on the back nine and reached 11 under par until the storm-delayed OHL Classic at Mayakoba in Playa del Carmen, Mexico, was suspended by darkness. Rickie Fowler was at 10 under with three holes left.
• Shanshan Feng shot a 1-over 73 to take a one-shot lead after the third round of the Blue Bay LPGA in Hainan, China. Feng had an upand-down day with three birdies and four bogeys to leave herself at 7-under 209 overall. Feng is looking to become the first back-to-back winner of 2017. Second-round leader Ashleigh Buhai (76) dropped to third place, two strokes behind Feng. Moriya Jutanugarn (68) hit seven birdies to move up six places into second at 6 under.
McGuffie shares bobsled victory
Codie Bascue of the United States drove to his first World Cup victory, teaming with Sam McGuffie in the second two-man bobsled race of the season at Mount Van Hoevenberg in Lake Placid, N.Y.
McGuffie, who played high school football at Cy-Fair and competed in college at Michigan and Rice, has been a member of the U.S. bobsled team since October 2015.
It was the end of a strong first weekend for the U.S. bobsled team, which took five of a possible nine medals from the races in Lake Placid.
There were only two two-man races in Lake Placid because of a ruling earlier in the week about ice conditions. There will be two four-man competitions in Park City, Utah, where the World Cup tour resumes next weekend.
Scandal costly to Penn State
Penn State announced that it recently paid out an additional $16 million to people with claims they were sexually abused by former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky, raising the total over several years to more than $100 million.
It is not clear how many people shared in the latest settlements, which were made during the fiscal year that ended in June.
The school previously said it settled with 33 people for $93 million, so the additional payments bring the running total to $109 million.
Last year’s payments mean Penn State’s overall Sandusky-related costs now exceed more than $250 million.