Stanford star OF Montgomery to transfer to Texas A&M
Stanford outfielder-pitcher Braden Montgomery announced he intends to transfer to Texas A&M, costing the Cardinal a key player from last season's College World Series team.
Montgomery, who was the Pac-12 freshman of the year in 2022, hit .336 with 17 home runs and 61 RBIs last season.
The Madison, Miss., product pitched only 14 innings last season but has a fastball that can reach the 95-mph range.
Montgomery was ranked as D1Baseball's No. 5 college prospect entering 2023 and as such is expected to go early in the first round of next year's MLB draft.
In other college news, athletic director Gene Smith, 67, who has spent the past 18 years at Ohio State leading one of the largest and most successful athletic programs in the country, announced he will retire at the end of June next year.
ELSEWHERE Ex-Raider Ruggs gets 3-to-10-year sentence
Former Las Vegas Raiders player Henry Ruggs was sentenced Wednesday to at least three years in a Nevada prison for killing a woman in a fiery crash while driving his sports car drunk at speeds up to 156 mph on a city street nearly two years ago.
“I sincerely apologize,” the former first-round NFL draft pick said as he stood for sentencing in Las Vegas after pleading guilty in May to felony DUI causing death and misdemeanor vehicular manslaughter, a charge carrying a six-month jail sentence that will be folded in with his three-to-10-year prison term.
Ruggs, now 24, was cut by the Raiders after the predawn crash Nov. 2, 2021. The collision killed Tina Tintorand injured Ruggs' passenger, Kiara Je'nai KilgoWashington, his fiancee and mother of their daughter.
Ruggs said after prison he intends to counsel others “about the dangers of driving at unsafe speed and driving and drinking.”
Golf: Back to full health, commissioner Jay Monahan said the PGA Tour is on the right path to finalize a deal with the Saudi backers of LIV Golf.
Monahan spoke publicly for the first time since he returned to work July 17, having stepped away for five weeks with what he described as anxiety that had been building up over time.
He said his only regret in the proposed business partnership with Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund and the European tour was keeping players in the dark. “I put players on their back foot,” he said. “That's something I regret and will not do again.”
Monahan was short on details of the proposed agreement, mainly because negotiations are ongoing.
He was bullish that a deal would get done by the end of the year, and that the PGA Tour is not considering any outside investors at the moment. “Our focus is on conversations with PIF,” he said
Soccer: Da'vian Kimbrough, a 13-year-old forward, signed a contract with the Sacramento Republic of the United Soccer League Championship, which says he is the youngest athlete in American professional team sports. Kimbrough joined the team's youth academy in 2021.