New Mexico State fires head coach
New Mexico State fired basketball coach Greg Heiar on Tuesday in the wake of hazing allegations on the team that shut down the program for the rest of the season.
Chancellor Dan Arvizu announced the firing of the first-year coach and said “hazing has no place on our campus, and those found responsible will be held accountable for their actions.”
The chancellor said decisions about the rest of the coaching staff will be made after further investigation.
Arvizu shut down the program for the season on Sunday, after reviewing a campus police report in which an Aggies player said three teammates ganged up on him and attacked him. The report, which redacted the names of the players, included allegations of false imprisonment, harassment and criminal sexual contact.
The 47-year-old Heiar spent time earlier in his career as an assistant for former Aggies coach Chris Jans, who left after last season to coach Mississippi State. Last season, Heiar was at Northwest Florida State, where he helped the Raiders win the junior college national title.
He brought two highly ranked players with him from the juco ranks, Issa Muhammad and Marchelus Avery, but the Aggies were riddled with problems almost from the start of their season.
It started unraveling when some basketball players were involved in a fight with New Mexico students at an Aggies football game in October. A month later, the night before New Mexico State basketball was scheduled to play at New Mexico in Albuquerque, forward Mike Peake went to the apartment complex of one of the students involved in the fight. Security cameras at the apartment complex shows the student pulling a gun, then Peake brandishing own gun and shooting the student, inflicting fatal wounds. Peake was taken to the hospital with leg wounds.
Peake has been suspended from the team but not charged with a crime while authorities in Albuquerque investigate. New Mexico State has hired an independent investigator to look into the circumstances surrounding the killing.
The Aggies were 9-15 when the season was first put on hold before a scheduled game Saturday at California Baptist.
COACH K WATCHES DUKE VICTORY >> Kyle Filipowski scored 22 points and Duke beat Notre Dame 68-64 in Durham, N.C., with former coach Mike Krzyzewski on hand to watch the man who succeeded him pick up a milestone victory.
Krzyzewski, accompanied by wife Mickie, attended his first game at “Coach K Court” inside Cameron Indoor Stadium since retiring after last season to conclude a 42-year career as the Blue Devils coach. He saw Jon Scheyer become the first men's ACC coach to win his first 13 career home games, passing North Carolina's Hubert Davis, who had 12 to start the 2021-22 season.
College football
GEORGIA RE-HIRES BOBO TO TAKE OVER AS OC >> Mike Bobo reclaimed the offensive coordinator job at Georgia, with Todd Monken leaving the twotime defending national champions for the NFL.
Bobo, a former Bulldogs quarterback and longtime assistant coach at his alma mater, also served as offensive coordinator under former coach Mark Richt.
The 48-year-old Bobo has some big shoes to fill. Monken accepted the offensive coordinator job with the Baltimore Ravens after serving on a staff that guided Georgia to back-to-back national titles.
The Bulldogs averaged 38.6 points per game in 2021 and 41.1 this past season while finishing 15-0, capped by a record-breaking 65-7 blowout of TCU in the national championship game.
Monken's three-season stint with the Bulldogs will be remembered for the stunning rise of quarterback Stetson Bennett from walk-on to Heisman Trophy finalist.
Soccer
MANCHESTER UNITED SALE DRAWING HIGH-PRICED INTEREST >> The race is on to buy Manchester United and it will take deep pockets to meet an estimated price of $6 billion.
No wonder the oil and gas rich state of Qatar is being so heavily linked with a bid and Elon Musk's name refuses to go away despite the Tesla owner saying he was joking when writing on Twitter last year about his intention to swoop in for the Premier League club.
With a declaration of interest expected to be made by Friday, only one potential buyer has gone public so far. Jim Ratcliffe, the billionaire owner of petrochemicals giant INEOS and one of Britain's richest people, announced his intention to bid last month.
Other confirmed candidates have been quiet, though that is likely to change after Friday.
Merchant bank Raine Group is handling the process a year after overseeing the sale of Chelsea, which commanded the biggest ever price for a soccer team when bought for $3 billion by a consortium led by Todd Boehly and Clearlake Capital.
UEFA BLAMED FOR CHAMPIONS LEAGUE FINAL FIASCO >> UEFA-appointed investigators have held European soccer's ruling body mostly responsible for chaotic security failures at the 2022 Champions League final in Paris that put the lives of Liverpool and Real Madrid fans at risk.
“It is remarkable that no one lost their life,” the investigation panel wrote in a 220-page document published Monday into a near “mass fatality catastrophe” at the biggest club game in world soccer.
“The panel has concluded that UEFA, as event owner, bears primary responsibility for failures which almost led to disaster,” the report said.
A failed security operation saw tens of thousands of fans held in increasingly crushed queues for hours before the May 28 game at the 75,000-capacity Stade de France, which is a key venue for the 2024 Paris Olympics.
Many fans were fired on with tear gas by police before the game, which was delayed by nearly 40 minutes. After Madrid's 1-0 win, dozens were robbed leaving the stadium by local residents in the impoverished SaintDenis neighborhood.
UEFA statements during the chaos and after the game blamed Liverpool fans for arriving at the stadium late and using fake tickets to try to gain entry — wrongly blamed on both counts, the report said.
An apology to Liverpool supporters for “the experiences of many of them” and the unjust blaming was made Monday by UEFA general secretary Theodore Theodoridis.