K.C. CAREER TACKLES LEADER JOHNSON TO BECOME FREE AGENT
Derrick Johnson’s tenure with the Kansas City Chiefs is coming to an end.
The franchise’s career tackles leader, and a four-time Pro Bowl selection, will become a free agent when his contract expires at the start of the new league year March 14. He intends to keep playing.
• The New York Giants are hiring Mike Shula as their offensive coordinator.
• Seahawks safety Kam Chancellor, whose career was in doubt after a neck injury, intends to play in 2018 if medically cleared.
• The Baltimore Ravens and Chicago Bears will launch the NFL’s 99th season by playing in the annual Hall of Fame game on Aug. 2.
• Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski, his father and his two brothers delivered a $25,000 check to The Barbara Bush Children’s Hospital at Maine Medical Center.
Charges dropped vs. AAU director.
The federal government dropped criminal charges against Jonathan Augustine, a former AAU basketball director from Florida, who was one of 10 men arrested in September for allegedly conspiring to funnel money from Adidas to recruits’ families.
Augustine, the former president of The League Initiative and director of the 1 Family AAU in Orlando, Fla., was charged with wire fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering after the FBI’s two-year investigation into bribes and other corruption in men’s college basketball.
MSU faculty: no-confidence vote.
Michigan State faculty members issued a vote of no confidence in the university’s board of trustees as the campus continues to deal with fallout from the Larry Nassar sexual assault scandal.
Members of the faculty voted 61-4 to express no confidence in the eightmember governing body at Michigan State, according to multiple news outlets in East Lansing. The faculty does not have power to force trustees from their position; they are elected by the public for eight-year terms. But members of the school’s faculty felt it was important to let the trustees know that a major part of the campus community does not approve of recent decisions they have made.
The vote was called largely in response to the board’s decision to name John Engler, a former Michigan governor, the school’s interim president.
Maroney only case of nondisclosure.
MICH.» USA Gymnastics LANSING, told Congress it has not used nondisclosure agreements in investigations except in the case of Olympic gold medalist McKayla Maroney, one of more than 200 women and girls who have said now-imprisoned sports doctor Larry Nassar sexually abused them under the guise of treatment.
The Indianapolis-based organization’s statement was part of its response to an initial congressional inquiry that was made public. The leaders of a Senate subcommittee with jurisdiction over the health and safety of athletes also released answers provided by Michigan State University — Nassar’s longtime employer until 2016 — and the U.S. Olympic Committee.
Young accuses opponent.
The ATP is reviewing an accusation by tennis player Donald Young that fellow American Ryan Harrison used racially inappropriate language during a heated exchange at the New York Open on Monday night.
Harrison defeated Young 6-3, 7-6 (4).
Footnotes.
Driver Brittany Force was released from a hospital after a precautionary overnight stay after a wall-banging crash in the NHRA season opener. … Danielle Herrington is the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit cover model for 2018.