Urban Meyer will join Nick Saban in the 2025 College Football Hall of Fame class, and Michael Vick and Michael Strahan are among the former players who will be inducted. The National Football Foundation announced Saban’s selection last week and the rest of the 18-player, four-coach class on Wednesday. Saban retired last year as the NCAA’s active leader in wins with 292-71-1 over 28 seasons at Toledo, Michigan State, LSU and Alabama. His seven national championships — one at LSU, six at Alabama — are most by a Football Bowl Subdivision coach. Meyer was 187-32 with three national championships over 17 seasons at Bowling Green, Utah, Florida and Ohio State. He won 22 of 24 games at Utah before taking over at Florida, where he won national titles in 2006 and 2008. He moved to Ohio State in 2012, won his third national championship in 2014 and went 83-9 over seven seasons.
CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy (AP) — Lindsey Vonn fell toward the end of a World Cup downhill training run on Thursday and appeared slightly banged up. Vonn got back up and skied to the finish area on the Olympia delle Tofane course but then went inside a medical tent for treatment. She did not break any bones, her team said. The 40-year-old Vonn recently returned to ski racing after nearly six years of retirement, with a titanium knee replacement. Last Sunday, she finished fourth in a super-G in St. Anton, Austria. Vonn holds the record of 12 wins in Cortina, the stage for next year’s Milan-Cortina Olympics.
EL SEGUNDO, Calif. (AP) — Jim Harbaugh is eager to begin plotting the Los Angeles Chargers offseason strategy with general manager Joe Hortiz. Those offseason plans, though, will take a slight pause when Harbaugh undergoes two medical procedures. Harbaugh said during his end-of-season remarks on Wednesday that he will “soon” have an ablation to treat an irregular heart rhythm as well as hip replacement surgery. Harbaugh experienced an irregular heartbeat during the first half of a 23-16 win at Denver on Oct. 13. During the first quarter, Harbaugh briefly entered the medical tent before heading to the locker room. While in the locker room, Harbaugh had his pulse and an EKG taken and received an IV and magnesium. Harbaugh returned to the sideline after the EKG showed his heart had returned to normal rhythm.
Viewer audiences for the first weekend of the NFL playoffs were down 9.3% from last year, a bigger decline than what the league experienced during the regular season. According to the league and Nielsen, the six wild-card round games averaged 28.3 million viewers on television and digital platforms, compared to 31.2 million last year. The two Saturday games held steady, while the Sunday and Monday matchups saw declines. The biggest takeaway from the weekend is that audiences have acclimated to one of the games being on a streaming service. Baltimore’s 28-14 victory over Pittsburgh averaged 22.07 million on Amazon Prime Video. It is a record for the most-watched game on Prime, surpassing the 17.29 million for the Detroit Lions-Green Bay Packers game on Dec. 5.
WEDNESDAY SCORES
NCAA MEN TOP 25
No. 2 Iowa State 74, No. 9 Kansas 57
No. 6 Tennessee 74, No. 23 Georgia 56
No. 10 Houston 70, West Virginia 54
No. 12 Michigan State 12, Penn State 85
No. 17 Purdue 69, Washington 58
UNLV 65, No. 22 Utah State 62