Miscellany

Baltimore, Boston and Chicago apparently have withdrawn from consideration to host the 2008 Olympics. Officials were apparently scared off by new International Olympic Committee mandates that local governments guarantee the billion-dollar budgets for the games.

USOC executive director Dick Schultz and other officials said they still expected formal applications - each accompanied by non-refundable, $100,000 deposits - from Cincinnati, Houston, New York, Seattle and Washington before a May 1 deadline.

A final decision on whether to go for 2008 is scheduled to be made at an executive committee meeting in Indianapolis on June 28.

The National Collegiate Athletic Association reduced the length of Alabama A&M University’s probation and cut other penalties the school faces for major rules violations.

College sports’ governing body cut the school’s probation by one year to four years and reduced bans on scholarships for international players to the men’s soccer, men’s and women’s track and field and men’s and women’s cross-country programs.

The NCAA will decide by the end of May whether to move its headquarters to Kansas City, Mo., or Indianapolis.

The NCAA eliminated Denver and Dallas, two of the cities under consideration when the college sports governing body decided in December to move.

Although the NCAA has been in Overland Park, Kan., since 1951, its lease expires in 2000.

The NCAA has 250 employees, and college officials coming in for meetings spend an estimated $2.5 million a year.