Fast Break
College Football
Montana State hires Ash
Rob Ash, a 27-year coaching veteran who emphasizes academic success while seeking athletic success, became Montana State University’s 31st head football coach on Monday.
Ash’s teams have posted a 125-63-2 record in 18 seasons at Drake. He earned Pioneer Football League coach of the year honors in 2004, 1998 and 1995.
Including nine seasons at NCAA Division III Juniata, Ash is 176-99-5 in his career.
Athletic director Peter Fields said Ash’s application rose to the top of MSU’s list, based not only on his team’s success, but its high academic and social standards.
Fields said Ash has accepted a three-year deal that pays an annual salary of $130,000 with incentives that have yet to be finalized.
College baseball
Blogger ejected
A reporter was ejected from an NCAA baseball tournament game for submitting live Internet updates during play.
Brian Bennett, a writer for The (Louisville, Ky.) Courier-Journal, was approached Sunday by an NCAA representative in the bottom of the fifth inning and told that blogging from an NCAA championship event is against NCAA policies.
Bennett had done live blogging during Louisville’s super regional games against Oklahoma State in the previous two games of the three-game series. The representative revoked Bennett’s credential Sunday and asked him to leave the game.
“It’s clearly a First Amendment issue,” said Bennie Ivory, the newspaper’s executive editor. “This is part of the evolution of how we present the news to our readers. It’s what we did during the Orange Bowl. It’s what we did during the NCAA basketball tournament. It’s what we do.”
NCAA spokesman Bob Williams said that Bennett was asked not to blog about game action before Sunday’s game.
“In a nutshell, we asked the blogger repeatedly not to cover it in that manner, because it violates the policy, and he continued, and his credential was revoked,” Williams said.
Williams said it didn’t matter that the newspaper had blogged at other NCAA events, like the Orange Bowl and NCAA basketball tournament.
Tennis
Federer pulls out
Roger Federer withdrew from his traditional grass-court warmup for Wimbledon, citing fatigue one day after losing to Rafael Nadal in the French Open final.
In four consecutive years, Federer has won the Gerry Weber Open title at Halle, Germany, and then gone on to win Wimbledon.
“In an attempt to prevent injury after the long final in Paris, I cannot defend my title at the Gerry Weber Open in Halle,” Federer said in a brief statement on his Web site.
Top-ranked Federer lost to Nadal in four sets in Paris on Sunday, again missing an opportunity to complete a career Grand Slam. He has won 10 Grand Slam titles.