2012 April at LinesMaker

Arkansas Hires John L. Smith as Interim Coach

FAYETTEVILLE (CFB/Rivals) — Eager to move on from the Bobby Petrino scan­dal, Arkansas announced Mon­day that pop­u­lar for­mer assis­tant John L. Smith will return as head coach of the Razor­backs next season. Smith, who left the Razor­backs after last sea­son to become the head coach at Weber State, will be for­mally intro­duced on Tues­day. The school said Smith signed a 10-month, $ 850,000 con­tract and will also be eli­gi­ble for other incentives. “I am tremen­dously excited to have this spe­cial oppor­tu­nity to return to Arkansas and lead the Razor­back foot­ball... 

NFL — New Orleans Saints Are Involved in Another Scandal

It might be a lit­tle to soon to really tell if there’s truly some­thing behind this new rumor, but it seems that the bad news keep on build­ing up against the New Orleans Saints. This has been a trou­bled off­sea­son for the Saints, prob­a­bly it’s rough­est ever. And we are talk­ing about a team in a city that in 2005 was dev­as­tated by Hur­ri­cane Kat­rina. When the Saints Gen­eral Man­ager Mick Loomis and the head coach Sean Pey­ton and start­ing quar­ter­back Drew Brees were able to guide this team into win­ning a Super Bowl a cou­ple of sea­son ago, the squad... 

Sauber’s Kaltenborn Joins F1 in Schools

F1 in Schools, the For­mula One tech­nol­ogy chal­lenge, has enlisted Sauber CEO Mon­isha Kaltenborn as the global edu­ca­tional initiative’s lat­est, high pro­file patron. Kaltenborn joins an impres­sive roll call of F1 names which includes McLaren team prin­ci­pal Mar­tin Whit­marsh, Red Bull’s chief tech­ni­cal offi­cer Adrian Newey, Caterham’s tech­ni­cal head Mike Gas­coyne, and Mer­cedes team prin­ci­pal Ross Brawn. “F1 in Schools is an excel­lent edu­ca­tional pro­gramme which is intro­duc­ing stu­dents to the many dis­ci­plines needed for careers... 

Coyotes Used to Working Overtime in Postseason

GLENDALE, Ariz. - The Phoenix Coy­otes’ first-ever foray into the West­ern Con­fer­ence Semi­fi­nals looked a lot like the for­mula that got them their first-ever series win in the Stan­ley Cup Playoffs. Timely goals from unlikely sources. An ugly over­time game-winner. And a whole lot of spec­tac­u­lar play from Mike Smith in between. Seven games into the post­sea­son, the Coy­otes haven’t been par­tic­u­larly happy with any of their five wins. But in the immor­tal words of “Bull Durham” hero Nuke LaLoosh — “Win­ning … it’s like, you know, bet­ter than losing?” Seven... 

Sources: O’Malley Pushing to Buy Padres

Updated Apr 28, 2012 2:35 AM ET Peter O’Malley, unsuc­cess­ful in his effort to regain own­er­ship of the Los Ange­les Dodgers, is now try­ing to buy one of the Dodgers’ NL West rivals. O’Malley, his son Kevin and nephew Tom Sei­dler are mount­ing an aggres­sive push for the San Diego Padres and want to close a deal by the All-Star break, sources say. The O’Malley group has signed doc­u­ments per­mit­ting it access to team finan­cial infor­ma­tion, sources say, and appar­ently has raised suf­fi­cient equity to pur­chase the club. Ini­tial indi­ca­tions are that... 

Denver Broncos Draft QB of Future in Brock Osweiler

NEW YORK — Pey­ton Man­ning is the Den­ver Bron­cos’ quar­ter­back of the present. No one — not even Man­ning — knows how long his post-surgery reboot in the Rock­ies will last. That’s why the Bron­cos selected Ari­zona State quar­ter­back Brock Osweiler with the No. 57 over­all pick in the 2012 NFL Draft. This always was the plan. Even when Tim Tebow was in town, the Bron­cos wanted to develop a “tra­di­tional” quar­ter­back for the future. Acquir­ing Man­ning doesn’t change that. “I don’t think it’s one of those things where Pey­ton Man­ning feels... 

Youth Movement on Team Canada

ZURICH, SWITZERLAND — At 3:36 a.m. Zurich time, with most of them in the air fly­ing here, Team Canada became Canada’s Team. When the Ottawa Sen­a­tors were elim­i­nated from the Stan­ley Cup play­offs in Game 7 in New York, it became the first time since 1996 that no Cana­dian fran­chises would be involved in the sec­ond round. And if there ever was a year for that to hap­pen again, it’s per­fect for the play­ers on Team Canada prepar­ing for the world hockey cham­pi­onships, which open next week in Helsinki. They’re likely the most star-studded col­lec­tion of young... 

Contested Wins Santa Anita Feature

ARCADIA, CA (Yahoo) — Con­tested romped to a 5 3/4-length vic­tory Sun­day in the $ 66,040 Titanic Purse for 3-year-old fil­lies at Santa Anita. Rid­den by Mar­tin Gar­cia, Con­tested ran 6 1/2 fur­longs in 1:15.58 and paid $ 2.60 and $ 2.10 as the 3–10 favorite. She is trained by Hall of Famer Bob Baf­fert and owned by his wife, Jill. “It’s going to be a happy home tonight,” Baf­fert said. Hid­den Pas­sion returned $ 4, while Heleonor Rugby was another half-length back in third. Dypsy ran last in a field reduced to four starters by the late scratch of Tiz the Tide. The... 

Nadal, Raonic Advance in Barcelona

Rafael Nadal dis­patched Janko Tip­sare­vic 6–2, 6–2 Fri­day to advance to the Barcelona Open semi­fi­nals, while Milos Raonic served 14 aces and upset second-seeded Andy Mur­ray 6–4, 7–6 (3). The top-seeded Nadal moved his Ser­bian oppo­nent around the red-clay court with his pow­er­ful forehand. The second-ranked Spaniard broke Tip­sare­vic in his first ser­vice game to set the tone for his 32nd con­sec­u­tive win at the tour­na­ment. Tip­sare­vic earned three break points in the last game of the first set, but Nadal recov­ered to win five straight points. Nadal... 

Colt McCoy on the Way Out of Cleveland?

The Colt McCoy era could be over by the end of the weekend. Browns gen­eral man­ager Tom Heck­ert admit­ted Thurs­day night that the team will con­sider trad­ing McCoy after select­ing Bran­don Wee­den with the No. 22 pick in the draft. “It’s some­thing we’ll talk about tonight and tomor­row,” Heck­ert said, via The Plain-Dealer. NFL Net­work insider Jason La Can­fora reported Thurs­day that McCoy is not request­ing a trade and is eager to com­pete with Wee­den, accord­ing to sources with knowl­edge of the situation. Trans­la­tion: McCoy is almost as good as gone....