Sports FYI
BY Staff and Wire reports
Friday, January 18, 2013
1/18/13 at 2:49 AM
Softball
OU picked to win Big 12 title: For the fourth time in five years, Oklahoma has been chosen by the league's head coaches as the front-runner for the Big 12 softball title. The Sooners received all six first-place votes to top the preseason Big 12 poll, it was announced Thursday.
Oklahoma, the reigning Big 12 regular season champion, is coming off its seventh appearance in the Women's College World Series and returns 13 letterwinners from the 2012 squad, including USA Softball Player of the Year Keilani Ricketts and fellow All-Americans Lauren Chamberlain and Jessica Shults. The Sooners finished the 2012 season as the national runner-up with a 54-10 record.
Texas notched 29 points, coming in second behind the Sooners. Baylor was a close third, receiving 28 points, while Texas Tech landed in fourth with a total of 20. Oklahoma State (16), Kansas (12) and Iowa State (6) rounded out this year's preseason poll.
Football
NSU's Bowie honored: Northeastern State offensive tackle Michael Bowie was named a 2012 All-America Honorable Mention by D2Football.com.
In his lone season with RiverHawks, the Sand Springs graduate produced a team-high 47 knockdowns while never allowing a quarterback sack.
Bowie is set to play in the 2013 Raycom College Football All-Star Classic on Saturday in Montgomery, Ala. Other seniors from the area joining Bowie at the Raycom Classic will be Tulsa center Trent Dupy, Oklahoma State guard Jonathan Rush, OSU defensive lineman Nigel Nicholas and Oklahoma defensive lineman Jamarkus McFarland.
Leaf kicked out of drug treatment center, sent to prison: Former NFL quarterback Ryan Leaf has been moved from a drug treatment center to the Montana State Prison for threatening a staff member and other unspecified behavioral problems at the center, a corrections official said.
The former San Diego Chargers and Washington State Cougars quarterback was charged last spring with breaking into two houses and stealing prescription painkillers near his hometown of Great Falls. He pleaded guilty in May to reduced charges, and his five-year sentence called for spending nine months in a locked drug treatment facility as an alternative to prison.
Leaf said then that he was looking forward to the treatment at Nexus Treatment Center in Lewistown. But the Montana Department of Corrections released a statement by Great Falls regional probation and parole administrator Dawn Handa that said Leaf will now serve his sentence in the Deer Lodge prison.
Pacino to portray Paterno in movie: Al Pacino will play Joe Paterno in a movie about the late Penn State football coach.
Producer Edward R. Pressman confirms Brian De Palma will direct "Happy Valley," the tentative title of the film, based on Joe Posnanski's best-seller "Paterno." No start or release dates were given for the film.
While Pressman said the plot remains "under wraps," Posnanski's book followed Paterno's final years, as the winningest coach in college football history saw his career end in disgrace in 2011 with the sex abuse scandal involving assistant Jerry Sandusky.
