Sports briefs
Pitt wins in ACC baseball tournament
Caleb Parry and Chris Cappas drove in seventh-inning runs to help Pittsburgh beat Georgia Tech 2-1 in Tuesday’s pool play at the Atlantic Coast Conference baseball tournament.
Parry’s grounder up the middle scored Liam Sabino for the game’s first run, then Cappas followed with a triple to score Parry. That was enough offense for the 12th-seeded Panthers (28-25), who had qualified for the ACC tournament for the first time since joining the league in 2014.
Matt Pidich (6-2) earned the win, allowing three hits and a run with eight strikeouts in seven innings.
Tristin English had an RBI groundout for the eighth-seeded Yellow Jackets (31-26).
Pitt faces top-seeded North Carolina today in Pool A, while Georgia Tech meets the Tar Heels Friday.
Jets trade Hackenberg
The New York Jets have traded quarterback Christian Hackenberg to the Oakland Raiders for a conditional seventh-round draft pick.
Jets coach Todd Bowles announced the move Tuesday in his post-practice news conference.
Hackenberg was a second-round pick out of Penn State in 2016, but never played a regular-season snap for the Jets. The 23-year-old quarterback was clearly No. 4 on New York’s depth chart, behind veterans Josh McCown and Teddy Bridgewater and first-rounder Sam Darnold.
Hackenberg said he was frustrated at times during his first two seasons because he didn’t get enough feedback on how to address his issues while with the Jets. He joins Derek Carr, EJ Manuel and Connor Cook in the Raiders’ quarterbacks room.
Favre says he went
to rehab 3 times
Retired quarterback Brett Favre said he made three trips to rehabilitation centers during his Hall of Fame career to fight his dependence on painkillers and alcohol.
Favre told Sports Illustrated he took as many as 14 Vicodin at one time during the 1995 season in Green Bay. Favre won the first of his three consecutive Most Valuable Player awards that season.
“It is really amazing, as I think back, how well I played that year,” Favre said. “That was an MVP year for me. But that year, when I woke up in the morning, my first thought was, ‘I gotta get more pills.'”
Favre said his issues with pills caused him to spend 28 days at a center in Rayville, La., in the early 1990s. Favre also said he spent 28 days in rehab “strictly for drinking” in 1998. The story also mentions a previously reported 72-day stint at a Kansas City rehab center in the mid-1990s to get off Vicodin.
“When I drank, I drank to excess,” Favre said.
NFL meeting
The NFL approved a new owner for the Carolina Panthers, passed a rule to eject players who hit with their helmets, and took steps to spice up the kickoff.
Still to be resolved: a much more contentious issue. What to do, if anything, about players who kneel during the national anthem?
The NFL was reportedly considering whether to assess a 15-yard penalty against any player who takes a knee or conducts any other protest during the anthem. Another possible option would be to change up the pregame routine, keeping teams in their respective locker rooms until after the anthem has played.
League owners welcomed David Tepper to their ranks by signing off on his record $2.2 billion deal to purchase the Panthers.
The new kickoff rules are aimed at making the high-speed play a bit safer and perhaps more exciting. Players on the kickoff team can’t get a running start, while eight of the return team’s 11 players must start out in a 15-yard zone near midfield, forcing them to run down the field alongside the coverage players.