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W&J, Franciscan to play in PAC final

Franciscan and Washington & Jefferson will meet in the Presidents’ Athletic Conference women’s tennis tournament title match Wednesday.

The match will be played at W&J’s Janet Swanson Tennis Center. The PAC has held semifinal and championship matches at the Swanson Tennis Center since moving to the team bracket championship format in 2018.

In Saturday’s semifinals, top-seeded Franciscan (11-2) earned a 5-1 win over No. 4 Grove City while No. 2 W&J (8-2) was a 5-2 winner over No. 3 Westminster (10-3).

Former Lions All-Pro Lucci dies at 81

Mike Lucci, a Pro Bowl linebacker who played nine seasons with the Detroit Lions, died Tuesday at age 81.

Lucci died after an extended illness, according to an obituary posted by Glick Family Funeral Home in Boca Raton, Florida.

Lucci was drafted by Cleveland, but spent most of his 12-year NFL career with the Lions, from 1965-73.

Lucci, a native of Ambridge, Pennsylvania, got a football scholarship at the University of Pittsburgh but transferred and played three seasons at Tennessee.

Cal climbs to No. 4

After its comeback road victory over the weekend, the California University football team recently moved up one slot to No. 4 in the latest American Football Coaches Association Top 25 poll.

The Vulcans jumped to No. 4 in the poll with 649 points to earn its highest national ranking in more than a decade. Cal erased a 13-point halftime deficit and scored the game-winning touchdown with 11 seconds left on Saturday for a 38-34 victory at then-No. 23 IUP in the 12th Coal Bowl. The Vulcans are one of four remaining undefeated Division II teams in the country with each team holding a 7-0 record.

In the NFL

The NFL is not going to issue a report on its 10-month investigation into allegations the Washington Football Team engaged in harassment and abuse because of its promise to protect the identities of those who testified, commissioner Roger Goodell said on Tuesday.

Speaking around 7 p.m. after the first day of meetings for the 32 owners, Goodell said the league wanted to protect the roughly 150 former employees who spoke to outside counsel Beth Wilkinson, who conducted the NFL investigation and amassed six million pages of evidence.

“When you make a promise to protect the anonymity, to make sure that we get the right information, you need to stay with it,” Goodell said. “And so we’re very conscious of making sure that we’re protecting those who came forward. They were incredibly brave.”

Goodell sidestepped a question about releasing a redacted report, saying he felt what the league did was appropriate. He said the league looked forward to responding to inquiries from Congress.

In college sports

The NCAA spends more on average on male athletes than female ones, particularly when it comes to the “mere handful of championships” viewed as revenue sources, according to a new report.

The law firm hired by the NCAA to investigate equity issues released its 153-page report Tuesday night, which includes a series of recommendations to improve the gap among all sports tournaments. It’s the second report from the New York-based firm, following its Aug. 3 one that recommended how to equalize men’s and women’s basketball tournaments.

The NCAA has implemented some of those, including allowing the women’s tournament to use the term “March Madness.”

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