Sports briefs
Site of PIAA football games moved
The PIAA football championship games will be played at Cumberland Valley High School beginning next season. The championship games have been held at Hersheypark Stadium since 1998. The switch was approved Wednesday by the PIAA.
Cumberland Valley won the bid to host the game for the next four years. Additionally, Cumberland Valley will host field hockey, girls volleyball, and both boys and girls soccer PIAA championships. Field Hockey and soccer were both also played at Hersheypark Stadium.
Cal baseball wins
Jacob McCaskey homered in a nine-run bottom of the first inning and the California University baseball team rolled to a 14-1 win over Wheeling on Wednesday at Wild Things Park.
Patrick Brogan homered in the second inning and also doubled, Jax Miller drove in three runs and winning pitcher Dylan Brosky tossed six innings of one-run ball for the Vulcans (4-1).
Zach Rohaley followed Brosky on the mound, throwing two scoreless innings and Joshua Bogdan pitched one shutout inning.
Wheeling’s record is 1-6.
In the NBA
The Cleveland Cavaliers promoted assistant general manager Mike Gansey to GM on Wednesday, one of several front-office moves made by the improved team.
Gansey has been with the Cavs since 2011.
He will have an increased role in draft preparations while working with Koby Altman, who was recently promoted from GM to president of basketball operations.
The 39-year-old Gansey is a Northeast Ohio native. He played collegiately at West Virginia, where he was a first-team Big East selection. Gansey previously served as GM for the Cleveland Charge of the NBA’s G League.
Record low ratings for Olympic Games
The final scores are in, and NBC is no doubt happy to put the Beijing Winter Olympics in the rear-view mirror.
The games reached an average combined audience of 11.4 million people in prime time on NBC, the USA cable network and Peacock streaming service, the network said. That’s the lowest-ever American audience for any Olympics, and down 42% from the Winter Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea, in 2018.
For NBC alone, the prime time telecasts reached an average of 9.3 million viewers, or 48% down from South Korea, the Nielsen company said.
The games never really captured the public imagination, and were hurt by COVID-19 restrictions that had most of NBC’s announcers working half a world away in Connecticut.
In a diminished world for broadcast television, however, NBC beat every other network in prime time during the Games’ duration. Only pro football can say the same this season. The Peacock streaming service, which will undoubtedly play a bigger role in future Olympics, had its best stretch of usage since the service began, NBC said.