Football Team

On campus, a successful football team is a cause for celebration. So much celebration, in fact, that three economists have found a link between a winning season at one big-time football program and lower grades for male students. In a new paper, the economists at the University of Oregon chart the grade point averages of students there alongside the fortunes of the football team between 1999 and 2007. Their findings could give ammo to critics of big-time college sports. Their conclusion: When the Ducks were winning, students celebrated more and grades suffered.

Running back Montel Harris has been thrown off the Boston College football team, the school announced Tuesday. "Montel Harris has been permanently dismissed from our football team due to a repeated violation of team rules," coach Frank Spaziani said. "We are grateful for his contributions the past four seasons and will support him in completing his degree requirements and in his future pursuits. " Harris, a senior who is BC's career-leading rusher with 3,735 yards, has been plagued by knee injuries the past two seasons.

Nearly 40 years after he earned All-Big Ten honors as a senior guard at Ohio State University, former Waltham High football star Chuck Bonica (pictured) earned one more start for the Buckeyes against archrival Michigan. And he did not have to pull on his shoulder pads or his No. 58 jersey. A 1973 Ohio State graduate who still lives in Waltham, Bonica was selected to an all-time Buckeyes squad by the Columbus Dispatch. The newspaper, through computer analysis, pitted Ohio State against a team of former Michigan stars that included New England Patriots...

On Holocaust Remembrance Day, President Barack Obama will be paying his respects at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. The White House says the president will discuss his administration's strategy to prevent and respond to mass atrocities and address the United States' pledge to "never again" allow genocide to happen. Obama will also tour the memorial museum. He will be introduced by Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel. Later in the day, the president will present the Commander-in-Chief Trophy to the Air Force Academy football team at the...

It’s a party for the Blue Mountain State Goats football team, and beautiful young women in various states of undress are rubbing up against all the players, who are drunk and getting drunker when they’re not bonging and snorting coke, and a guy named Sammy is in the corner puking into a feeding bowl, and a live goat is standing beside him chowing down in between Sammy’s heaves. And if that image inspires a smile, rather than a constriction of your throat, you may be the ideal audience for Spike TV’s “Blue Mountain State.’’ The new show, a rare scripted effort from the...

For most of his 28 years, Kyle Piazza used math to measure his accomplishments in the classroom and on playing fields. "He was always very good with numbers," said his mother, Karen. "Everything in life that he did was a mathematical equation. Any question that came up, he would use his math skills to figure it out. Like he said, ‘Math is in everything.' " He was a math teacher and coach at Braintree High School, where numbers trailed along with him outside when classes ended.

Seven-year-old soccer players sliding to their knees, pumping fists in the air as they run up the score against an opponent. Eighth-graders bumping chests after a touchdown. High school hockey players throwing a celebratory glove into the air and pretending to shoot it down with their stick. These days it's not just pro athletes who spike the ball in the end zone, raise a finger in triumph, thump their chests, dance a jig, or engage in other victory antics on the field, rink, or court.

A jury has found a former University of New Hampshire football player not guilty of a sexual assault charge involving a woman at a party. JeRome Wilkins was acquitted Monday. He was charged with aggravated felonious sexual assault in July 2010. The woman and Wilkins knew each other. Foster's Daily Democrat reports (http://bit.ly/whJFmS) the 21-year-old Wilkins testified Friday that he engaged in sexual activity with the woman and that he believed it was consensual. The woman testified she was assaulted before blacking out. She never identified Wilkins, although...

MADISON, Wis. -- Elroy "Crazy Legs" Hirsch, an NFL Hall of Famer who earned his nickname for an erratic on-field running style, died Wednesday of natural causes at an assisted living facility. He was 80. Mr. Hirsch was a halfback and receiver for the NFL's Los Angeles Rams from 1949 to 1957. Before that, he played for the Chicago Rockets of the All-America Football Conference. It was as a running back for the University of Wisconsin, however, that Mr. Hirsch earned his nickname.

The Needham High School Dance Team finished its season strong by winning the Winter State Dance Championships in Lowell last Sunday. The state title is the third that the team has taken home in four years. The girls performed an original jazz routine to the music of Whitney Houston and Aerosmith. There were 12 teams competing for the title. Twenty-four girls compete on the dance team, which is coached by Paula Callanan. Ten are seniors, taking home their third state title in their high school dance careers.

MILK ★★★★ (Comcast Movie Collections: Movies Under $3) The focus of Gus Van Sant's radical film about San Francisco City Supervisor Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man elected to public office, expands from an individual to a neighborhood to a country. With an unusually life-size Sean Penn as Milk and Josh Brolin as his stressed-out fellow supervisor and future assassin. (R; runs through April 30) Wesley Morris RUDY ★★½ (Comcast Movie Collections: Xfinity Streampix)

The Needham High School Dance Team finished its season strong by winning the Winter State Dance Championships in Lowell last Sunday. The state title is the third that the team has taken home in four years. The girls performed an original jazz routine to the music of Whitney Houston and Aerosmith. There were 12 teams competing for the title. Twenty-four girls compete on the dance team, which is coached by Paula Callanan. Ten are seniors, taking home their third state title in their high school dance careers.

There's a beautiful moment in the documentary "Undefeated," about Tennessee's Manassas High School football team, in which a player named Chavis Daniels demonstrates how much he's changed. Chavis, who's been nothing but trouble to his teammates and coaches, returns from a suspension and turns in a game-winning performance. A few days later in the locker room in front of the entire team, the head coach, Bill Courtney, names Chavis his "uncommon man," a regular honor whose prize appears to be a copy of the bestseller "Uncommon" by the former Colts coach and NBC commentator, Tony Dungy.

At the Academy Awards a few weeks ago, there was a close call on the red carpet. A husky high school football coach from Memphis was improbably mingling with acting royalty, because his team was the subject of a little film nominated in the feature-length documentary category. The coach turned away from Ryan Seacrest "and damn near knocked George Clooney over," he recalls. Clooney took one look at redheaded Bill Courtney and said, "Well, hey, coach!" "At that point I recognized this thing had gone way beyond any of our expectations," says Courtney.

A wrestling coach who was fired from Bridgewater-Raynham Regional High School after hazing allegations surfaced last month is threatening to sue for back pay and contends that serious hazing on other sports teams has been ignored, according to his lawyer. Paul F. Wynn, a lawyer representing former wrestling coach Jeff Francis, sent a letter to the Globe on Feb. 27 to "refute the false allegations" that Francis was involved in an alleged hazing episode that took place at a wrestling practice.

A jury has found a former University of New Hampshire football player not guilty of a sexual assault charge involving a woman at a party. JeRome Wilkins was acquitted Monday. He was charged with aggravated felonious sexual assault in July 2010. The woman and Wilkins knew each other. Foster's Daily Democrat reports (http://bit.ly/whJFmS) the 21-year-old Wilkins testified Friday that he engaged in sexual activity with the woman and that he believed it was consensual. The woman testified she was assaulted before blacking out. She never identified Wilkins, although...

There's a lot of talk these days about the world ending in December 2012. But, you ask, just because there's nothing after that in the Mayan Long Count calendar, does that really mean that the earth will end in flood and fire? Probably. For even if the Mayans were not right in all the particulars, between economic uncertainty, global warming, social and political unrest, and the return of the ancient and unspeakable gods who will drown the world in blood, they were quite right to expect that something big will happen this year.

“The Die-Hard Sports Fan’s Guide to Boston’’ by Christopher Klein (Union Park, paperback, $17.95) is a handy primer for the sports-bewildered. It begins with a bucket list of 10 sporting events before focusing on the big four: baseball, football, basketball, and hockey. Klein, raised in New York until his family moved to Greater Boston when he was in the sixth grade, offers advice on scoring tickets, autographs, and a parking spot. Klein’s sports obsession extends to the Boston Demons Australian football team and the 45 local teams in the Gaelic Athletic Association.

QB Tom Brady and his wife, Gisele Bundchen, shared some intimate moments in front of the media Sunday night after the Pats' searing Super Bowl loss to the Giants. The supermodel comforted a deflated and exhausted Brady while the cameras flashed. Not long after, a video of a still-smarting Bundchen - now solo - talking back to a heckler went viral on the Internet. In the video, credited to The Insider.com, an off-camera Giants fan shouts, "Eli [Manning] owns your husband!" Bundchen pauses for a moment before responding, "My husband cannot [expletive]