NEW YORK (AP) — The NFL has made its first change of the season to its “Sunday Night Football” schedule by moving the Nov. 20 game between the Kansas City Chiefs and Los Angeles Chargers into prime time. The game between the AFC West rivals will kick off at 8:20 p.m. EST on NBC with the matchup between the Cincinnati Bengals and Pittsburgh Steelers moving to 4:25 p.m. EST on CBS.
UNDATED (AP) — Halfway through the 2022 season it appears NFL defenses have finally started catching up. After a five-year run of hot-shot quarterbacks lighting up scoreboards and leaving defenses with few answers, the pendulum has turned away from the offense for a change. The 21.8 points per game average through nine weeks is the lowest at this stage of the season since 2010, when teams averaged 21.7 points per game. Scoring is down a staggering 3.5 points per game from this point two years ago when offenses peaked in partly empty stadiums due to the pandemic, and 1.6 points per game from last season.
UNDATED (AP) — Georgia was the new No. 1 in the College Football Playoff rankings, followed by Ohio State, Michigan and TCU. The Bulldogs rise from three to one was no surprise after their dominant victory against the previously top-ranked Volunteers. Clemson, which was No. 4 in the selection committee’s first rankings last week, also lost. That cleared the way for changes in the top four. Ohio State stayed at two. The Buckeyes’ Big Ten rival, Michigan moved up from five to three. TCU jumped three spots to No. 4, putting the nation’s four unbeatens at the top of the rankings. Tennessee fell to No. 5.
NORMAN, Okla. (AP) — Oklahoma receiver Drake Stoops has gone from walk-on at the beginning of his college career to scholarship player who has started six of his team’s nine games. Iowa State tight end Jared Rus, Kansas receiver Quentin Skinner, Kansas State linebacker Austin Moore, Oklahoma State kicker Tanner Brown, Texas Tech receiver Xavier White and West Virginia kicker Casey Legg are other Big 12 players who started as walk-ons and have become key contributors.
MANHATTAN, Kan. (AP) — Keyontae Johnson scored 13 points in his first real action since collapsing during a game nearly two years ago, and Kansas State opened the season under new coach Jerome Tang with a 93-59 romp over UT Rio Grande Valley on Monday night. Nae’Qwan Tomlin and Markquis Nowell led the Wildcats with 14 points apiece. Tang took over the Wildcats’ program after serving as an assistant to Scott Drew at Baylor from 2003-22. Johnson, the Southeastern Conference’s preseason player of the year in 2020, transferred to Kansas State this summer after four years at Florida. He spent the past two recovering from a suspected heart condition that caused him to crash to the floor while coming out of a timeout in December 2020.
LAS VEGAS (AP) — The Houston Astros’ six-game victory over the Philadelphia Phillies finished as the second least-watched World Series on television. The six games averaged 11,784,000 on Fox, down 1.3% from the 11,940,000 for the Atlanta Braves’ six-game win over the Astros last year and ahead of only the 9,946,000 for the Los Angeles Dodgers’ six-game victory over the Tampa Bay Rays in 2020. Houston’s 3-1 win in Game 6 on Saturday night was seen by 12,549,000 viewers on Fox, down 11% from 14,140,000 Atlanta’s 7-0 victory over the Astros in last year’s finale, played on a Tuesday night.
GENEVA (AP) — Former FIFA president Sepp Blatter says picking Qatar to host the World Cup was a mistake 12 years ago. Blatter led FIFA at the time of the vote and says soccer and the World Cup are too big for a country as small as Qatar. He repeated his claim that key votes for Qatar were swayed by a 2010 meeting in Paris between then-French president Nicolas Sarkozy and FIFA vice president Michel Platini. The 86-year-old Blatter spoke with a Swiss newspaper group. It was his first major interview since being acquitted with Platini in July of financial misconduct at FIFA.
TUESDAY SCORES
NATIONAL HOCKEY LEAGUE
Final Vancouver 6 Ottawa 4
Final OT Vegas 4 Toronto 3
Final Philadelphia 5 St. Louis 1
Final N-Y Islanders 4 N-Y Rangers 3
Final New Jersey 3 Calgary 2
Final SO Montreal 3 Detroit 2
Final Arizona 4 Buffalo 1
Final Edmonton 3 Tampa Bay 2
Final Winnipeg 5 Dallas 1
Final Seattle 5 Nashville 1
Final Los Angeles 1 Minnesota 0