(TALLAHASSEE, Fla.) — Legendary Florida State University football coach Bobby Bowden has been diagnosed with a terminal medical condition, his family announced in a statement to the Tallahassee Democrat on Wednesday.
Bowden, who turns 92 in November, has seen his health deteriorate in recent months. He tested positive for COVID-19 in October 2020. He was hospitalized for several days in June. The Tallahassee Democrat reports Bowden has been under supervised care at his home, and is “resting comfortably.”
“I feel fine but I can’t do much,” he told the Democrat earlier this month.
Bowden coached the Seminoles to 316 wins in 34 seasons at FSU. The program won two national titles in 1993 and 1999, and recorded just one losing season in his first year at the school in 1976.
He won 377 games in his 44-year coaching career, fourth-most all-time.
(TALLAHASSEE, Fla.) — Legendary Florida State University football coach Bobby Bowden has been diagnosed with a terminal medical condition, his family announced in a statement released by the school.
Bowden, who turns 92 in November, has seen his health deteriorate in recent months. He tested positive for COVID-19 in October 2020. He was hospitalized for several days in June. The Tallahassee Democrat reports Bowden has been under supervised care at his home, and is “resting comfortably.”
“I feel fine but I can’t do much,” he told the Democrat earlier this month.
FSU Athletic Director David Coburn called Bowden “a part of the heart and soul of FSU, but it goes beyond even that — he is a big part of the history of the game.”
University President John Thrasher praised the former coach saying he “built a football dynasty and raised the national profile of Florida State University, and he did it with dignity, class and a sense of humor,”
— President John Thrasher (@FSUPresThrasher) July 21, 2021
Bowden coached the Seminoles to 316 wins in 34 seasons at FSU. The program won two national titles in 1993 and 1999, and recorded just one losing season in his first year at the school in 1976.
He won 377 games in his 44-year coaching career, fourth-most all-time.
Tiger Woods is opening up about life and parenthood in his new series, “A Round With Tiger: Celebrity Playing Lessons.”
The first episode, which was filmed just one day before he was involved in a serious car crash on Feb. 23, debuted Tuesday on Golf Digest and featured Jada Pinkett Smith.
The two engaged in a round of golf and discussed an array of topics, including parenthood, and the 45-year-old athlete shared what he’s learned from his daughter, 14-year-old Sam.
“She has taught me how to be more patient,” he said, describing Sam as his “little girl.” “I don’t ever want her to leave home.”
The five-time Masters winner is also the proud father to 12-year-old son, Charlie. He explained that he doesn’t coach his son in golf because he doesn’t want him to feel pressure there. “I don’t want him to fall onto that trap,” Woods said.
However, it seems even without the coaching, Charlie inherited some of his father’s skill.
“He just watches me do it, and then he kind of does it,” Woods said of Charlie, agreeing with Pinkett Smith that his son is “a natural.”
Woods also opened up about the discipline and resilience he practices, stating, “I’m always fighting, you know, and I’m always trying to get better. That’s all I know.”
“I feel like I’m never out of the fight, you know, in that regard,” he continued. “I’m always pushing.”
The pro also described how his own thoughts on his game always pushed him to work even harder. “For me, I always felt like I wasn’t the most talented,” he shared. “So I felt like I had to work my a– off because I was always younger than everyone else … so I want to become better.”
Woods is currently still recovering from the car crash and gave his “blessing” for “A Round With Tiger: Celebrity Playing Lessons” to be released.
(SEATTLE) — The Seattle Kraken will build their initial roster Wednesday night during the NHL’s expansion draft, where they will choose one unprotected player from each of the other teams in the league.
ESPN reports that the Kraken will not select Montreal Canadiens goaltender Carey Price, considered one of the top unprotected players available to them.
Price led the Canadiens to the Stanley Cup Final, and waived his no-movement contract clause to become available in the expansion draft. Sources told ESPN Price did so because he is unsure if he will be available to start next season due to injuries, and wanted to allow Montreal to protect their backup goaltender, Jake Allen.
The last time the NHL held an expansion draft was when the Las Vegas Golden Knights entered the league. The Golden Knights reached the Stanley Cup Finals in their first season, largely thanks to the selection of another star goaltender, Marc-Andre Fleury from the Pittsburgh Penguins.
Sources also say that the Kraken have used an exclusive negotiating window to reach deals with a pair of unrestricted free agents. The team is expected to sign Edmonton Oilers defenseman Adam Larsson and Florida Panthers goalie Chris Driedger. Those two players will count as Seattle’s selections from those teams in the expansion draft.
Seattle’s full roster will be revealed at 8pm ET on ESPN2.
(MILWAUKEE) — The Milwaukee Bucks won the NBA Championship 105-98 Tuesday night, beating the Phoenix Suns four games to two.
Giannis Antetokounmpo became the series MVP, after putting up 50 points during the Game 6 win. Antetokounmpo averaged 31.9 points per game during the NBA Finals — the most ever in NBA Finals history.
This is the Bucks’ second title — the first being 50 years ago in 1971.
Watch the full report, including highlights, from ABC’s Good Morning America below:
(TOKYO) — At the first modern Olympic Games, held in 1896 in Athens, there wasn’t a single female competitor. When the 2020 Games kick off in Tokyo this month, nearly half of the athletes competing will be women.
Tokyo marks a “turning point” for the elite international sporting competition as the most gender-equal Olympics in the games’ history, organizers said, with women accounting for nearly 49% of the 11,090 athletes. That’s up from 45% at the last games in 2016 in Rio, 23% at the 1984 Games in Los Angeles, 13.2% at the 1964 Games in Tokyo, and 2.2% at the 1900 Games in Paris — the first to have female athletes.
When the games return to Paris in 2024, there is anticipated to be full gender parity, with the same number of female athletes as male athletes.
The milestone comes as the 2020 Games have sparked a conversation around the needs of mothers in particular, regarding accommodations around pregnancy, breastfeeding and child care and as scandals involving the abuse and harassment of female athletes continue to plague sports globally.
In the years leading up to the Tokyo Olympics — which, after being delayed a year due to the coronavirus pandemic, run Friday through Aug. 8 — the International Olympic Committee has been working toward achieving more gender equity in terms of athlete quotas and event programming.
International Olympic Committe
Women’s Participation in Summer Olympics
Deliberate action
The IOC was “very deliberate” about working with international sports federations, which are in charge of their discipline’s qualifying procedures, to increase the number of female athletes in 2020, IOC Sports Director Kit McConnell told ABC News.
“We got the overall number of athletes down from Rio to Tokyo, but even in getting the overall number down, we increased the number of women’s athletes,” he said.
For the first time, each team participating will have at least one female and one male athlete, and the 2020 Games will feature new events for women and more mixed-gender teams in an attempt at greater gender equity within sports.
Some events have been dropped for men and added for women in boxing, canoe slalom and rowing, and two more women’s teams will compete in water polo in Tokyo than in Rio, for 10 women’s teams and 12 men’s teams total. In swimming, the 1,500-meter freestyle — an event only men previously competed in at the Olympics — has also been added for women.
The five sports debuting at Tokyo — karate, skateboarding, speed climbing, surfing and three-on-three basketball – will all have women’s events. Both baseball and softball also return to the Olympics after a 13-year hiatus.
The Tokyo Games will have double the number of mixed-gender events than in 2016, for 18 total, including in archery, shooting, judo, table tennis, track and field, triathlon, swimming and surfing.
“We don’t think there’s anything more equal than to have men and women competing in the same team, on truly equal footing,” McConnell said.
The International Judo Federation had pushed to add a mixed-team event, with three men and three women on each team, to the Olympics “for years,” the organization’s spokesman, Nicolas Messner, told ABC News.
“Judo is an individual sport that you have to practice as a group,” he said. “You cannot train alone in judo.”
Having a mixed team was “natural,” he said. And while there won’t be any spectators at the 2020 Games, the event has had an “amazing” atmosphere in other competitions. “The noise level in the venue is way higher during the team event than during the individual competition,” he said.
Additionally, for the opening ceremony, all Olympic teams are encouraged to have one male and one female athlete carry their country’s flag.
Increased visibility for women’s sports
When the games are broadcast, women’s events will also have more visibility in the 2020 Games, with a more balanced schedule on the weekends — including more women’s team gold medal events (17) than men’s (13) on the last weekend — according to McConnell.
“It’s not just about having the athletes on the field of play, it’s also finding the best positions in the schedule to promote those events as well,” he said.
The Olympics are a time when women’s sports often receive their greatest visibility.
“Generally speaking, the coverage of women’s sports is very low, and I think the Olympics is often the exception to that,” Sarah Axelson, vice president of advocacy for the Women’s Sports Foundation, told ABC News.
A 2017 report by the Women’s Sports Foundation found that media coverage of men’s and women’s athletes in the 2016 Olympics was “relatively equitable.”
Having more women in the Olympics has a “ripple effect,” with more investment and equality in other competitions, McConnell said. The Olympics can also create a pathway for professional athletes. In boxing, women first competed in the Olympics at the 2012 Games in London. At Rio in 2016, there were 36 female boxers and three weight categories; that will be up to 100 boxers and five weight categories for Tokyo.
“Where it is now versus where it was 10 years ago … it’s just a night and day change,” McConnell said. “And that’s because now there are medal opportunities, there are qualification opportunities, there are pathways for the athletes.”
Patrick Smith/Getty Images, FILE
Allyson Felix celebrates with her daughter Camryn after finishing second in the women’s 400-meter final at the 2020 U.S. Olympic track and field trials on June 20, 2021 in Eugene, Ore.
Basketball, soccer and softball are other sports that have benefited from an Olympic profile, according to Cheryl Cooky, a professor of women’s, gender and sexuality studies at Purdue University, an editor of Sociology of Sport Journal and the co-author of “No Slam Dunk: Gender, Sport, and the Unevenness of Social Change.”
“I think the Olympics have really, historically for women athletes, served an important role with respect to opportunities,” Cooky said. “There was a time 20, 30 years ago where there really weren’t strong, viable professional leagues for women. You competed in college and then once you graduated, your career opportunities were essentially over for the most part.”
“In some ways, the Olympics are really serving an important function to provide another venue for women to be able to participate,” she said.
More room for improvement
Even as the Olympics are set to have full gender parity by 2024, other areas within the Olympics movement are working toward greater gender equality.
For Tokyo, the Paralympic Games will have at least 40.5% female athletes, up from 38.6% at Rio in 2016.
Over the past decade, only 10% of accredited coaches at the Olympic Summer and Winter Games were women, according to the IOC. The organization has committed to working with international sports federations and national Olympic committees to have more female coaches.
“That’s an area that for the time being is a little bit harder for us to directly control,” McConnell said, noting that the IOC can set athlete quotas, but the athletes ultimately choose their coaches. “But what we can do is put in place programs with the national Olympic committees, with the international federations, and create the opportunities from the bottom up to … develop women’s coaches.”
The IOC has also been working to improve the representation of women within the organization itself, where women currently make up 33.3% of the IOC executive board and 37.5% of IOC members.
Leading up to the games, organizers for the Tokyo Olympics have also faced criticism over comments and policies impacting women.
In February, Yoshiro Mori, then-president of the Tokyo Olympics organizing committee, resigned following backlash over sexist comments he made suggesting women talk too much in meetings. He was replaced by a woman, Seiko Hashimoto, who is a decorated Olympian.
After several breastfeeding athletes spoke out against a pandemic-based policy that banned athletes’ family members from traveling to Tokyo, the organizing committee adjusted its policy to allow nursing mothers to bring their children “after careful consideration of the unique situation” those athletes faced, it said in a statement.
“If we want to support female athletes, part of being a female athlete is also having a family and if you want to support me as a complete athlete, you should be able to make room for my family,” U.S. Olympic marathoner Aliphine Tuliamuk, who gave birth to a daughter in January and fought to bring her still-nursing child to Tokyo, told “Good Morning America” last week. “You can’t just talk about supporting women and then not actually support them.”
The case of Canadian boxer Mandy Bujold also highlighted the unique circumstances facing female athletes with families. Bujold’s Olympic qualifying tournament was canceled due to the pandemic, and she was either pregnant or on maternity leave for the tournaments that ended up deciding the Olympic rankings. The IOC denied her request to have her pre-pregnancy ranking recognized, though Bujold won an appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport and will be competing in Tokyo. The IOC had said in a statement that as a result, it may have to “make decisions that would prove detrimental to other athletes,” though accepted her entry “as a matter of exception.”
These situations, though spawned by unprecedented circumstances, only further highlight the challenges parenting athletes face, Axelson said.
“The circumstances for this year certainly add an extra layer of scrutiny and complexity to it, but it’s a challenge that athletes who are parents, or breastfeeding moms, they will face every year regardless of whether or not we are enduring a global pandemic,” she said. “They’re still a parent, they still have to figure out how to train and compete with a child.”
Earlier this month, the Women’s Sports Foundation and Athleta announced a program that commits $200,000 to help fund child care costs for professional mom-athletes who are traveling to competitions. The first recipients of the Power of She Fund, who will each get $10,000, include six athletes headed to the Tokyo Olympics.
“Parenthood should not be the barrier to athletic participation or athletic success,” Axelson said.
For Cooky, it’s challenging to talk about progress in gender equality when women are sometimes subjected to “problematic dynamics as a part of their participation,” such as abuse.
Between the Rio and Tokyo Olympics came allegations of sexual abuse against former USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar from dozens of girls and women. Nassar pleaded guilty in 2017 in a case that made international headlines as prominent gymnasts, like gold medalist Aly Raisman, read emotional statements during sentencing. Basketball’s world governing body, FIBA, is currently investigating allegations of systemic sexual abuse of female players in Mali, as first reported by The New York Times.
“Women’s sports have made some important strides over the last 40, 50 years, but at the same time, there’s a lot of challenges and discrimination and inequality and abuse,” she said. “We have to take those into account as well, because otherwise we’re not telling the complete story.”
(NEW YORK) — Here are the scores for Tuesday’s sports events:
MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL
INTERLEAGUE
Kansas City 5, Milwaukee 2
NY Yankees 6, Philadelphia 4
Seattle 6, Colorado 4
AMERICAN LEAGUE
Oakland 6, L.A Angels 0
Detroit 4, Texas 1
Tampa Bay 9, Baltimore 3
Houston 9, Cleveland 3
Chi White Sox, 9 Minnesota 5
Boston at Toronto (Postponed)
NATIONAL LEAGUE
Washington 6, Miami 3
Atlanta 2, San Diego 1
Cincinnati 4, NY Mets 3
Chi Cubs 7, St. Louis 6
Arizona 11, Pittsburgh 6
LA Dodgers 8, San Francisco 6
NATIONAL BASKETBALL ASSOCIATION PLAYOFFS
Milwaukee 105, Phoenix 98 (Milwaukee wins series 4-2)
(NEW YORK) — The chief of the Tokyo 2020 organizing committee addressed concerns of rising COVID-19 cases during a press conference on Tuesday and did not rule out the possibility of a last-minute cancellation of the games.
“We can’t predict what will happen with the number of coronavirus cases. So we will continue discussions if there is a spike in cases. I think that is all I can say at this juncture,” said Tokyo 2020 CEO Toshiro Muto, in a response translated from Japanese.
Muto said the Tokyo 2020 organizing committee will continue to monitor cases and make decisions based on the current situation at hand.
“We agreed that based on the coronavirus situation, we will convene five-party talks again. At this point, the coronavirus cases may rise or fall, so we will think about what we should do when the situation arises,” Muto said.
As of Tuesday, Tokyo Olympic organizers said 71 people accredited to the games, including athletes in the Olympic Village, have tested positive for the virus just days ahead of the opening ceremonies set for Friday.
International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach said last week there is “zero” risk of athletes in the village passing on the virus to Japanese citizens or other residents of the village, according to the Associated Press.
Tokyo 2020 President Seiko Hashimoto recognized the public’s general concern over hosting the games during the Tuesday press conference.
“The problems [with the Olympics] have given rise to many people feeling discontent and anxiety about the Tokyo Games,” Hashimoto said in Japanese.
Hashimoto said “safety is paramount” and promised to give the general public of Japan a “sense of security” throughout the games.
At the beginning of the month, Japan announced a state of emergency due to large outbreaks in the greater Tokyo area, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
As of Tuesday, the country reported 2,477 new cases.
(NEW YORK) — President Joe Biden welcomed the Super Bowl champion Tampa Bay Buccaneers to the White House Tuesday, praising the team for helping the country get through the pandemic with some sense of normalcy, and trading some zingers with MVP quarterback Tom Brady.
As the event got underway, Biden gave a special shoutout to Chris Godwin, a wide receiver on the team and Delaware native.
“You know, born in Pennsylvania, raised in Delaware right come from, that’s a heckuva combination man,” Biden said.
He then took good-natured aim at Brady and coach Bruce Arians.
“You know, a lot has been made about the fact that we have the oldest coach ever to win a Super Bowl and the oldest quarterback to win the Super Bowl. Well, I’ll tell you right now, you won’t hear any jokes about that from me. As far as I’m concerned, there’s nothing wrong with being the oldest guy to make it to the mountaintop. That’s how I look at it,” Biden, who at 78 is the nation’s oldest serving president, joked.
He thanked the players for giving Americans something to positive to root for amid hard times.
“And I hope you all know just how important it was for, after such a tough year for the nation. In the middle of a long, dark winter, every Sunday, people were able to sit down and watch you play. You created memories that helped folks make it through and believe that we could get back to normal again. And you did it as a team, trailblazer, including the first team with two women, full-time coaching positions,” Biden said.
He praised the team for helping with the vaccination effort at their Florida stadium, but also called out players who haven’t yet gotten their shot.
“Your stadium also became a lifeline for families in Tampa Bay this spring, administering nearly 200,000 vaccine shots. And y’all who don’t have a shot, man, get one, OK?” Biden said, drawing an “amen” from someone on stage.
Brady, who walked in to the event with Biden amid some questions about whether he would show up, then cracked some jokes of his own, with the president standing nearby.
“It didn’t look right there at one point. We were seven and five struggling a little bit, as the president alluded to, but we found our rhythm, we got on a roll, not a lot of people, you know, think that we could have won. And in fact, I think, about 40% of the people still don’t think we won,” said Brady, who has avoided questions about whether he ever supported Donald Trump.
“I understand that,” Biden said, smiling.
Brady, who noted he was a bit older than many of his teammates, also had a zinger about the former president’s preferred nickname for Biden.
“We had a game in Chicago where I forgot what down it was. I lost track of one down in 21 years of playing, and they started calling me ‘Sleepy Tom.’ Why would they do that to me?” Brady said, as the crowd laughed.
(LOS ANGELES) — Los Angeles Rams running back Cam Akers has torn his Achilles during a workout, according to ESPN’s Adam Schefter.
Further testing confirmed the injury, according to Schefter.
Akers is likely out for the season. The team has not announced the injury.
Akers was the team’s leading rusher last year with 626 yards and two touchdowns. Darrell Henderson Jr. was the second leading rusher with 624 yards and five touchdowns.
The 22-year old Florida State product missed two games last year with a rib injury.
