The Department of Justice reached a $138.7 million settlement Tuesday with the victims of former USA Gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar over the FBI’s initial failure to adequately investigate sexual abuse allegations against him.

“For decades, Lawrence Nassar abused his position, betraying the trust of those under his care and medical supervision while skirting accountability,” acting Associate Attorney General Benjamin C. Mizer said in a statement. “These allegations should have been taken seriously from the outset. While these settlements won’t undo the harm Nassar inflicted, our hope is that they will help give the victims of his crimes some of the critical support they need to continue healing.”

The DOJ said the settlement agreement resolves 139 claims against the FBI and the money will be distributed to the claimants.

Nassar sexually abused over 300 female gymnasts under the guise of medical treatment, and more than 150 women and girls spoke out publicly against him. The disgraced sports doctor pleaded guilty in 2018 to seven counts of criminal sexual conduct and was sentenced to 40 to 175 years in prison. The year prior, he was sentenced to 60 years in federal prison on child pornography charges.

In June 2022, Nassar had a final appeal rejected by the Michigan…

The Pac-12 Conference, which will drop down to two members this summer, will no longer be an “autonomous conference,” the NCAA Division I Board of Directors determined on Monday, effective Aug. 2. It will instead be classified as a “nonautonomous FBS conference” like the Group of 5.

The board created new governance thresholds for conferences that fall below membership requirements. As a result, the Pac-12 will lose representation on the Board of Directors. It will retain representation and voting rights on the Division I Council, the Football Oversight Committee and the Division I Student-Athlete Advisory Committee when applicable, but the weight of its Council vote will be diminished.

Multi-sport conferences are required to have at least eight members, but in the event they drop below that number, they are allowed a two-year grace period to get back up. The Pac-12 will lose 10 schools to the Big Ten, Big 12 and ACC this summer, leaving only Oregon State and Washington State. The board’s determinations on Monday apply to conferences in that grace period.

In 2014, the board created a new “autonomy” model, granting the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12 and SEC the ability to make some of their own rules together, which happened the next year with full cost-of-attendance…

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — The U.S. Olympic Team for wrestling is set. The Olympic Trials wrapped up Saturday night in the Bryce Jordan Center on Penn State’s campus.

On the men’s side, the U.S. has already qualified for the Olympics in four of the six weight classes in freestyle. It’s qualified in three of the six weight classes in Greco-Roman. The U.S. women have all six weight classes qualified.

While Spencer Lee and Zain Retherford are both Olympic Trials champions, they both still must qualify the weight class by finishing among the top three during the World Olympic Games Qualifier which runs May 9-12 in Istanbul.

Men’s freestyle

57 kg: In the competition of four-time Iowa All-America honorees it was Lee who defeated Thomas Gilman in two consecutive matches. Lee won 6-3 and then pinned Gilman, the 2020 Olympic bronze medalist, in the second match in 5:58. In order to wrestle in Paris, Lee must now qualify the weight.

65 kg: Retherford swept his training parter and former Penn State teammate Nick Lee, 2-1 and 5-0. He called the win “bittersweet” because he had to beat his close friend to do so. Retherford said he wasn’t sure he was even going to wrestle this cycle as he eyes a future in New York working with a financial firm. In January, Retherford decided he…

Aleah Finnegan was on the verge of tears the moment her feet hit the mat following her balance beam routine in the anchor spot of LSU’s lineup.

The Tigers entered the final rotation of the NCAA women’s gymnastics championship Saturday trailing Utah by .037, and though the Utes left the door open with a few mistakes on vault, LSU needed Finnegan to put up a clutch performance to replace the 9.3875 Savannah Schoenherr received after an uncharacteristic fall. Fellow Tigers Konnor McClain, Kiya Johnson and Haleigh Bryant recorded three straight scores of 9.950 or better to get the Tigers back on track, but the margin of error remained slim after Utah rallied to a strong finish.

With a shot at clinching LSU’s first national title teetering on the four-inch width of the beam, Finnegan delivered.

The 21-year-old, who will represent the Philippines at the Paris Olympics this summer, was rock solid from the moment she jumped to perch sideways for her mount. She floated through her difficult backhand spring, layout step-out, layout step-out series, tossed a front aerial with ease and capped the title-winning performance by drilling her full-twisting gainer dismount.

LSU started celebrating before the judges flashed Finnegan’s score, and when her 9.950 sealed the deal, there were…

Former Kentucky women’s swim team captain Briggs Alexander said he was “vigorously discouraged” from coming forward about former coach Lars Jorgensen’s alleged sexual abuse during his time as a swimmer and later an assistant coach with the team.

“I thought I could trust them,” Alexander said of Kentucky’s Title IX office. “I went to them and disclosed my abuse and thought it was going to be taken care of. … I was repeatedly discouraged and vigorously discouraged to not come forward.”

Alexander is one of two former team members who filed a lawsuit against Jorgensen, Kentucky, UK athletic director Mitch Barnhart and former UK swim coach Gary Conelly. According to the complaint, Kentucky’s “complicity and deliberate indifference” enabled Jorgensen “to foster a toxic, sexually hostile environment within the swim program and to prey on, sexually harass and commit horrific sexual assaults and violent rapes against young female coaches and collegiate athletes who were reliant on him.”

During Jorgensen’s time as an associate head coach and eventually the head coach, Kentucky received reports of Jorgensen being in a relationship with a swimmer he previously coached at the University of Toledo. Kentucky was contacted by Mark Howard, a former Toledo…

In August 2019, two swim coaches at San Jose (Calif.) State reported allegations they had heard about University of Kentucky head swimming coach Lars Jorgensen to a Title IX officer at their school. The allegations were that Jorgensen had been in a relationship with one of his swimmers at an earlier coaching stop and that he had sexually assaulted a woman on the swim staff at Kentucky. The Title IX officer at San Jose State then alerted a counterpart at Kentucky.

It was at least the third time Kentucky was made aware or should have been aware of an allegation of misconduct by Jorgensen.

In June 2012, Mark Howard, a former assistant swimming coach at the University of Toledo, sent separate emails to Gary Conelly, then Kentucky’s head swim coach, and UK athletic director Mitch Barnhart. “This is no joke at all and I cannot stomach the fact that (Jorgensen) will be coaching women again,” Howard wrote to Conelly, who had recently added Jorgensen as an associate head coach. He informed both men that a swimmer had told him that she had been in a sexual relationship with Jorgensen while he coached her at Toledo.

In October 2014, a former Toledo softball coach repeated the allegation that Jorgensen had been in a “long-term romantic relationship” with a student-athlete in a…

The National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) approved a transgender participation policy Monday that will only allow athletes to participate in NAIA-sponsored women’s sports if their biological sex assigned at birth is female and they have not begun hormone therapy. The policy will also allow all athletes to participate in male sports.

“We are unwavering in our support of fair competition for our student-athletes,” NAIA President and CEO Jim Carr said in a news release. “It is crucial that NAIA member institutions, conferences, and student-athletes participate in an environment that is equitable and respectful. With input from our member institutions and the Transgender Task Force, the NAIA’s Council of Presidents has confirmed our path forward.”

Under the new policy, an athlete who has not begun any masculinizing hormone therapy may participate in women’s sports without limitation. But if an athlete has begun hormone therapy, that athlete will not be allowed to participate in interscholastic competition, but will still be permitted to workout, practice and participate in team activities.

The transgender participation policy will apply to all sports except for cheer and dance, which are both coed.

The NAIA is a mostly small college sports…