Sports

All seven of the top horse trainers leading the national earnings list faced penalties for horses testing positive for ephedrine, bicarbonate loading or powerful painkillers in the past decade, a San Diego Union-Tribune investigation found. Reporter Brent Schrotenboer checked records for 20 successful trainers in Southern California; 12 had violations, including some in 2006. Trainers…

ESPN.com investigative sports reporter Mike Fish reports on Greg Anderson, the personal trainer whose testimony prosecutors believe could put Barry Bonds behind bars and, in turn, derail his record home run chase. Federal prosecutors “convinced U.S. District Judge William Alsup that Anderson’s cooperation is pivotal to their ability to indict [Barry Bonds]. Because Anderson isn’t…

Steve Weiberg and Jodi Upton of USA Today looked at the salaries of men’s Division I basketball coaches. “USA Today obtained contracts or other documents detailing salaries for coaches at 58 of the 65 schools in the 2006 tournament field. Their average salary this season: nearly $800,000. In the six marquee conferences

As spring training opens around baseball, Mike Fish of ESPN.com takes a two-day look at the state of Major League Baseball’s fight against performance-enhancing drugs in the Dominican Republic with a series of stories and reports. (The articles are also available in Spanish.)

Mike Fish of ESPN.com reports that Mack Henry “Hank” Sloan, who runs an Atlanta clinic with a clientele of sports stars, is under investigation for allegedly practicing medicine without a license. “The 36-year-old Sloan calls himself a naturopath, a practitioner of a medical discipline that emphasizes holistic approaches to enhance the body’s innate ability to…

Thomas Hargrove of Scripps Howard News Service found that the average weight of NFL athletes dropped more than a pound last year, reversing a 20-year trend in which pro football’s behemoths steadily gained bulk at the rate of more than a pound per man per year. According to the Scripps Howard News Service study of…

Jodi Upton and Steve Wieberg of USA Today have taken an extensive look at the contracts of NCAA Division 1-A football coaches. “Head coaches at the NCAA’s top-level schools are making an average of $950,000 this year, not counting benefits, incentives, subsidized housing or any of the perks they routinely receive. At least 42 of…

Jill Riepenhoff and Mike Wagner of The Columbus Dispatch “collected and analyzed police incident reports to gauge behavior that broke [Big Ten] school rules or criminal laws inside stadiums and to examine police response. More than 4.8 million fans flooded the conference’s 11 football stadiums during the [2005] season.” Of the almost 1400 incidents reported,…