New UCLA coach Bob Chesney will direct his first football season in a historic venue the Bruins have long called home.
UCLA announced on Saturday that the Bruins will play the 2026 season at the Rose Bowl amid ongoing litigation of the university’s right to potentially break its lease and play home games at SoFi Stadium.
“We know how much game day means to Bruins — to our students, alumni and fans who plan their autumn around Saturdays together,” UCLA vice chancellor for strategic communications Mary Osako said in a statement. “Our priority is delivering a strong season experience for our student-athletes and our community, and we have great momentum in our football program.
“During this unprecedented time in college athletics, UCLA will always be guided by what’s best for our student-athletes and the Bruin community.”
The California Post was the first to report UCLA’s decision to play another season at the Rose Bowl.
While the lawsuit states UCLA has formally notified the Rose Bowl that it is “moving on” and that “there’s no way we’re staying long term,” the school has never publicly announced plans to move its home games to SoFi Stadium.
“While we continue to evaluate the long-term arrangement for UCLA football home games, no decision has been made,” Osako said in a statement to The Times in October.
After a judge denied UCLA’s request to settle its legal dispute with the Rose Bowl operators and city of Pasadena via arbitration, it seemed unlikely the legal issues would be resolved in time for UCLA play the 2026 season anywhere but the Rose Bowl.
The city of Pasadena and the Rose Bowl Operating Co. filed a lawsuit in October to force UCLA to honor its contract and play games at the stadium through the 2044 season.
The complaint and subsequent filings have alleged that the university has been working to play its home games at SoFi Stadium, calling the move “a profound betrayal of trust.” Rose Bowl officials have since added SoFi Stadium and its operator, Kroenke Sports, to the lawsuit.
UCLA’s lease runs through June 30, 2044, and Pasadena officials say taxpayers have invested more than $150 million in stadium renovations while recently refinancing an additional $130 million in bonds for capital improvements.
The iconic Rose Bowl opened in 1922, is a national historic landmark and boasts ample tailgating opportunities, but some fans have complained about the aging venue’s uncomfortable seating and lack of modern amenities.
The next hearing in the case is scheduled for Friday as it proceeds toward trial.
UCLA has canceled an upcoming lecture featuring CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss.
Weiss was scheduled to give the annual Daniel Pearl Memorial lecture on Feb. 27, about “The Future of Journalism.” But according to the university, the program will not move forward as scheduled, after Weiss’ team withdrew from the event.
A source familiar with the UCLA program said the lecture was canceled due to security concerns from Weiss, despite the public university offering to obtain additional security for the event, the source said. The Daniel Pearl Memorial lecture series honors the late journalist and is considered the capstone of the university’s Burkle Center for International Relations. Previous speakers include journalists Jake Tapper, Anderson Cooper and Bob Woodward.
According to the source, several employees at both the Burkle Center and the International Institute expressed opposition to Weiss speaking on campus. The university was also expecting a large number of students to protest the event.
Neither Weiss nor CBS immediately responded to a request for comment.
Weiss founded the media company, The Free Press, which was purchased in October by Paramount, CBS’ parent company. Following the $150 million purchase, Weiss was installed as editor-in-chief of CBS News.
Two months after taking on the new role, Weiss made the widely panned decision to pull a “60 Minutes” episode that examined the alleged abuse of deportees sent from the U.S. to an El Salvador prison. The decision earned Weiss heavy criticism and accusations that the move was politically motivated.
The canceled UCLA lecture comes at a time of ongoing organizational upheaval at CBS, which this week made headlines amid an escalating battle with its own late-night talk host, Stephen Colbert, over the FCC’s effort to enact stricter enforcement of the equal-time rule.
Feb. 13 (UPI) — Two people are dead and a third is wounded following a shooting on the campus of South Carolina State University, officials said.
The shooting occurred Thursday night in an apartment at the Hugine Suites student residential complex on the university’s campus in Orangeburg, located about 75 miles northwest of Charleston.
The university issued a campus lockdown at about 9:15 p.m., according to officials, who said in a statement that they have asked the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division to investigate.
SLED investigators are on site and investigating the crime, the university said.
Little information about the shooting was immediately available.
“Stop what you’re doing and pray,” Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., said in a statement posted to her personal X account following reports of the shooting.
“Join us in prayer for the students, staff and their families. God bless our brave law enforcement responding tonight.”
The identities of the victims have yet to be confirmed, the school said.
As of early Friday, the campus remained on lockdown.
School officials said Friday’s classes were canceled and counselors would be made available to students.
The shooting is the latest at the school since Oct. 4, when one person was killed and a second person was wounded in separate shootings on the historically Black university’s Orangeburg campus.
The deceased victim from one of the October shootings was identified as 19-year-old Jaliyah Butler.
Brigham Young receiver Parker Kingston has been charged with first-degree felony rape by prosecutors in Utah.
The Washington County Attorney’s Office announced the charges on Wednesday, almost a year after a 20-year-old woman told officers at St. George Regional Hospital that Kingston had sexually assaulted her on Feb. 23, 2025.
The St. George Police Department gathered digital and forensic evidence and interviewed the involved parties and other witnesses before turning the information over to the Washington County Attorney’s Office for review.
Kingston, 21, is being held without bail and is scheduled to appear in Utah’s Fifth Judicial District Court on Friday afternoon.
Kingston has been with the Cougars for four years and has one season of college eligibility remaining. In a breakout 2025 season, he had 67 receptions for 928 yards and five touchdowns with 119 yards and three touchdowns rushing. Over the past two seasons, Kingston has also returned three punts for touchdowns.
“BYU became aware today of the arrest of Parker Kingston,” the school said Wednesday in a statement. “The university takes any allegation very seriously, and will cooperate with law enforcement. Due to federal and university privacy laws and practices for students, the university will not be able to provide additional comment.”
Last year, then-BYU quarterback Jake Retzlaff was accused in a civil lawsuit of raping a woman in November 2023. Retzlaff contended that the sex was consensual, and the parties agreed to dismiss the case with prejudice in June. Facing suspension for violating a BYU honor code that requires students to abstain from premarital sex, Retzlaff transferred to Tulane.
MILAN — One short week after Lindsey Vonn crashed in Crans-Montana, Switzerland, and tore her left anterior cruciate ligament, she was tearing down the hill in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, a light knee brace warping the fabric of her racing suit the only obvious sign of anything amiss. When she finished the training run Friday, clocking the third-fastest time for a U.S. woman on the day, she casually fist bumped an American teammate at the finish line.
She made the feat look effortless. Sports medicine experts can say it’s anything but.
“It’s atypical to be able to compete without an ACL, at anything, but especially at a high level like Lindsey Vonn’s going to compete at,” said Clint Soppe, a board certified orthopedic surgeon and sports medicine specialist at Cedars-Sinai. “So this is very surprising news to me as well.”
The ACL, which connects the shin bone to the femur, is a main stabilizing force in the knee and protects the lower leg from sliding forward. Straight-line movement doesn’t stress the major knee ligament and some day-to-day tasks such as walking are easily accomplished without an ACL. But what Vonn is doing is far from normal.
“If you add cutting, pivoting, changing directions, in 95% of humans, you need an ACL to do that,” said Kevin Farmer, an orthopedic surgeon and professor at the University of Florida’s department of orthopedics and sports medicine. “She’s obviously fallen into that 5%.”
Farmer calls the rare group “copers.” They overcome the lack of an ACL by strengthening and engaging other muscles. It’s primarily the hamstrings and quadriceps, but everything, including the glutes, calves, hips and core, counts.
Vonn will have had just nine days between the Olympic downhill race and her injury when she stands at the start gate Sunday. But the 41-year-old has had her whole career to develop the type of strength and control necessary to carry her through the Games without an ACL. She’s already done it before.
Lindsey Vonn concentrates ahead of a downhill training run in Cortina d’Ampezzo on Friday.
(Marco Trovati / Associated Press)
Vonn skied on a torn right ACL for more than a month until withdrawing just before the 2014 Sochi Olympics. In 2019, she won a bronze medal at world championships without a lateral collateral ligament and three tibial fractures in her left knee. She said this week that the same knee feels better than it did during that bronze medal run.
“She’s dealt with knee injuries in this knee before, so she’s been able to develop mechanisms and strategies,” Farmer said. “She probably doesn’t even realize that, but just from years of practicing with a knee that’s not normal, her body has developed mechanisms of firing patterns that allow her knee to have some inherent stability that most people don’t have.”
For athletes who suffer major injuries for the first time, pain often prevents them from firing their muscles, said Jason Zaremski, a nonoperative musculoskeletal and sports medicine physician and clinical professor at the University of Florida’s department of physical medicine and rehabilitation. But Vonn, whose injury history is almost as long as her resume, looked calm during training, her coach Aksel Lund Svindal told reporters in Cortina on Saturday.
So even if she’s one ACL short, Vonn’s team knows she has more than enough of the intangibles to get her not only down the mountain, but into medal contention.
“Her mental strength,” Svindal told reporters in Cortina on Saturday. “I think that’s why she has won as much as she has.”
Vonn completed her second training run Saturday with the third-fastest time before training was suspended after 21 athletes. She was 0.37 second behind compatriot Breezy Johnson, who is intimately familiar with what Vonn is attempting.
Johnson, a medal contender for the United States who led the second training run at 1 minute and 37.91 seconds, attempted to ski in Cortina without an ACL in 2022. She had one successful training run, but crashed on the second one, sustaining further injuries that forced her to withdraw from the Beijing Olympics.
Johnson, like many, gasped when she saw Vonn’s knee buckle slightly on a jump during training Saturday. She said coming off jumps on this course are especially difficult.
“There are, I think, more athletes that ski without ACLs and with knee damage than maybe talk about it,” Johnson said at a news conference from Cortina. “… I think that people often are unwilling to talk about it because of judgment from the media and the outside.”
Critics say Vonn is taking a spot from a healthy teammate or that she simply refuses to give up the sport for good. But Vonn has already come to terms with the end of her career. She said she came out of retirement with a partially replaced right knee simply wanting an opportunity to put the perfect bow on her ski racing career at a course she especially loves.
The stage is different, but the sentiment is familiar to Zaremski. The doctor has worked with high school athletes who beg for a chance to play a final game after suffering a torn ACL. Through bracing, taping and treatment, sometimes there are temporary fixes for the biggest moments.
“If we’re trying to get a huge event like the Olympics, I would never put anything past [Vonn],” Zaremski said. “She’s an amazing, once-in-a-generation athlete.”
