Comment on LEADING OFF: Price Jays debut; Burnett to doc; Cubs-Pirates

Champ Bailey says college football’s future wears shades and a cowboy hat. If your school isn’t looking for its own Coach Prime Effect after 2024, it’s not just missing the boat, baby. It’s kissing the gravy train goodbye. “Prime, to me, is the trend,” Bailey, the Broncos icon, Pro Football Hall of Famer and TNT/Warner Discovery college football analyst, reflected earlier this month when asked about CU football coach Deion Sanders. “He’s one of a kind.

The Broncos’ run of good weather fortune may be coming to an end. Denver’s Saturday afternoon game at Cincinnati is forecast to be played in rainy conditions, which would mark the first time the team’s seen anything but dry since late September. In Week 4 against the New York Jets, a round of surprise precipitation played a role in rookie quarterback Bo Nix throwing for minus-7 yards in the first half and struggling to grip the ball. The difference this time around is that Denver’s expecting bad weather.

Nikola Jokic continues to bloat the stat sheet, now becoming proficient in the quadruple-double: scoring, rebounding, passing and yelling. What’s going on with the NBA’s best player? I got pushback when I suggested the Nuggets owed him an apology for the roster construction in early November and again last week when I endorsed a trade for Chicago’s Zach LaVine. One thing is clear: It is becoming increasingly impossible to ignore Jokic’s frustration with his teammates, with the losses, with the wild inconsistency of the 16-12 start. Jokic showed his emotions on multiple occasions during a deflating 110-100 Christmas Day loss to the Phoenix Suns.

SAN ANTONIO – Ben Finneseth was a senior at Durango High School when his father took him to Golden to visit the Colorado School of Mines. “I asked my dad, I was like, ‘Can we just drive up to Folsom Field? I just want to see it. I’ve never seen it,’” Finneseth said this week.

PHOENIX — Injuries keep loitering in the Nuggets’ locker room. They’re not decimating Denver’s season by any means, not demanding long-term absences from affected players. But they are overstaying their welcome, lingering and quietly looming over most games and unleashing inconvenient warning signs. Like the one Aaron Gordon received from his calf for Christmas.

By EDDIE PELLS DENVER (AP) — The U. S. Center for SafeSport abruptly fired one of its investigators last month after learning he’d been arrested for stealing money confiscated after a drug bust he was part of during his previous job as a police officer. Jason Krasley left his job with the Allentown Police Department in Pennsylvania in 2021 and was hired by the Denver-based SafeSport center to look into sensitive cases involving sex abuse and harassment. Among Krasley’s cases was one with Sean McDowell, who had filed a report to the center accusing a member of his Seattle-based recreational rugby club of stalking and harassment.