Sports briefs 10/26/04

Colleges

• The graduation rate for major college football players increased for the fourth straight year, and the rate for all Division I athletes remained at 62 percent, or 2 percent higher than the general student population.

The figures, released Monday by the NCAA, were for athletes who entered college in 1997 and graduated within the six-year window set by the U.S. Department of Education.

This year's report showed 70 percent of female athletes who entered Division I colleges on scholarship in 1997 have graduated, compared with 55 percent of the male athletes over the same period.

• Florida coach Ron Zook was fired but will finish the season while the school searches for his replacement, a university source told The Associated Press on Monday.

After two-plus years and a stack of embarrassments, athletic director Jeremy Foley satisfied a growing groundswell for Zook's ouster that literally began the day he replaced Steve Spurrier.

.The Gators are 20-13 under Zook with four games left. The latest debacle, a 38-31 loss to Mississippi State, sealed Zook's fate.

• Vince Young of Texas, Iowa State's Brandon Brown and Todd Pegram of Texas A&M were named Big 12 players of the week on Monday.

Young ran for 158 yards and four touchdowns and threw for 142 yards and another score in the Longhorns' 51-21 win over Texas Tech. The sophomore's four rushing touchdowns is a Texas quarterback record.

Brown had 13 tackles, forced one fumble, recovered two fumbles and had a sack in Iowa State's 26-25 win over Baylor. He had eight unassisted tackles to help Iowa State to its first Big 12 conference road win since 2001.

Pegram made five field goals, including one of 19 yards in overtime, to give Texas A&M a 29-26 win over Colorado. He hit a 20-yard field goal at the end of regulation to force overtime and connected from 23, 25 and 34 yards.

• Darrell Jackson, a freshman who withdrew from classes at Missouri and left the football team in August, was charged Monday with five counts of statutory sodomy.

The charges came after a judge transferred Jackson's case from family court to St. Louis County Circuit Court so Jackson could be tried as an adult, STLtoday.com, the Web site of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, reported Monday. Jackson was being held on $50,000 bond. Jackson, 19, is accused of molesting an elementary school girl who was an acquaintance when he was a high school student.

Football

• The Chicago Bears are taking a pass on Tim Couch and will stick with the three quarterbacks on their roster, despite their 1-5 record, coach Lovie Smith said Monday.

Couch, the top overall pick in the 1999 draft who was cut by the Browns and the Packers and had been bothered by a sore arm, had a tryout on Friday and Saturday with the Bears.

Motorsports

• Crews on all-terrain vehicles on Monday recovered the bodies of all 10 people killed in the crash of a Hendrick Motorsports plane that was carrying family and friends of one of NASCAR's top syndicates.

Federal investigators said they did not know what caused the Beech 200 King Air to crash Sunday en route from Concord, N.C., to Martinsville Speedway, about 7 miles east of the crash site on Bull Mountain in the foothills of the Appalachians.