Briefly: Missouri State hires Bobby Petrino as football coach

Bobby Petrino, a coach with a track record of on-the-field success and off-the-field embarrassments, will be the next coach at Missouri State.

Petrino, 58, will be introduced at a news conference Thursday, the school said. He will replace Dave Steckel, who was fired last week after winning just 13 games in five seasons.

Petrino has a 119-56 record in 14 seasons at Arkansas, Western Kentucky and Louisville. He also spent part of one season coaching the NFL's Atlanta Falcons but resigned abruptly with three games remaining in the 2007 season to return to college coaching at Arkansas.

Petrino was 34-17 in four seasons at Arkansas, but after the 2010 season he was injured in a motorcycle accident that exposed an extramarital affair with an athletic department employee. Petrino originally said he was riding alone but later revealed that the woman was a passenger and that they were involved in a relationship. Petrino was fired and was out of football in 2012. Stops at Western Kentucky and a return to Louisville followed.

At Louisville he coached Heisman Trophy winner Lamar Jackson and had the Cardinals ranked No. 3 in 2016, but a 2-8 2018 season ended his time there, and he sat out the 2019 season.

Veterinarians missed reasons to remove Mongolian Groom from the Breeders' Cup Classic before the gelding suffered a fatal injury, a report on the incident said.

Dr. Larry Bramlage, a veterinarian who did the report, said Mongolian Groom had small stress fractures in both hind cannon bones before the Classic but that they caused no swelling and were difficult to identify on X-rays. He placed no blame.

The incident happened at Santa Anita in Arcadia, Calif., where Mongolian Groom was the 37th horse to die in a year.

Lefthander Alex Wood agreed to a $4 million, one-year contract to return to the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Wood spent last season with Cincinnati, making only seven starts while dealing with a back injury. He pitched for the Dodgers from 2015-18 and went 16-3 with a 2.02 ERA in 2017, earning his first All-Star selection.

Tennis: Serena Williams will be part of the U.S. team for its Fed Cup qualifier next month against Latvia. Williams has played in 10 previous Fed Cup competitions and is 13-0 in singles, but she didn't play last year.

Doping: Kenyan runner Alfred Kipketer, who raced in the 800-meter final at the 2016 Olympics, was suspended for failing to make himself available for doping tests. He's the latest in a string of Kenyan athletes to face discipline connected to doping. … World champion boxer Alexander Besputin's belt is threatened because of a failed drug test. Besputin won the WBA welterweight title in November, a result that could be changed because of the drug test.