in brief

COLLEGE FOOTBALL

BYU will play undetermined
opponent in New Mexico Bowl

Brigham Young has accepted an invitation to play in the New Mexico Bowl on Dec. 18 in Albuquerque. The Cougars' opponent has yet to be selected.

BYU (6-6) won five of its last seven games to tie Air Force and San Diego State for third place in the Mountain West Conference.

It will be the Cougars' 29th bowl appearance but first in Albuquerque.

Also: San Diego State accepted an invitation to play in the hometown Poinsettia Bowl on Dec. 23 against Navy.

San Diego State finished the regular season 8-4 under second-year coach Brady Hoke, who is being courted by Minnesota for its vacant job.

This will be the Aztecs' first postseason game since the 1998 Las Vegas Bowl.

Air Force is headed to the Independence Bowl on Dec. 27 to play an Atlantic Coast Conference team.

basketball

Elbow surgery sidelines Hawks
star Johnson at least four weeks

Atlanta Hawks star guard Joe Johnson will be sidelined four to six weeks with an injured right elbow.

Johnson will need arthroscopic surgery to remove a "loose body" in the elbow. He visited orthopedist Dr. James Andrews in Alabama. The Hawks said Andrews will perform the surgery on the four-time All-Star today in Pensacola, Fla.

Johnson said the elbow has caused discomfort "off and on" this season.

Also: NBA leading scorer Kevin Durant missed Oklahoma City's 123-120 triple-overtime win against the New Jersey Nets on Wednesday because of a sprained left knee.

MISCellaneous

LPGA will allow transgender
players to compete on tour

LPGA players have voted to allow transgender players to compete on the tour in response to a lawsuit filed by a California woman who had her sex changed five years ago.

The players voted to remove the "female at birth" requirement from the tour's constitution at a year-end meeting at the LPGA Tour Championship, commissioner Michael Whan said. He said steps will be taken in the coming weeks to make the change.

Players competing this week in Orlando, Fla., were mostly satisfied with the change.

"We don't need to comment on this because it's a dead issue," Cristie Kerr said. "She can compete if she can qualify. We certainly don't want to discriminate against anybody; that's not what the LPGA is about. And if she can qualify, she'll be able to play.''

Also: America's final pitch to host the 2022 World Cup was left to a former president and an Oscar-winning actor, who talked of diversity and outlined an aggressive economic plan with hopes of sweeping past Australia, Japan, Qatar and South Korea in today's vote at Zurich.

Bill Clinton and Morgan Freeman were the key speakers in a 30-minute presentation that included a video from President Barack Obama and focused on the financial boost soccer would get worldwide by returning to the United States, where the sport has experienced slow, steady growth in the past 25 years.

The U.S. laid out a proposal that would provide the most money for FIFA, soccer's governing body, with average attendance of 76,000 and $1 billion in projected sponsorship funds.

Saturday's Sunset Region football championship game between Bishop Gorman and Palo Verde set a record as the largest paid crowd to watch a game in Southern Nevada.

The paid attendance was 4,102, breaking the record of 3,773 when Gorman beat Palo Verde in a Sunset Region semifinal last season.

The largest paid crowd in state history, according to the Nevada Interscholastic Activities Association, was 4,908 for the Northern Region championship game in 2002.

The largest overall crowd was 9,005 for the 2000 Class 4A title game. The paid attendance for that game was 4,612.

The contract of UNLV women's volleyball coach Allison Keeley will not be renewed, and a national search for a new coach will begin immediately.

In seven years, Keeley compiled a 108-96 record, including a 10-20 mark this season. She became the winningest coach in UNLV history in 2008.