Sports in Brief: Night football for Penn State

Penn State will play at least one regular-season night football game this fall for the 12th consecutive season.

The Big Ten Network said Thursday night that it will show Penn State's Oct. 22 visit to Northwestern. The Nittany Lions and Wildcats will meet at 7 p.m. in Evanston, Ill.

Police in Norman, Okla., were investigating whether drugs had a role in the death Thursday of Oklahoma linebacker Austin Box, 22, and a witness told authorities he believed his friend had overdosed.

Radford men's basketball coach Brad Greenberg, 57, a former 76ers general manager, resigned. He was suspended for four games in February for NCAA violations tied to impermissible team travel and associated extra benefits for an ineligible player.

East Carolina was placed on one year of probation by the NCAA and must vacate wins for self-reported academic fraud violations after a women's tennis player working as a tutor wrote papers for four baseball players.

PRO FOOTBALL: DeMaurice Smith, executive director of the NFL Players Association, gave a graduation speech at Maryland that compared the players' lockout fight against the owners to the detractors the students will face in their future lives.

Smith turned on his own recording of Gary Glitter's "Rock and Roll (Part 2)" and encouraged everyone to clap while shouting the mild profanity that fans insert into the song at basketball games.

"To anybody who thinks for one minute that passion is something that is cheap and futile, I have two words for them: 'You suck,' " Smith said.

New York Giants co-owner John Mara is warning that the players' strategy in the labor impasse, if successful, would lead to NFL chaos. Mara wrote an essay posted Thursday on nfl.com and giants.com in which he pointed to no salary caps or minimums and perhaps no draft.

Carolina Panthers linebacker Jon Beason won a civil suit brought by a man who accused the three-time Pro Bowl pick of punching him in the face at a strip club in Charlotte, N.C.

GOLF: Lee Westwood of England produced a blitz of birdies to defeat Anders Hansen of Denmark, 6 and 5, on the opening day of the World Match Play Championship in Casares, Spain.

Paula Creamer and Karrie Webb had first-round victories in leading nine of the top 11 seeds into the second round of the $1.5 million Sybase Match Play Championship at Hamilton Farm Golf Club in Gladstone, N.J.

David Toms shot a bogey-free 8-under-par 62 to share the first-round lead with Chez Reavie in the Colonial in Fort Worth, Texas. Toms' best score in more than five years came only four days after he lost a playoff in The Players Championship.

AUTO RACING: Swiss driver Simona De Silvestro burned both hands during a crash at an Indianapolis 500 practice, threatening her participation in qualifying.

Denny Hamlin's No. 11 team successfully defended its title in NASCAR's Pit Crew Challenge in Charlotte, N.C., edging Jimmie Johnson's No. 48 team in the final round.

Danica Patrick won't commit to returning to the IndyCar series next year.

TENNIS: Andy Roddick and 2003 French Open champion Juan Carlos Ferrero withdrew from this year's tournament after failing to recover from right shoulder injuries.

Mardy Fish and John Isner of the United States lost their matches to Argentina in the semifinals of the World Team Cup in Duesseldorf, Germany.

- Inquirer wire services