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— free for readers, with article processing charges paid by authors or their institutions. Tennessee and North Carolina State have broken into the top 10 of the AP college football poll while USC Sports moved up a spot to No. 6 and UCLA received votes. The Rams can’t seem to find any consistency through three games, but luckily for them they are 2-1 after a road win over NFC West rival Arizona.

Notably, the Japanese samurai practiced many forms of archery, the most colourful of which was probably yabusame, whose mounted contestants drew their bows and loosed their arrows while galloping down a straight track some 720 to 885 feet long. They were required to shoot in quick succession at three small targets—each about 9 square inches placed on 3-foot- (0.9-metre-) high poles 23 to 36 feet from the track and spaced at intervals of 235 to 295 feet (71.5 to 90 metres). The Chicago Bulls' two-time All-Star and Olympic gold medalist landed the richest contract in franchise history when he agreed to a $215 million, five-year contract. MINNEAPOLIS — After opening with a decisive win against the Green Bay Packers, the Minnesota Vikings have been tested the past two weeks. A Minnesota offense looking to make a jump under new coach Kevin O’Connell is still a work in progress. PHOENIX — All-Stars Devin Booker and Chris Paul, along with freshly paid Deandre Ayton and coach Monty Williams, are back together for another run at an elusive NBA title.

TORONTO — Blue Jays right-hander Alek Manoah has been honored with a sportsmanship award for defending teammate Alejandro Kirk after the catcher was criticized online for his weight. Manoah received a roughly $73,000 ($100,000 Canadian) sponsorship prize and immediately donated it to KidSport, a Canadian nonprofit that gives children the opportunity to participate in organized sports. SALT LAKE CITY — A dramatic roster overhaul has left the Utah Jazz with a load of new faces entering this season. Utah traded Royce O’Neale, Rudy Gobert, Donovan Mitchell, and Bojan Bogdanovic in separate deals over the summer, effectively tearing down a team that endured a series of disappointing early playoff exits. LOS ANGELES — Nothing put a bigger smile on Los Angeles Clippers owner Steve Ballmer's face than seeing a healthy Kawhi Leonard walking around the team's practice facility. Ballmer hopes to be feeling even better when the Clippers open training camp Tuesday in Las Vegas and Leonard is testing out his surgically repaired knee.

Ball games of all sorts were quite popular among the Chinese. Descriptions of the game cuju, which resembled modern football , appeared as early as the Eastern Han dynasty (25–220). Games similar to modern badminton were also played in the 1st century. Finally, the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) scroll painting Grove of Violets depicts elegantly attired ladies playing chuiwan, a game similar to modern golf. Sports, physical contests pursued for the goals and challenges they entail. Sports are part of every culture past and present, but each culture has its own definition of sports.

Its unarmed techniques were especially prized within Chinese culture and were an important influence on the martial arts of Korea, Japan, and Southeast Asia. Much less well known in the West are varma adi (“hitting the vital spots”) and other martial arts traditions of South Asia. In the early modern era, as unarmed combat became obsolete, the emphasis of Asian martial arts tended to shift back toward religion. Japanese kenjutsu (“techniques of the sword”) became kendō (“the way of the sword”). Like the highly evolved civilizations of which they are a part, traditional Asian sports are ancient and various.

Boston’s Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown said they had not spoken to Coach Ime Udoka since the team announced his full-season suspension on Thursday. With an average of 0.77 sacks per game, Donald could challenge Bruce Smith’s career sacks record. The Spurs traded Dejounte Murray in the summer and project to be one of the worst teams in the league.

Baseball, for example, boomed in Cuba, where Nemesio Guilló introduced the game to his countrymen in 1863, and in Japan, where Horace Wilson, an American educator, taught it to his Japanese students in 1873. It was, however, only in the post-World War II world that U.S. influence generally overwhelmed British; only then did basketball and volleyball become globally popular. Peasant women participated freely in the ball games and footraces of medieval times, and aristocratic ladies hunted and kept falcons, but middle-class women contented themselves with spectatorship. Even so, they were more active than their contemporaries in Heian Japan during the 8th to 12th centuries.

— There is a scene in Jimmie Johnson's coffee table book “One More Lap” in which the seven-time NASCAR champion and future Hall of Famer gives a dramatic reading of an excerpt from a biography of the late journalist Hunter S. — Seven-time NASCAR champion Jimmie Johnson is retiring from full-time racing and will turn his focus toward spending time with family. He figures his future schedule will include no more than 10 bucket-list events, but the 47-year-old had no idea Monday what that will look like in 2023. TORONTO — Aaron Judge and the New York Yankees will have to wait at least one more day to achieve home run history and crack some bubbly. Judge stayed at 60 home runs, one shy of Roger Maris’ American League record, and the Yankees’ bid to clinch the AL East stalled when Vladimir Guerrero Jr. Eastern Michigan University's Emoni Bates, who transferred to the school after one year in Memphis, was charged with two felonies following a traffic stop Monday.