• Beloved singer died last week at the age of 80

• Parton was born 30 miles from college campus

The Tennessee Volunteers will be honoring Dolly Parton with a helmet sticker this season, the college football team’s head coach, Josh Heupel, announced on Monday.

Parton, a Tennessee native, died last week at the age of 80 from cancer.

• Junior taken to hospital after first-quarter emergency

• Division II season opener suspended and later canceled

• School plans vigil for Barnett and his family

William Jewell College running back MicahJo Barnett had a medical emergency on the sideline during ⁠the school’s season opener on Saturday. and the school later announced his death.

Barnett, a junior, ⁠reportedly experienced seizure-like ⁠symptoms during ​the first quarter of the Division II contest against Fort Lewis College. The game was played ⁠on William Jewell’s campus in Liberty, Missouri, about 20 miles northeast of Kansas City.

Bill Belichick’s North Carolina Tar Heels upset the TCU Horned Frogs in a low-scoring affair at Dublin’s Aviva Stadium on Saturday in the first major college football game of the 2026 season

• College football is booming, chaotic and more confusing than ever

• Man claims he was coached extensively by authorities

• Pennsylvania says recantation is ‘highly suspect’

• Sandusky serving sentence after 2012 conviction

A judge has granted a hearing to explore claims that a man wants to recant allegations of sexual abuse years ago by Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky.

Sandusky, 82, has been serving a decades-long prison sentence since he was convicted of 45 counts of sexual abuse in 2012. Eight young men testified about what happened to them as boys. He has repeatedly lost efforts to get a new trial, but Sandusky’s lawyers are trying again.

America’s second biggest sporting obsession returns this weekend, which means marching bands, 100,000-seat stadiums, ancient rivalries and, increasingly, the operating model of a sport being invented in real time

Is college football healthy? It’s a seductive question, one that now comes up every year around this time. Actually, it never recedes, so it’s just with the sport all the time. It’s also the wrong question, because whoever answers it is free to choose their own adventure. The television ratings are way up there in the galaxy. Money rains down on dozens of programs and thousands of players. Marching bands continue to march. Yet a lot of teams are stranded by realignment or an economic inability to keep up in a transfer arms race. Their fans – actually any team’s fans – may be exhausted by escalating asks for their dollars.

If you have been checked out of the sport for a while ahead of this weekend’s first set of games, you may feel like your body has been frozen for a few decades. Indiana, (yes, really) are the defending national champs, fresh off a 16-0 season that puts them on the list of the handful of best teams ever. Texas Tech, once likened to Siberia by a former coach who is now a US senator, are the fiercest program in the Big 12. Ole Miss are good for the first time since integration. At least Ohio State and Georgia are still powerhouses.

• Center Kate Koval departs after one season with Tigers

• Anna Minaeva of Russia joined team earlier this month

• Kim Mulkey hoped two could be ‘ambassadors’ for peace

Ukrainian center Kate Koval is leaving LSU less than two weeks after the Tigers brought in a player from Russia.

LSU coach Kim Mulkey said Monday night that Koval was leaving for “personal reasons”, adding that the program will “respect her privacy on her decision”.

• Kai Spears incorrectly linked to death of young mother

• Times says it had not lost libel case in more than 50 years

An Alabama jury has awarded $9.25m in damages after finding that the New York Times defamed a college basketball player by incorrectly reporting that he was at the scene of a fatal shooting.

Kai Spears, who played for the University of Alabama men’s team, sued the Times in 2023 after it published a report, citing a person familiar with the investigation, that said he was a passenger in a car involved in the shooting. The Times reported that the person had spoken “on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.”