Notre Dame QB DeShone Kizer declares for the draft

Notre Dame quarterback DeShone Kizer declared for the NFL draft Monday, giving up his senior season and opening up the Fighting Irish’s starting job next year for Brandon Wimbush.

Kizer put together a solid junior season for a disappointing Fighting Irish team that went 4-8 in 2016. He threw for 2,925 yards and 26 touchdowns, and rushed for 472 yards and eight touchdowns. He ranks among the most prolific players in Notre Dame history despite playing extensively in only 24 games over the last two seasons.

Earlier this month, Malik Zaire, who served as backup to Kizer this season after competing for the starting job in the off-season, announced he was transferring from Notre Dame as a graduate student.

AP All-America teams named

No. 1 Alabama placed four players on the Associated Press All-America team, most of any school, and Louisville quarterback Lamar Jackson and fellow Heisman Trophy finalists Jabrill Peppers of Michigan and Dede Westbrook of Oklahoma were also first-team selections.

The Crimson Tide and No. 2 Ohio State tied for the most players on the three All-America teams released Monday with six.

No. 3 Clemson had five players on the three teams, but none on the first team. Washington, which has a spot in the College Football Playoff team along with Alabama, Ohio State and Clemson, had two players on the second team.

Jackson won the Heisman on Saturday, finishing well ahead of Clemson’s Deshaun Watson and Oklahoma’s Baker Mayfield. The three quarterbacks lined up similarly on the All-America teams with Watson second-team and Mayfield third-team.

USC junior cornerback Adoree’ Jackson was named to the defense first team.

Etc.

Kansas rewarded David Beaty with a two-year contract extension and a significant raise after he took the Jayhawks from a winless record in his first season to a pair of wins in Year 2. The extension keeps Beaty with the Jayhawks through the 2021 season, while increasing his salary to $1.6 million in the first year with an additional $100,000 each succeeding year.

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Former USC football player LenDale White was among the pallbearers at the funeral in New Orleans for Joe McKnight, a former USC and New York Jets running back who was shot and killed Dec. 1 during a road-rage incident in suburban New Orleans.

“Anytime he touched the ball he could take it the distance and that was exciting about Joe,” said Mark Sanchez, who played with McKnight at USC and for the Jets. “But we all remember him joking around all the time, and the warm heart he had.”

Ronald Gasser, 54, has been arrested on a manslaughter charge in McKnight’s death.

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Former Oklahoma All-American football player James “Jimbo” Elrod, who played on the Sooners’ 1974 and 1975 national championship teams, has died in a car wreck near Chandler, Okla., the Oklahoma Highway Patrol said. He was 62.

The highway patrol said that the single-vehicle crash happened at about 3:45 a.m. Monday on Interstate 44 near Chandler, about 60 miles southwest of Tulsa. The highway patrol said Elrod was killed after his 2015 Lexus struck a guardrail, ejecting him through the vehicle’s sun roof.