AP Sportlight
Jan. 12
1918 — Montreal’s Joe Malone scores five goals in the Canadiens’ 9-4 win over the Ottawa Senators. Malone becomes the NHL’s first 20-goal scorer.
1921 — Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis becomes baseball’s commissioner and is given wide-ranging powers. He replaces a three-man National Commission that ran the game for nearly two decades.
1958 — Dolph Schayes of the Syracuse Nationals sets an NBA record for career points in a 135-109 victory over the Detroit Pistons. Schayes scores 23 points to bring his career mark to 11,770, breaking the record of 11,764 held by George Mikan.
1958 — The NCAA makes the first change in football scoring rules since 1912 by adding the 2-point conversion.
1960 — Syracuse’s Dolph Schayes becomes the first player in NBA history to score 15,000 career points.
1969 — New York Jets quarterback Joe Namath, who guaranteed a victory before the game against the 17-point favorite Baltimore Colts, leads the AFL to its first Super Bowl victory. Namath completes 17 of 28 passes for 206 yards, Matt Snell rushes for 121 yards and a touchdown and Jim Turner kicked three field goals for 16-7 win over the Baltimore Colts. The Colts had lost only once in 16 games all season.
1975 — The Pittsburgh Steelers shut down Minnesota’s offense, handing the Vikings their third Super Bowl defeat, 16-6. Franco Harris, the game’s MVP, sets a Super Bowl rushing record with 158 yards.
1986 — The Chicago Bears become the first team to have consecutive shutouts in the NFL playoffs, with a 24-0 win over the Los Angeles Rams. The Bears beat the New York Giants 21-0 on Jan. 5.
1991 — Princeton defeats Cornell in a swim meet in which the Ivy League schools compete by telephone because a blizzard complicated travel to Ithaca, New York. Both teams swim in their home pools and the results are exchanged by fax.
2007 — Tadd Fujikawa, just shy of his 16th birthday, becomes the youngest player in 50 years to make the cut on the PGA Tour.
2012 — Dwight Howard breaks Wilt Chamberlain’s nearly 50-year-old NBA record for most free throw attempts in a game, making 21 of 39 in the Orlando Magic’s 117-109 victory over the Golden State Warriors. Chamberlain shot 34 for the Philadelphia Warriors against St. Louis on Feb. 22, 1962.
2013 — Colin Kaepernick rushes for a quarterback playoff-record 181 yards and two touchdowns and throws two scoring passes to Michael Crabtree in San Francisco’s 45-31 win over Green Bay.
2015 — Ezekiel Elliott rushes for 246 yards and four touchdowns and Ohio State wins the first national title in college football’s playoff era, routing Oregon 42-20.
2017 — Fresh off his victory on Maui, Justin Thomas becomes the seventh player to join the “59 Club” on the PGA Tour when he makes a 15-foot eagle putt on his last hole at the Sony Open for an 11-under 59.
2019 — Roy Williams is sent to his worst home loss in 16 seasons with North Carolina when Louisville defeats the 12th-ranked Tar Heels 83-62.