1969: Bowie Kuhn replaces William Eckert and becomes the fifth commissioner of baseball.
1970: The NBA expands to 18 teams, adding Buffalo, Cleveland, Houston and Portland.
1990: Notre Dame becomes the first university to sell its football games to a national TV network with a five-year contract with NBC that begins in 1991.
FOLLOW-THROUGH: NBC and Notre Dame recently extended their contract, which already had been extended twice, to run through the 2010 season at approximately $9 million per year.
1996: Calling 8-year-old Charlotte Coliseum "obsolete" for an NBA team, Hornets President Spencer Stolpen announces plans to build a new, privately funded $85 million to $88 million facility either in uptown Charlotte or close to the South Carolina border. Stolpen: "We have no intention of moving the team out of the Charlotte market."
FOLLOW-THROUGH: A new uptown facility is being built, but not for the Hornets, who relocated to New Orleans in May 2002. The expansion Charlotte Bobcats will call the new facility home beginning with the 2005-06 season.
1996: A consortium of Japan's TV broadcasters, made up of NHK and several private networks, agrees to pay a record $37.5 million for domestic rights to the 1998 Nagano Olympic Games, nearly three times what they paid for the 1994 Winter Olympics. Overall TV broadcasting rights fees for the '98 Games totals $511.9 million, 60 percent of which goes to Nagano organizers.
1996: The FCC unanimously approves Walt Disney Co.'s acquisition of Cap Cities/ABC but orders the new company to sell radio and newspaper properties in Fort Worth, Texas, and Pontiac-Detroit. With a picture of Mickey Mouse over his left shoulder, Peter Jennings announces: "We now work for them."
1997: Lance Alstodt, after kicking a 35-yard field goal to win $1 million in the Hershey's $1 Million Pro Bowl Kick: "Now that everyone has shown me the money, I just want to eat Hersheys, wear Reebok and drink Pepsi."
1998: Puma signs then-16-year-old Serena Williams to a five-year, multimillion-dollar endorsement contract, which after incentives culminated in a $12 million total. Williams: "I could have signed with any sports brand, but this was the most promising and felt right for me."
FOLLOW-THROUGH: Nike signed Williams last December to a lifetime shoe and apparel contract worth at least $60 million, the largest endorsement contract for a female in history.
1998: Casey Martin's challenge to the PGA Tour's walking rule (Martin v. PGA Tour) goes to court this week as Martin, who suffers from an atrophied right leg that makes walking difficult, tries to prove that a cart is a reasonable modification to the tour's rules, not a fundamental change. The PGA's stance is that walking is an integral part of the game.
FOLLOW-THROUGH: In a Feb. 11 ruling, Martin was victorious in the case. The PGA Tour, however, announced its intentions to appeal. Martin, the first professional athlete to successfully sue under the Americans with Disabilities Act for a change in a sports organization's playing rules, said: "I thought the judge would really make a good decision. I thought that if he ruled that it was a big enough part of the game that I needed to walk, then I would accept that and vice versa." The case eventually made its way to the Supreme Court, which ruled in favor of Martin on May 29, 2001.
1999: Dan Dierdorf, a 12-year veteran analyst of ABC's "Monday Night Football," is told that he will not get a contract extension. ... LPGA Commissioner Jim Ritts resigns, and LPGA vice president of business affairs Ty Votaw is named his replacement. ... The New York Mets drop 16-year TV analyst Tim McCarver in favor of Tom Seaver.
