Usher, Keith Urban and Natasha Bedingfield are kicking off the NFL season with a free concert that's expected to draw thousands to Manhattan's Columbus Circle. They are scheduled to perform Thursday afternoon. A video about the Super Bowl champion New York Giants will be shown before the NFL Kickoff show.

 

Some of South Carolina's Championship Subdivision colleges are being affected by Tropical Storm Hanna.

 

Officials have set a 6 p.m. start time for Saturday's Charleston Southern-Wofford football game. The contest was originally set for Charleston Southern's campus but was moved to Wofford as Tropical Storm Hanna approached the South Carolina coast.

 

Daunte Culpepper, who starred for the Minnesota Vikings before suffering a major knee injury in 2005, never returning to his past Pro Bowl form, retired from the NFL on Thursday.

 

A member of Francis Marion's golf team has been killed in a traffic accident. The school says 21-year-old junior Jonathan Lavin died in the accident Wednesday about three miles from the school's Florence campus.

 

Former Cincinnati quarterback Ben Mauk is taking his case for another year of college football before a judge in the northwest Ohio town where his playing career started.

 

The International Olympic Committee is investigating the silver and bronze medalists in the men's hammer throw in Beijing for suspected doping offenses. The Russian news agency Allsport reports Belarusian athletes Vadim Devyatovskiy and Ivan Tsikhan tested positive for traces of testosterone after the hammer final on Aug. 17.

 

A private detective says Floyd Mayweather, Jr. is posting a $100,000 reward for information about the theft of more than 7.2 million dollars in jewelry from the boxer's Las Vegas home.

 

With Michael Vick out of the picture, the Atlanta Falcons wasted little time anointing rookie Matt Ryan as the new face of the franchise. Now the question is whether they'll regret that decision down the road.

 

Baseball's first use of instant replay backed an onfield call of a home run for Alex Rodriguez during the ninth inning of the New York Yankees game against the Tampa Bay Rays on Wednesday night.