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Power Five conference commissioners want to change NCAA rules to give athletes more time away from team activities, including no longer counting travel as an off day, a mandatory seven-day break after the season and an additional 14 off days from athletic activity during the academic year.The agreement in concept was announced Thursday by the Atlantic Coast Conference, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12 and Southeastern Conference. The leagues said they believed they had found the right balance to help tens of thousands of athletes with a proposal they are calling Flex 21. The extra 21 days off would be in addition to the current mandatory off days, and could be tailored to fit each teams schedule with input from coaches and athletes.Formal proposals still need to be submitted, but the conferences could vote to turn them into NCAA rules at the next convention in January.College sports leaders have been looking into changes to ease the time demands on athletes for several years. At the last NCAA convention, the issue was delayed so more research could be done, including a survey of athletes from all sports. Conference officials seem eager to provide more benefits to athletes at a time when college sports is under legal and public pressure to make changes, including a push to pay athletes. Led by the College Athletes Players Association, members of the Northwestern football team made an attempt to unionize that ultimately failed.NCAA members schools and conferences have in recent years agreed to raise the value of athletic scholarships to cover the federally determined true cost of attendance that goes beyond tuition, books, room and board, and fees. They have also guaranteed four-year scholarships for many athletes and given athletes more say in making rules.We heard from our students that they would like more certainty in their schedules in order to engage in other activities, the commissioners said in a joint statement. We recognize there will need to be a level of flexibility and reasonableness in carrying out these changes, especially with regard to travel, but students deserve time off and we want athletic departments to work in a sensible and appropriate way to provide it. We want administrators to have some degree of flexibility in implementing these rules, but they must be mindful that rest is important to a students health, in addition to their athletic and academic performance.Currently, athletes are generally limited during the school year to 20 countable hours toward their sports per week, with one day off. Countable hours mostly cover practices, competition and conditioning, but does not count travel to and from events. The commissioners proposed expanding the definition of required athletic activities to include but not be limited to activities such as media requirements and mandatory community service.The proposal also includes a mandatory free-time block of eight hours overnight.The 14 extra off days will be on top of the current required two calendar days off per week outside the season. The additional 14 days can be used during the season if agreed to by coaches and athletes.We believe we have found the right balance between helping students participate in sports while also providing them with more down time, the commissioners said. Different sports have different demands and we think the concepts weve agreed to will help tens of thousands of students achieve more balance as they pursue their academic and athletic commitments. Steph Curry Shoes From China . 1, meaning problems for the doping controls at both major international sports events next year. 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RIO DE JANEIRO -- Rival is the wrong word.Giving the United States one almighty scare, as they most certainly just did, should not and does not put Australias Boomers on the same level as Carmelo Anthony & Co.When youre sporting a 71-game winning streak as we speak, like Team USA, you have no real rivals.However ...You can safely draw the following conclusion after the scrappy, stubborn display witnessed in Olympic Park on Wednesday night from the green-and-gold-clad squad led Patty Mills, Matthew Dellavedova and Andrew Bogut:Australia is suddenly closer to the R-word than anyone else in world basketball.Closer than France. Closer than Argentina. Closer, even, than Mike Krzyzewskis old friends from Spain.That sentiment was slammed home in the mixed zone after the game, not by journalists or pundits but by the likes of Kevin Durant, Paul George, Klay Thompson and Krzyzewski himself. The Aussies led by as many as eight points in the first half, stayed within a possession or two until the final minute of Team USAs wholly uncomfortable 98-88 victory and, as you listened to the big names tell it, left the distinct impression that theyll be an obstacle for the Yanks one more time down here.They can go pretty far, Durant said. Im pretty sure well probably run into them again.Said George: Were probably going to see them again. Were going to have to do a better job matching them.And Thompson: Theyre a tough team. Well probably see them again, so that was a lot of fun.And lastly Coach K: You beat one of the best teams in the tournament. You beat a team that could ... they are going to vie for a gold medal.Not even halfway through an event that requires the victorious nation to play eight games, Australia has already been that impressive, earning raves from some of the most esteemed hoops luminaries that have gathered in South America for its toughness, cohesion, chemistry, physicality and, most of all, fearlessness.Once-mighty Spain has shown signs of age and stumbled to an 0-2 start. France was on the brink of falling to 1-2 in Group A before Tony Parkers game-turning bucket earlier Wednesday pulled out a one-point win over Serbia. Getting-up-there Argentina has looked reasonably frisky in the face of lowered expectations, but no one out there comes close to matching what Australia is doing now that Bogut -- who was forced to miss the London Olympics in 2012 thanks to a serious ankle injury -- has joined London holdovers Mills, Dellavedova, Joe Ingles, Aron Baynes and David Andersen.Australia, Krzyzewski said, has probably played the best of anybody in the Olympics.Its true. The Aussies spanked France by 21 points on the tournaments opening day, followed it up with a 15-point victory over Serbia and looked as credible as they ever have against Team USA ... while also making you wonder how dangerous they might have been had they been able to throw a youngster named Ben Simmons at the scalding-hot Anthony as opposed to the clunkier big men at Australiass disposal who dont have the foot speed or agility to keep up with Melo.ddddddddddddIf they had Simmons in this game, one NBA general manager said over the phone after watching the United States finally carve out a 98-88 victory, Australia wins.Yet even without the Philadelphia 76ers dynamic rookie, who wowed summer-league-goers with his passing eye and athleticism, Australia needs just two more wins over lowly Venezuela and China to secure second place in Group A.And that would ensure that Australia, after quarterfinal losses to the United States in Beijing and London by 31 points and 33 points, cant face the Americans again until the gold-medal game on Aug. 21.Andersen, Australias elder statesman, reflected on those prior meetings by saying that the current squad brought a bit more sense of belief onto the floor for this shot at Team USA.Were building something special here, Andersen said.Bogut then explained that the players on the 12-man Olympic roster, in a further departure from the old mentality, made a conscious decision as a collective to aim for the absolute summit of the sport.The Australian media is saying, This is the best thing ever, you battled, were proud of you -- but were disappointed, Bogut said after Wednesdays near-miss. And thats the mindset we have to have. This groups a little different to ones Ive been on in the past, whereas we would have celebrated this loss. And thats just not right. So well work on things and hopefully see them again and battle them the same way.No disrespect to the U.S., but we dont want to get into an Olympics aiming for second or fourth or ninth. You should go in with the mindset of trying to be first. And if they beat you, they beat you. ... Guys [used to be] kind of afraid to say gold medal, and [preferred] saying, Lets get a medal. But we said as a group: No. Lets go for gold. And then well live with whatever we get after that if we dont get it.Australia has never medaled in mens basketball and had never even opened the tournament at 2-0 before its wins over France and Serbia. Yet its all changed with the way Dellavedova and Mills mesh in the backcourt, how Delly and Bogut move the ball with their passing and, of course, how they scrapped and made the Yanks work so hard to dig out of a 54-49 halftime deficit, Team USAs first deficit at intermission in the Olympics since the ill-fated semifinal loss to Argentina at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens.It got real, Team USAs George conceded. It definitely got real.For this group, thats the first real international game weve had, Krzyzewski said, referring to his 10 first-time Olympians and their maiden taste of navigating a true scare without warning in the wake of blowout after blowout.This, Coach K went on to say, was a very, very good night for us.Handy to know this early, in other words, just how high the bar is. ' ' '