College notes: TCU confirms football assistant hirings

TCU announced the hiring of DeMontie Cross as linebackers coach and Curtis Luper as wide receivers coach Wednesday.

Cross comes to TCU from Kansas, where he coached linebackers in 2012. He graduated from Missouri in 1997 and coached there and at Iowa State before a five-year stint in multiple positions with the Buffalo Bills. He was Wisconsin's special teams coordinator and safeties coach in 2011.

Luper, who went to Sherman High School, was the running backs coach and recruiting coordinator the last four seasons at Auburn.

-- Stefan Stevenson

Te'o kept truth hidden

Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te'o admitted to Katie Couric he answered questions about his "dead," online girlfriend even after he received a call Dec. 6 from a woman posing as the fake person.

Te'o also maintained he played no part in the hoax.

Pressed by Couric to admit that he was in on the deception, the All-American said he was convinced the woman he knew as Lennay Kekua died in September.

"Katie, put yourself in my situation. I, my whole world told me that she died on Sept. 12. Everybody knew that. This girl, who I committed myself to, died on Sept. 12," Te'o said in an interview to air today on Couric's syndicated talk show.

"Now I get a phone call on Dec. 6, saying that she's alive and then I'm going be put on national TV two days later. And to ask me about the same question. You know, what would you do?" Te'o said.

ESPN reported that it received from a source spreadsheets, not the original logs, of Te'o's phone records that show he made and received more than 1,000 calls between May and September 2012 to a number with a 661 area code. The source said Te'o believed that was Kekua's number.

Briefly

Miami probe: The NCAA has found what it calls "a very severe issue of improper conduct" committed by former members of its enforcement program during the Miami Hurricanes investigation, and will not deliver the notice of allegations until an external review is completed. The NCAA said former enforcement staff members worked with the criminal defense attorney for former Miami booster Nevin Shapiro "to improperly obtain information ... through a bankruptcy proceeding that did not involve the NCAA."

Louisville football: Coach Charlie Strong agreed to an eight-year contract extension that will pay him an annual base salary of $3.7 million. The deal puts him seventh among the highest-paid Division I football coaches.

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