Spanning the globe on a Wednesday morning. ...

A safe jump got Brittney Reese into today's Olympic women's long jump final in what she called an "ugly" qualifying performance.

Meanwhile, in the men's 200 Isaih Young finished third in his heat and advanced to the semifinals.

Geoff Calkins of the Commercial Appeal filed this account from London of Reese's qualifying round.

In this account, the London Telegraph hails Great Britian's Shara Proctor, who had the top jump at qualifying and compares her 6.83 effort to Reese's 6.57 jump.

And in local sports, college football ...

Alabama coach Nick Saban says preseason predictions "hijack" the game. Also, Crimson Tide players say they expect a smooth transition with their new offensive coordinator, Doug Nussmeier. ...

From Baton Rouge, Rob Bolden had his struggles as quarterback at Penn State and is looking forward to a fresh start at LSU.

At SEC Media Days, LSU coach Les Miles downplayed the Twitter fight between Tyrann Mathieu, the Honey Badger, and Alabama QB AJ McCarron. However, Honey Badger did not attend Media Days and was off limits until Tuesday when LSU had its own campus Media Day. ...

From Columbia, big things are expected of South Carolina's Jadeveon Clowney in his second season including snaps at linebacker. ...