Baseball

Players might lose minimum wage protection — Minor league baseball players who make as little as $5,500 a season would be stripped of the protection of federal minimum wage laws under a provision in government spending legislation expected to be approved by Congress this week. The “Save America’s Pastime Act” is included on page 1,967 of the law and appears to pre-empt a lawsuit filed four years ago in U.S. District Court in San Francisco by three players alleging Major League Baseball and its teams violate the Fair Labor Standards Act and state minimum wage and overtime requirements for a work week they estimated at 50 to 60 hours. The provision in the legislation would exempt “any employee employed to play baseball who is compensated pursuant to a contract that provides for a weekly salary for services performed during the league’s championship season (but not spring training or the offseason) at a rate that is not less than a weekly salary equal to the minimum wage … for a workweek of 40 hours, irrespective of the number of hours the employee devotes to baseball related activities.”

Basketball

UConn hires Dan Hurley — Connecticut has hired Dan Hurley as its next men’s basketball coach, hoping to turn the page on the coaching tenure of Kevin Ollie, which began with a national championship but ended with an NCAA investigation, the team’s first losing seasons in 30 years and potential litigation. Hurley spent the previous six seasons as Rhode Island’s head coach, and the two before that as the head coach at Wagner, on Staten Island. He took Rhode Island to the last two NCAA tournaments.

— From wire reports