Five-time defending NASCAR champion Jimmie Johnson beat out NHRA funny car champion John Force for the Driver of the Year award.

It’s the fourth time Johnson has received the honor, tying him with Hendrick Motorsports teammate Jeff Gordon for most wins in the award’s 44-year history.

Reliever Randy Choate agreed to a $2.5-million, two-year contract with the Florida Marlins.

Choate appeared in 85 games this year, the most in the American League since 2004 and the most by a left-hander in the AL since 1998. He went 4-3 with a 4.23 earned-run average for Tampa Bay

The Yankees finalized a minor league contract with right-handed pitcher Mark Prior, who is trying to make it back to the majors for the first time since 2006.

Still trying to come back from shoulder surgery, Prior spent most of 2010 with an independent minor league team. He could be reunited with former Chicago Cubs teammate Kerry Wood, who was

New York’s setup man late in the season and then became a free agent.

Free-agent infielder Ty Wigginton and the Colorado Rockies agreed to a two-year contract worth $8 million with a club option for 2013.

Wigginton, 33, became a first-time All-Star last season with Baltimore. He hit 22 home runs with 76 runs batted in while batting .248

Arizona State’s baseball team must vacate 44 of its wins from 2007 and is banned from the postseason in 2011 under sanctions announced by the NCAA on Wednesday.

The NCAA Division I Committee on Infractions ruled that former coach Pat Murphy failed to promote an atmosphere of compliance and committed numerous recruiting and other violations from 2004

to 2008.

The penalties, many self-imposed by the university, include reduction of two scholarships by 2011-12, recruiting restrictions and limitations on coaching activity during practice. Arizona

State vacated 44 of its 49 wins from 2007, including its Pacific 10 Conference title and College World Series games.

Murphy, who announced his resignation in 2009, received a one-year show-cause penalty.

The committee noted the case is the school’s ninth with major infractions, the most of any NCAA member school.

The NCAA said Murphy and several assistants made more than 500 impermissible recruiting calls, including about 25 before the prospective student-athletes’ junior year. The committee said it

was hard to tell the precise number of impermissible calls because Murphy and his staff did not properly document recruiting calls.

The committee found Murphy violated several rules while recruiting one particular prospect by making impermissible calls and directing a team manager who used to coach at the student’s

two-year institution to recruit him, even though the manager was not an authorized recruiter for the school.

The committee ruled that Murphy asked four student-athletes to decrease all or a portion of their scholarships so it could be used for new or incoming student-athletes. Murphy also was ruled

to have paid 20 baseball players over $5,800 from his own nonprofit organization for work they did not perform.

Murphy spent 15 seasons at Arizona State, leading the Sun Devils to the College World Series four times. He signed in November to manage the Eugene (Ore.) Emeralds, a single-A team in San

Diego’s farm system.

Swimming: Lochte wins his first race but U.S. relay team loses at worlds

Ryan Lochte’s won his first race at the short-course world championships at Dubai, United Arab Emirates, but will not meet his goal of matching Michael Phelps’ record of eight golds.

Lochte’s bid was derailed when the United States’ 400-meter freestyle relay failed to medal on the opening night of the meet.

Lochte won the 200 free in a meet-record 1:41.08, nearly a full body-length ahead of his closest competitor, Danila Izotov of Russia.

In the relay, the U.S. fell behind after Nathan Adrian’s dismal opening leg, leaving Lochte too much time to make up in the anchor leg.

The French team won in 3:04.78, with Russia a slim 0.04 behind and Brazil third, 0.96 back.

Normally the dominant force in relays, the U.S. team of Adrian, Garrett Weber-Gale, Richard Berens and Lochte placed fourth, a distant 1.32 behind.

The U.S. men hadn’t finished off the podium since they were disqualified at the 2007 long-course worlds for a false start in morning heats.

Meanwhile, China set swimming’s first world record of 2010, winning the women’s 800 freestyle relay.

The USC women’s volleyball team will meet California in an NCAA tournament semifinal Thursday at 6 p.m. PST in Kansas City, Mo., in a match that will be broadcast on ESPN2.

The Trojans (29-4) swept the Golden Bears (29-3) in two Pacific 10 Conference matches this season, both by three-games-to-one margins.

Penn State (30-5) will play Texas (27-5) in the other semifinal at 4 p.m. The national championship match will be played Saturday at 5:30 p.m. PST.

The majority owner of the AVP has retained control of the pro beach volleyball tour in a bankruptcy auction.

RJSM managing director Nick Lewin said that the firm used its $3.8 million of debt to purchase the assets of the tour Wednesday, including the brand and the rights to all of its intellectual

property.

Lewin told the Associated Press that there will be a tour next year, with a different financial model.

The AVP shut down in August with five events left in the season when it ran out of money. According to papers filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Los Angeles, the tour had less than $184,000

in assets and $4.97 million in liabilities.