Around 70,000 smiling, cheering football fans turned out Saturday for the biggest party Clemson coach Dabo Swinney has thrown at Death Valley to celebrate the school’s first national championship in 35 years. Swinney closed the 90-minute ceremony at Memorial Stadium in Clemson, S.C., thanking all who supported and believed in him since his rise from interim coach to national champion. His team won the title with a 35-31 victory over defending national champ Alabama last Monday night when Deshaun Watson connected with Hunter Renfrow on a 2-yard TD pass with one second left . . . California hired Wisconsin defensive coordinator Justin Wilcox as its head coach to replace the fired Sonny Dykes. Wilcox, the son of Pro Football Hall of Famer and former San Francisco 49ers linebacker Dave Wilcox, has never been a head coach.

Winter sports

Vonn’s return delayed

Lindsey Vonn’s return to World Cup skiing was delayed for at least a day after snowfall forced the cancellation of downhill training and the women’s race itself in Altenmarkt-Zauchensee, Austria. Organizers moved the program to Sunday. Weather was forecast to improve overnight. Vonn, a four-time overall champion, and American teammate Julia Mancuso planned to make their World Cup comebacks this weekend. Vonn has been eyeing a comeback after an 11-month layoff to nurse an injured knee and broken arm. For Mancuso, surgery for her hip dysplasia became unavoidable and forced her to sit out the 2015-16 season . . . Heavy snowfall also forced the cancellation of the classic Lauberhorn men’s World Cup downhill in Wengen, Switzerland, for the first time since 2004. A makeup will be determined . . . Toni Eggert and Sascha Benecken set a track record on both runs to win a luge World Cup doubles race in Sigulda, Latvia, and take a big step toward the overall title. The Germans won in a combined time of 1 minute, 23.113 seconds. There was a German 1-2 in the women’s singles as Natalie Geisenberger took her third win of the season, winning in 1:23.485 over two runs, 0.028 seconds ahead of veteran Tatjana Huefner.

Soccer

Galaxy trade defender

The LA Galaxy traded defender A.J. DeLaGarza to the Houston Dynamo for $175,000 in Major League Soccer allocation money. DeLaGarza was the Galaxy’s longest-tenured player, joining the franchise in 2009. DeLaGarza won three MLS Cups while making 204 regular-season appearances, fifth in Galaxy history . . . Barcelona president Josep Maria Bartomeu said extending Lionel Messi’s contract is ‘‘essential’’ for the club and predicts negotiations will have ‘‘a happy ending.’’ Messi’s current deal ends in 2018.

Messi scored in Barcelona’s 5-0 rout of Las Palmas. It was his 13th goal in his last 12 club matches.

. . . Congo’s sports minister, Willy Bakonga, led a delegation of 100 officials to the African Cup of Nations tournament in Gabon to resolve a player strike two days ahead of the team’s first game. The squad boycotted a training session on Friday in a dispute over unpaid bonuses . . . American criminal investigators are continuing to pursue soccer corruption, according to outgoing Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who initiated the prosecution of fraudulent FIFA executives. The FIFA case, which started when Lynch was a U.S. Attorney in Brooklyn before being appointed the country’s chief law enforcement officer in 2015, has led to more than 40 people or organizations being charged. The scandal helped to topple FIFA President Sepp Blatter, whose 17-year reign ended in October 2015 when financial wrongdoing was unearthed in a parallel Swiss investigation.

PRO BASKETBALL

Silver: Wait on Mexico

A couple of days after the Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban said that he was in favor of putting a team in Mexico, NBA commissioner Adam Silver said that it will not happen, at least not in the immediate future. Before the Mavericks beat the Suns on Thursday night in Mexico City, Cuban said that a team in Mexico would help the sport. Said Silver: “The next step before we start talking about a franchise in Mexico City is to bring more games here and we have this two regular-season games and whether we bring additional regular-season games next season or do some sort of tournament with several teams playing each other, that is something that we are looking at.’’

MISCELLANY

Solarte, Padres OK deal

Third baseman Yangervis Solarte agreed to a $7.5 million, two-year contract with the San Diego Padres that includes club options for the 2019 and 2020 seasons. Solarte had a career season in 2016, hitting .286 with 15 home runs and 71 RBIs . . . The Arizona Diamondbacks agreed to a $1.5 million, one-year contract with catcher Chris Iannetta, a person with knowledge of the situation told the Associated Press . . . Luxembourg veteran Gilles Muller beat Daniel Evans, 7-6 (7-5), 6-2, in the men’s final at the Sydney International in Australia. It was the 33-year-old Muller’s first ATP win in his sixth final. At No. 34, he had been the highest-ranked player on the ATP Tour to have not won a tournament . . . Belgian qualifier Elise Mertens’s decision to forgo singles qualifying for the Australian Open paid off when she beat Monica Niculescu, 6-3, 6-1, to win the Hobart International final in Australia.