Head Coach

This is being called a "traditional" Rose Bowl because the football champions of the Pac-12 and Big Ten conferences just hit town, went to Disneyland, plan to eat wheelbarrows of prime rib and then play in the sacred Jan.1 post-parade time slot. Stanford, representing the West, got here the old-fashioned way - by defeating UCLA twice in six days after putting down USC for a fourth straight season. Wisconsin won the Big Ten, fair and square, by finishing third in its division and then crushing old (well, not so much)

The latest round of NHL labor talks ended with the two sides in different rooms. The players' association and league negotiators met separately Wednesday with federal mediators in suburban New Jersey, holding discussions that didn't appear to have moved the sides any closer to a deal to save the hockey season. There was hope going into Wednesday that negotiations could get back on track to the point they were last Thursday before talks fell apart. When the NHL agreed last week to increase its make-whole offer of deferred payments from $211 million to $300 million, it was part of a proposed package that required the union to agree on three non-negotiable points.

Bryan Harsin is set to become the new head coach at Arkansas State, according to multiple sources. Harsin spent the last two years as co-offensive coordinator at Texas and the 10 previous years at Boise State (five as quarterbacks coach, five as offensive coordinator). He is expected to be introduced by Arkansas State at a press conference scheduled for Wednesday afternoon. The team's website links to an ESPN report about the apparent hiring. Harsin will be the Red Wolves' third new coach in as many years.

CHICAGO - It all began right here, when Vinny Del Negro took his first NBA head-coaching job with the Bulls. It lasted just two years, Del Negro getting fired after taking Chicago to playoff appearances in 2009 and 2010. Del Negro now is in his third season with the Clippers, his second opportunity to be a head coach. In his fifth season leading an NBA team, Del Negro said he has grown as a coach from "just the experience of doing it. " "I think you get better every year," Del Negro said before the Clippers played the Bulls on Tuesday night.

OKLAHOMA CITY -- The undersized point guard didn't think he could do it. Scott Brooks was trying to make the eighth-grade basketball team as a seventh-grader when he shared his growing doubts with his mother. "I told her, 'I can't make the eighth-grade team,'" Brooks recalled Saturday. The phrase contained a word that was unfamiliar to Lee Brooks, a single mother who supported her seven children in the Northern California hamlet of Lathrop by rebuilding automotive parts at a nearby factory.

Barry Alvarez isn't coming back to coach Wisconsin for one game because he wants to boost his chances of getting into the Rose Bowl Hall of Fame. Alvarez is already in it -- he was inducted in 2009. Wisconsin's athletic director is returning to the Rose Bowl sidelines, he says, because he was asked. After learning Tuesday that Wisconsin head coach Bret Bielema was leaving before the bowl game for the head coach job at Arkansas, Alvarez said senior linebacker Mike Taylor called and asked Alvarez to coach the Badgers against Stanford in the Rose Bowl.

Manuel Douglas is listed as the head football coach of City Section Division I champion Harbor City Narbonne, but his assistants tease him about "checking in with the real head coach. " That would be his wife, Jelerine, the mother of his three young children. She's a teacher and has been in the U.S. Army Reserve for 19 years as a combat medic instructor. What Douglas does for Narbonne's football players, Jelerine provides at home, keeping everyone on schedule and offering plenty of support.

So Jon Gruden is supposedly in talks to become the next head coach for a down-on-its-luck football team? Haven't we heard this story before? Many, many times? Since he left coaching and went into broadcasting in 2009, Gruden has been the subject of such rumors concerning teams with coaching vacancies or teams whose fans want them to have coaching vacancies. But the latest one out there is pretty interesting. CBSChicago.com senior columnist and WSCR radio host Dan Bernstein tweeted Tuesday that Hub Arkush of Pro Football Weekly had mentioned on air that Gruden, currently an analyst for ESPN's "Monday Night Football," is in talks with the Oakland Raiders to return as their head coach.

Monte Kiffin, who resigned as USC's assistant head coach for defense, said neither Coach Lane Kiffin nor USC officials pressured him to step down. "It was not forced upon me or anything like that," Monte Kiffin said in a telephone interview. USC announced last week that Monte Kiffin would pursue NFL opportunities but coach through the Trojans' bowl game. USC will learn its bowl destination Sunday. USC began the season ranked No. 1 in several polls, but finished with a 7-5 record after losing four of its last five games.

Fallout from USC's collapse this season began Thursday, as Monte Kiffin, the assistant head coach for defense, resigned effective after the Trojans' bowl game, the school announced. Kiffin, the 72-year-old father of Coach Lane Kiffin, stepped down to "pursue opportunities in the NFL," the announcement said. But Monte Kiffin was under fire for the defense's poor performance during a 7-5 season. "I respect my father's decision and his desire to return to the NFL," Lane Kiffin said in a statement.