SPORTS
September 22, 2011 | Chris Dufresne
Don't mess with … Pullman? These are fascinating days for purveyors of dark comedy and comeuppance. Last year, Texas wrecked what was then the Pacific 10 Conference's plan to expand to 16 teams when the Longhorns reneged in the 11th hour. Tuesday night, as college football stood at the precipice of upheaval, the West told Texas, "go east" and sang the old Texas song: "You've got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em. " This wasn't the Cuban missile crisis by the factor of infinity, but it's been an interesting "Ten Days in September" for brinkmanship.
SPORTS
September 14, 2011 | Chris Dufresne
Texas may or may not end up in the Pacific 12 Conference. Larry Scott, the Pac-12's commissioner, tried to lure the Longhorns last year before his dream for a 16-team super league was squashed — or maybe only deferred. Texas once held a big stack of expansion chips, but was last seen in Norman begging Oklahoma not to go west. (Which is probably not going to work.) Can Texas hold the fractious Big 12 Conference together? Will the Longhorns go independent? Texas to the Atlantic Coast Conference is this minute's rumor.
SPORTS
July 30, 2011 | Chris Dufresne
A college football fan recently rescued after two years on a deserted island — please play along here — was asked to make this year's conference picks. He liked Nebraska in the Big 12, Boise State to win the Western Athletic and Brigham Young and Utah to battle it out in the Mountain West. Told those schools were no longer in those leagues, he quipped, "Whoa, next you'll tell me Texas joined the Pac-10. " No, but almost. College football avoided (for now) the "Big Bang" cosmic conference shift, yet the Big Ten alone underwent so much realignment it could have split into the "Sciatica" and "Lower Lumbar" divisions.
SPORTS
July 26, 2011 | Chris Dufresne
Toss your Pacific 10 mouse pad into Walnut Creek. It's a new day. Tell the maitre d' it's now a reservation for 12, not 10. And bring us a bottle of your best champagne. In terms of where college football stands, and where it's headed, Tuesday's first Pacific 12 Conference media day offered all you needed to know. Everything is brighter, louder, expanded, complicated, divided, but not necessarily rosier. What's not to like, and loathe? The league is thriving under the leadership of Commissioner Larry Scott, who has pushed the conference into everybody's business.
SPORTS
May 30, 2011 | By Chris Foster
UCLA starts its baseball postseason where its regular season began and UC Irvine returns to where its season ended in 2010. The Bruins (33-22), who play host to a regional in the NCAA tournament, take on San Francisco (31-23), a team they opened the season against, Friday at 6 p.m. UC Irvine (39-16), which UCLA eliminated in a 2010 regional, plays Fresno State (40-14) at 2 p.m. "Whenever you have four teams from the West, you know you're getting a tough regional," UCLA Coach John Savage said.
SPORTS
April 8, 2011 | By Ben Bolch
There was a shakeup involving UCLA's basketball schedule Friday that had nothing to do with the location of a home game. The Bruins will play Arizona in the Wooden Classic on Jan. 5 at the Honda Center, breaking from the usual mold of a December game against a nonconference opponent. Nan Muehlhausen, John Wooden's daughter, said one option had been for UCLA's game against Pennsylvania on Dec. 10 at the Honda Center to be designated as the Wooden Classic. But Wooden's family and the Honda Center officials who run the event wanted a more high-profile opponent.