Pac 10

Pacific Life Pac-10 Tournament MEN Quarterfinals, Thursday at Staples Center Oregon OR Washington State vs. No. 1 California (21-9), 2:30 p.m.— Cal is top-seeded for the first time after winning a conference title outright for the first time in 50 years. Senior guard Jerome Randle, the Pac-10 player of the year, averages 18.7 points. Senior guard Patrick Christopher (16.0 points a game) also was selected first-team all-conference and forwards Theo Robertson (13.8)

Bob Cantu, who was USC associate head basketball coach and is in his 12th season with the Trojans men's basketball program, became, for the second time, head coach of the Trojans on Monday after Athletic Director Pat Haden fired Kevin O'Neill. In 2011 Cantu coached the Trojans for a game when O'Neill was suspended after getting into a verbal altercation with an Arizona fan at the team hotel during the Pac-10 tournament at Staples Center. In a brief telephone conversation Monday, Cantu said, "I feel bad for Kevin.

"Others receiving votes" in Thursday's release of the preseason Associated Press basketball poll . . . UCLA. Program currently under NCAA investigation . . . USC. Program currently under reconstruction . . . Arizona. Number of the top 15 players in the Pacific 10 Conference last season who are returning . . . four. Team picked to win the conference this season . . . California. Last time Cal last won it . . . 1960. Reasons to believe this will be a banner season for the Pac-10 . . . can you think of many?

Just when you thought you had your favorite colleges finally matched with their current and future conferences comes word that the landscape is shifting again. The latest thunderbolt came Monday when Maryland said it will leave the Atlantic Coast Conference for the Big Ten in 2014. That announcement was soon to be followed by the news that Rutgers is bolting the Big East for the Big Ten. How does Pac-12 Commissioner Larry Scott see the latest moves affecting his conference? "I don't," Scott said in an email response Monday.

Kevin Weiberg's hiring as chief operating officer and deputy commissioner of the Pacific 10 Conference was a strategic move toward the goal of launching a television sports network, Commissioner Larry Scott said Tuesday. "A Pac-10 network was something that we were going to seriously explore," Scott said in a conference call with reporters. "The timing is such that now we're less than a year away from our negotiating period, our analysis and evaluation has to get more serious and more rigorous.

The Pacific 10 Conference and Alamo Bowl are in discussions that could make the San Antonio game the league's No. 2 bid behind the Rose and push the Holiday Bowl to No. 3. A spokesman for the Pac-10 on Thursday had no comment on a deal, but the Seattle Times reported the conference and the bowl are "on the brink of hooking up." The Pac-10 would play a Big 12 team on Jan. 2 starting after the 2010 season. Talks with the Alamo started before Larry Scott succeeded Tom Hansen as commissioner on July 1. The Pac-10, which went 5-0 in bowl games after last season, has been criticized for the strength of its postseason games other than the Rose Bowl.

About a year ago, when Larry Scott took over as commissioner of the Pacific 10 Conference, he quickly discovered the numbers didn't add up. Pac-10 schools consistently led the country in national championships. UCLA held the record for most titles and Stanford regularly won the Directors' Cup for best overall athletic program. Yet, the Pac-10 lagged well behind other major conferences when it came to generating revenue. "There was a significant gap," Scott said. "That was the challenge for me."

As a possible Big Ten Conference expansion sends shockwaves throughout college sports, the Pacific 10 and Big 12 conferences are continuing talks that could lead to a collaboration of media rights and expanded scheduling partnerships. Pac-10 Commissioner Larry Scott confirmed Friday that he met with Big 12 Commissioner Dan Beebe and Pac-10 athletic directors during this week's Pac-10 meetings in Phoenix, continuing discussions that began between him and Beebe last September. The Dallas Morning News reported the latest discussions Friday.

Opposing student sections serenade Isaiah Thomas with the same chant whenever he lights up the scoreboard. "It's a small world after all. " The reference to the popular Disney ride and the song that sticks in your brain like melted sugar has become an anthem for burrowing beneath the skin of college basketball's six-foot-and-under stars. FOR THE RECORD: College basketball: In the March 9 Sports section, an article about guards playing basketball in the Pacific 10 Conference said former Oregon player Aaron Brooks is now with the Memphis Grizzlies of the NBA. Brooks plays for the Phoenix Suns.

It might seem like a new day in Pacific 10 Conference football but we're still a long way from judgment day. Oregon (7-2, 5-0) and Arizona (5-2, 3-1) are the only schools that control their Rose Bowl fates while USC stares up with two league losses and can't seem to stop anyone on defense. The conference race is not over, however, and the Rose Bowl bid is not secure. "We've got nine conference games," Arizona Coach Mike Stoops said on Tuesday's weekly Pac-10 coaches' conference call.

Priorities USA Action, the “super PAC” supporting President Obama's reelection bid, raised $10 million in August, its most lucrative month of the campaign so far. The haul was first reported by the New York Times and confirmed to the Los Angeles Times/Tribune Washington Bureau by strategist Bill Burton, one of two former White House aides running the group. Burton did not specify any notable donors who stepped up in August; those names will be revealed Sept. 20 when the group files its monthly finance report with the Federal Election Commission.

Dwayne Jarrett was quick. His career in pro football was quicker. The former standout receiver from USC, who left school as the Pac-10's all-time leader in touchdown catches, has retired from football at 25. The Saskatchewan Roughriders, the last stop on his playing tour, announced his decision this week. Jarrett, who was cut by the Carolina Panthers in 2010, three years after they selected him in the second round, was hoping to restart his career in the Canadian Football League.

It was a tense negotiation. Fox Sports and ESPN were paying about $54 million a year for the TV rights to Pac-12 Conference games. The Pac-12 guys wanted five times that. And a 12-year commitment. The networks were so taken aback that a top executive sarcastically asked if the Pac-12 was smoking something, according to people who witnessed the exchange but spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the deal. But in the end, the two sides agreed to the biggest TV rights contract in college sports history — a 12-year, $3-billion deal, which works out to a per-year average of $250 million.

From Tucson -- What could be worse for Rick Neuheisel than his team rolling over dead on national TV? Worse than the embarrassment of not being able to tackle anyone, cover the opposition or stop one of the worst teams in the country from scoring seemingly every time it had the ball? What could be worse than appearing so inept on offense against a team ranked 116th in the nation on defense? Worse than being party to a classless brawl? How about this: "Mr. Guerrero is unavailable for comment," a UCLA spokesman said at halftime.

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.

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.

California came to the Pacific Life Pac-10 men's basketball tournament with two goals for its quarterfinal game against Oregon: Beat the Ducks and not expend too much energy doing so. Top-seeded Cal had no problems Thursday, cruising to a 90-74 victory at Staples Center that advanced the Golden Bears into a Friday night semifinal against UCLA. "I was pleased with the fact that really nobody played over 30 minutes so it gives us a little bit of a chance to rest," Cal Coach Mike Montgomery said after his team improved to 22-9.

If you believe swirling reports, that 2014 Rose Bowl featuring Pacific 10 Conference champion Texas Tech versus Big Ten Conference champion Missouri on Channel 206 could really be something. Advertisers, you know, drool over the television markets in Lubbock and Columbia. If you believe the Rose Bowl game used to be a tradition unlike any other — except maybe the Masters — you missed the Rose Bowl joining the Bowl Championship Series in 1998 and then, one year, Washington State playing Oklahoma in Pasadena the same season USC and Iowa played in South Florida.

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.

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.