Pac 10

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.

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.

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)

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.

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.

"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?

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."

Arizona State ranks third nationally this week and USC is sixth, with UCLA checking in at No. 15 and Arizona at No. 25. Well, of course. The Pacific 10 Conference is always well represented in total offense. But wait . . . these are NCAA figures for defense. For offense, the Pac-10 has no team ranked in the top 25. USC, with all those question marks behind center, is No. 29. Oregon is No. 88, one spot ahead of Temple, and UCLA is 108th, 12 spots from dead last. Defenses have taken over.

There is a huge confrontation in the Bay Area on Saturday, and it's on early enough so USC and California players can watch it. UCLA and Stanford are playing with first place in the Pacific 10 Conference on the line. Somewhere Red Sanders and Pop Warner are surely monitoring. Times staff writer Chris Foster looks at some of the game's key issues and matchups: The Big Game While a couple of ranked teams meet nearby in a game that is likely to eliminate one from conference championship contention, UCLA and Stanford, who are among the unranked and unwashed of the Pac-10 football masses, are trying to change the landscape.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The 2010 college football season — coming soon to a campus near you — faces the daunting challenge of getting the drama of its fall and winter to match its spring and summer. The Pacific 10 Conference, of all the sleepy gym joints, caused most of the commotion by awakening from a publicity coma to make more headlines — good and bad — than it had in years. In terms of noise levels, the league went from one kazoo to 50,000 vuvuzelas. Led by its hotshot second-year commissioner, Larry Scott, the Pac-10 aggressively tried to become the Pac-16 and nearly knocked conference alignment off its Texas A&-axis.

The Pacific 10 Conference has spent more than a year preparing for the moment when it can put its television rights up to bid on the open market for the first time since its expansion. With Fox's exclusive negotiating window expiring Thursday, the conference can shop the rights to some 2,700 events a year and a possible partnership in a Pac-12 network to a bevy of interested media and technology companies. The conference will have 12 teams with the additions of Utah and Colorado, covers one-fifth of the country and is the last major-college property on the market for at least a few years.

With his recent brilliant play in front of a national audience, many figure Arizona star sophomore Derrick Williams will leave for NBA riches after this season. But following his team-high 20 points in the Wildcats' 65-63 loss to Connecticut on Saturday at Honda Center in the NCAA West Regional final, the Pacific 10 Conference player of the year wasn't ready to discuss whether he had played his last college game. "I'm not answering any questions about that, no questions about the next level, no questions about the NBA," Williams said.