University Of Nevada

Good news greeted first-year Coach Chris Tormey of Nevada moments after he stepped off an airplane from Idaho to take over the Wolf Pack football program: David Neill announced he is not transferring from Nevada, the athletic director told Tormey. It was the best news Tormey could have asked for considering his plans to employ a wide-open, one-back offense centered around the quarterback.

A key step toward stability next season in the Cal State Fullerton basketball program came around 7 a.m. Monday, when Nevada Athletic Director Chris Ault telephoned Titan Coach Brad Holland and informed him that the Wolf Pack had chosen Houston Coach Pat Foster as basketball coach. Holland interviewed at Nevada last Tuesday and was one of six candidates to replace Coach Len Stevens, who was fired this month. Foster's five-year contract is worth nearly $1 million, according to a Nevada source.

They make quite a pair on the Nevada football team--the Kid and the Slightly Older Kid. Trevor Insley and Geoff Noisy, former standout Orange County prep athletes, have flourished with the Wolf Pack. They have combined for 2,009 yards, or 51.4% of the team's receiving yardage, and 14 touchdowns.

Not much in the men's shoe department at Nordstrom interests Dan Ledieff. The former La Habra and Cal State Long Beach football standout is a rat all right, but he's of the gym variety, not the mall type. Ledieff has little use for anything in a wingtip with high polish. Cleats with caked mud are more his style. There's a time and place for everything, and Ledieff is spending many of this summer's waking hours at the gym lifting weights and on the track running laps and stadium stairs.

Every spring since he was 5, former Notre Dame High first baseman Glen Carson played baseball until he encountered an opponent that he "would not wish upon my worst enemy." During his senior year at Nevada, Carson was baffled at the sudden deterioration of his body. He suffered weight loss, diarrhea and severe stomach pain. A disease with no known cure--Crohn's disease--was attacking his intestines.

Aaron France of Cypress and Wade Jackson of Saddleback have signed to attend four-year colleges. France, a sophomore right-handed pitcher, signed with Miami. France, from Loara High School, is 9-3 with 99 strikeouts in 96 innings this season. Jackson, a sophomore third baseman, signed with Nevada. Jackson, from El Toro High School, is hitting .374 for Saddleback. Jackson had home runs in three consecutive games last season and has four home runs this season.

"Oh, you mean the guy with the 70-year-old head and the 20-year-old body-builder body? That picture has got to be Photoshopped." Dr. Jeffry Life smiles when I tell him about the general reaction I get about the famous picture of him with his shirt off, the shot that turned a mild-mannered doctor in his mid-60s into a poster boy for super-fit aging and controversial hormone replacement Appearing in medical-clinic ads in airline magazines and...

Dr. Jay Goldstein of Anaheim Hills has spent the last five years researching and treating patients with chronic fatigue syndrome, a debilitating disease characterized by incapacitating exhaustion and a range of other perplexing symptoms. Explaining his theory of an unknown retrovirus invading the immune system, inducing cells to produce a chemical transmitter affecting the entire body, Goldstein pauses. "You know," the family practitioner says, "some very respected physicians will tell you I am crazy."

LAS VEGAS - For nearly five years, the steel-and-concrete skeleton of the abandoned resort project has taunted this city, a glaring reminder that casino operators here can't win every economic wager they place. The stalled Echelon project sits on hallowed gambling ground: It's where the old Stardust casino was imploded. Construction on the new $4-billion resort began in 2007 and froze a year later - a failure so embarrassing that city officials later ordered owner Boyd Gaming Corp.

Put a cowboy hat on a microphone and you have Gerald Haslam, whose short stories have recorded the landscapes, the working-class customs and, above all, the voices of the Bakersfield area for two decades now. Okies, Indians, blacks and Latinos; ranchers, roughnecks and a few who got education but could never get the dust and oil and tule fog out of their blood--Haslam lets them all sound off. "That Constant Coyote" consists of six new stories and 19 that Haslam published as long ago as 1972.