Bay Area Sports Blog

So today the Licoln (Neb.) Journal-Star will live blog the Nebraska Board of Regents meeting. Will it be the most exciting live blog of a regents meeting in this history of regents meeting live blogs? Potentially.

Nebraska is considered the large red domino at the top of the line of major conference realignment, and the school’s regents are debating whether to join the Big 10 today. The Journal-Star lays it out thusly: “Potentially at stake: the future makeup of college athletic conferences, including the possible demise of the Big 12; historic rivalries;  millions of dollars in sports television revenue; even academic programs and research.”

So, not much then.

Nebraska rival Colorado officially joined the Pac-10 on Thursday, but Nebraska still holds the key to the conference becoming the Pac-12 or the Pac-16. As the Merc’s Jon Wilner reports, if Nebraska stays in the Big XII the conference could survive and the Pac-10 could add only Utah to become the Pac-12. But if Nebraska joins the Big 10, the Big XII could end and the mega-move would happen.

Colorado, the first little domino, is pretty damn excited to be in the Pac-10. The Buffs lost six scholarships this year because of poor academic performance, and school president Bruce Benson said the academics were a main positive of the move to the Pac-10. “Look at the Ivy League. Seven of eight are in the AAU (American Association of Universities). You’re judged by your peers. I like to be judged against UCLA and Stanford and Berkeley and USC and Washington.”

Comparing the Pac-10 to the Ivy League? You’ll fit in around here, Bruce Benson.

So, just as USC gets slammed with sanctions for Reggie Bush’s transgressions (Cal and Stanford fans can now look back fondly on the 2005 season where they each beat USC), the rest of the nation instead will be focused on Nebraska, and that live blog. Orangebloods.com reported that Nebraska’s Big Ten move is already writ, but tune in to see.

John Wooden, who died tonight of natural causes, touched a lot of lives during his remarkable 99 years on this earth. As far as personal memories of the Wizard of Westwood go, former Stanford star Josh Childress will always have a pretty good one.

With Stanford chasing a perfect regular season in February 2004, Sports Illustrated brought Childress and Wooden together for a photo shoot at Pauley Pavilion. While Washington ruined the Cardinal’s quest for perfection during the final weekend of the Pac-10 season, Sports Illustrated on Campus put the legendary UCLA coach and the Stanford swingman on the cover of ts March Madness preview.

SIOC also picked Stanford to win it all, “because the geek is chic in college hoops.” The geek was weak in the tournament, as Alabama upset the No. 1 seed Cardinal in the second round, but the image of Wooden and Childress is classic.

R.I.P, Coach.

Forget Boise State, Fresno State, BYU, and Utah. Pac-10 commissioner Larry Scott is thinking  bigger when it comes to expansion. Big 12 big.

According to a report on Orangebloods.com by former Dallas Morning News reporter Chip Brown, Scott is preparing to offer half of the Big 12–Colorado, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech–invitations to join the Pac-10.  Those six schools would join Arizona and Arizona State in one division, while the original members of the Pacific-8 would form the mega-conference’s other division.

Scott issued a statement indicating that Pac-10 officials, who will meet this weekend in San Francisco, don’t have any definitive expansion plans at this time. Meanwhile, Colorado AD Mike Bohn told the Boulder Daily Camera that Brown’s report “did have some validity to it.”

Wow.

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It’s just raining titles at Stanford after men’s volleyball ended the drought earlier this month. On Tuesday, the Cardinal women’s tennis team beat Florida after coming into the NCAAs as an 8-seed, despite having only one loss on the season. Can’t say we really understand that.

This, anybody can understand: After freshman Mallory Burdette sealed the title, her sister Lindsay (a senior and the second-ranked singles player on the team)  rushed out onto the court and just lit. Mallory. Up.

Boom! Now that’s a hit any football coach would appreciate. And Stanford’s Jim Harbaugh did:

Too bad Lindsay Burdette doesn’t have any eligibility left. Harbaugh was eying the way she she blitzes the passer and tracks her competition all over the court.

The Giants and A’s lost by a combined scored of 18-2 tonight, the Sharks are still down 2-0, and the Warriors, no matter how you spin it, got hosed in the NBA draft lottery. So how ’bout some good news?

Former Stanford closer Drew Storen, the No. 10 pick in last year’s draft, made his major league debut with the Nationals on Tuesday, much to the delight of his family’s dog.  Storen’s promotion was well deserved — he put up impressive numbers at each of his minor league stops — and a nice reward for his decision to sign immediately after the draft. No. 1 pick Stephen Strasburg, who made the Nationals sweat until the deadline, remains at Triple-A.

Storen worked 2/3 of an inning tonight and picked up a win in relief against the Mets. He received two shaving cream pies to the face during a post-game interview and later donned the Nationals’ Silver Fox in the clubhouse.

It’s a memorable week for a couple rookies from Cal, too. Detroit Tigers outfielder Brennan Boesch, who is off to a record-setting start, will face A’s rookie and former Golden Bears teammate Tyson Ross on Thursday.

The previously undisclosed violation of team rules that led Stanford head coach Tara VanDerveer to dismiss junior point guard JJ Hones from the team earlier this month was, well, disclosed Wednesday.

Hones was arrested on suspicion of DUI while operating a golf cart on the morning of May 2. According to Stanford’s Department of Public Safety, Hones failed to obey officers’ commands and a series of field sobriety tests.

Charges are pending, but VanDerveer obviously already reached her verdict. While some might argue that it’s a stiff penalty given the nature of the offense, we may not know the entire story or about any other factors that weighed into VanDerveer’s decision.

VanDerveer could have a change of heart–she can look to her friend Jim Harbaugh as an example of someone who made the most of his second chance after being charged with a DUI–but it appears more likely the Cardinal will be looking elsewhere for senior leadership next season.

Hones is only the second player VanDerveer has dismissed for alleged misconduct during her 24-year tenure on the Farm. Tanda Rucker, a member of the 1992 national championship team, was dismissed after the 1993 season, reportedly for theft. In 2006, she was involved in more serious trouble.

So yes, two days later, Dallas Braden’s perfect game still stands. Bud Selig hasn’t put an asterisk next to it because of low attendance, nor has he declared the game a draw because both teams played hard. Alex Rodriguez wasn’t able to buy an erasing of the history books.

Braden was on NPR on Monday and tonight he’ll give the Top 10 list on Letterman. That’s when it will become real, probably. Letterman!

There has been much, much analysis of Braden’s perfect game, but most of it focuses on one solitary facet: How? As in, how the hell did that happen? As in, how did a guy with 17 previous career wins go out and toss the holy sacred perfecto? We loved this portrait from SI’s Joe Posnanski: “No, he was never highly regarded. He was not regarded at all.”

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You may have heard the inspiring story of the Stanford men’s volleyball team, which won its first national title since 1997 by sweeping Penn State at Maples Pavilion last night. The Cardinal dedicated their win to late assistant coach Al Roderigues, who died of cancer in March. Roderigues had urged Stanford to complete a “worst to first” run after the Cardinal finished 3-25 in 2007, and his words served as their motivation throughout a dominating 2010 campaign. Stanford finished 24-6.

But beyond the walls of Maples Pavilion, the volleyball team’s victory meant more to Stanford. With the win, the Cardinal finally have an NCAA title in the 2009-10 school year, extending their streak to 35 consecutive years with at least one national title.

The Bootleg had an examination of Stanford angst over this issue in April. Through the winter sports season, four Stanford teams had finished second, and the streak was officially in jeopardy. I mean, you wouldn’t want to be UCLA in 1994, right? Right? (UCLA is probably the only other school that cares about this. They have 105 total titles to Stanford’s 98).

So now we can all sleep tonight knowing Stanford fans won’t have to suffer through a year without a trophy. With Toby Gerhart finishing second in the Heisman vote, we were about to dub it “Secondford.” But, you know, now it won’t come to that.

What’s your deal, Jim Harbaugh? Why are you so awesome at Twitter? The Stanford head coach announced the news of the latest addition to the Cardinal’s 2011 class with the cryptic message above. It turns out that Harbaugh received a verbal commitment from offensive tackle Brendon Austin, the top rated player in Colorado, tonight.  The Big (265 lbs.), Strong (300 lb. bench press), and Tall (6-foot-5) Austin chose Stanford over Notre Dame and Colorado.

It was a good week for Harbaugh, whose team won the Pac-10 golf scramble on Wednesday. Given his affinity for word play, we may ask him to create our Rebus tomorrow.

Toby Gerhart isn’t nervous on the eve of the first round of the NFL draft, and even if he was, you couldn’t tell it. The former Stanford standout is as pale as a ghost as it is.

“I’m just going to sit back and let it all be,” the Heisman runner-up who is so white he gets lost when he goes skiing told Jon Wilner. “There’s no stress. Any questions (NFL teams) had, I think I’ve answered.”

Those questions have included at least one from a team about his skin color. No joke.

“They asked if it made me feel entitled, or like I felt I was a poster child for white running backs,” Gerhart told Yahoo.com’s Michael Silver. “I said, ‘No, I’m just out there playing ball. I don’t think about that.’ I didn’t really know what to say.”

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