If last month's conference realignment madness didn't already prove that football is king in college athletics, one glance at the Pac-10's glitzy new website should remove all doubt.

The page devoted to Pac-10 football is pristine, eye-popping and error-free. The pages devoted to men's basketball and the rest of the Pac-10's sports are ridden with mistakes that would have a high school web designer cringing.

Readers who visited the Pac-10's website the past two days found a countdown clock on the homepage building anticipation for a relaunch at 5 p.m. EST on Tuesday. Perhaps conference officials should have postponed that to correct some of the gaffes below:

If you look closely at the photo that corresponds with this USC press release, you'll notice it's of the late John Wooden and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar sitting behind the bench at a UCLA game. USC fans have long accused Wooden of recruiting violations during his dynasty, but even they probably don't think he had much to do with the

Not only is first-year Boise State coach Leon Rice striving to build the Broncos' program in Gonzaga's image, the ex-Zags assistant is also doing his best to make the WAC resemble the West Coast Conference.

The WAC has adopted Rice's suggestion to change the format of its conference tournament to reward teams who do the best in the regular season, the Idaho Statesman reported Tuesday. Beginning this coming season, the top two seeds in the WAC tournament will get a bye to the semifinals just as they have in recent years in the WCC.

Boise State will only reside in the WAC for one more season before moving to the Mountain West in 2011, so the conference tournament makeover probably will have minimal impact on Rice's program. Instead the biggest benefactors figure to be Utah State and Nevada, both of which have dominated the league the past five years and combined to win or share the last seven WAC titles.

In the past eight years, 2007-08 San Diego is the only WCC team seeded third or

Ex-Harvard star Jeremy Lin's signing with the Golden State Warriors didn't just elevate the Ivy League's profile in basketball circles.

It also means the Atlantic Sun Conference will soon stand alone Division I college basketball's lone league that hasn't produced an NBA player in the past five years.

The Atlantic Sun's NBA drought dates back to 2001 when both Mercer alum Sam Mitchell and ex-Jacksonville star Dee Brown retired. Prior to Lin, the last Ivy Leaguers to play in the NBA were Chris Dudley of Yale and Matt Maloney of Penn, both of whom retired in 2002.

Here's a look at the conferences who have produced the least number of players who have appeared in an NBA game in the past five years:

Zero NBA players since 2005:

• Ivy League

• Atlantic Sun Conference

One NBA player since 2005:

• America East Conference: Jose Barea, Northeastern

• Big South Conference: Reggie Williams, VMI

• Northeast Conference: Corsley Edwards, CCSU

• Patriot League: Adonal Foyle, Colgate

• Summit League:

Either Michigan State coach Tom Izzo is sandbagging to provide some early motivation for his players, or he truly believes Purdue is the best team in next season's loaded Big Ten.

Izzo told ESPN.com that the Boilermakers should enter the season as Big Ten favorites even though the Spartans return all but one rotation player from their Final Four team and get star guard Kalin Lucas back from an Achilles tendon injury.

"People can pick us, pick them, but I think they're going to be the team to beat," Izzo said. "It'll be interesting to see who survives with so much on the line. We have everything we can chew and more this season."

Purdue and Michigan State figure to wage a year-long battle for the Big Ten title just like they did a season ago when they finished tied atop the conference with Ohio State. The Boilermakers might have won the title outright last season had forward Robbie Hummel not torn his ACL days before a crucial late-February matchup with the Spartans in West Lafayette.

The rebranding of the Pac-10 begins in earnest Tuesday with the release of a new logo, the launch of a new web site and the start of a three-day marketing blitz designed to familiarize East Coast fans and media with the conference.

For the first time, the conference will erect billboards in Times Square and other East Coast locations and make its top football players and coaches available for interviews in New York City and at the ESPN studios in Bristol, Conn. Expect a similar but scaled down campaign when basketball season arrives in a few months.

The increased emphasis on raising the Pac-10's profile is all part of new commissioner Larry Scott's efforts to eradicate the conference's stodgy reputation and put it in the best possible position before he negotiates a new TV contract next year. The Pac-10's current deal lags well behind other BCS conferences at less than half the value of the ACC's new deal and less than a third of the SEC and Big Ten.

Scott, who had no previous

Whatever slim chance Oregon had of being competitive in the Pac-10 in Dana Altman's first season in Eugene may have just disappeared altogether.

A source with knowledge of the situation told KVAL-TV this weekend that starting guard Malcolm Armstead has asked for and received his release from Oregon. If true, Armstead would become the fifth Ducks player to transfer out of the program since longtime coach Ernie Kent was fired in March.

Whereas Matt Humphrey, Josh Crittle, Drew Wiley, and Jamil Wilson all left either before or immediately after the hiring of Altman, the timing of Armstead's apparent departure three months later is a bit more curious. Furthermore, the junior guard likely would be Oregon's best returning player next season after averaging 10.3 points and a team-high 4.3 assists as a sophomore and setting a school record with 65 steals.

Many Pac-10 prognosticators already projected the Ducks to finish last for a second straight year next season, so losing Armstead could be a

Walk down a busy street in any town in the state of Texas, and it probably won't take long to spot someone wearing a Longhorns T-shirt, a burnt orange cap or even a pair of silver Bevo earrings.

Now comes a much greater test of Texas' sports marketing clout: Can the Longhorns sell electric power the way they do merchandise?

Dallas-based Branded Retail Energy has signed a six-year contract with the university and will make Texas Longhorns Energy available to consumers in August. Sports Business Journal has more:

The electricity will be supplied by Champion Energy Services and is being touted as 100 percent renewable energy to alumni and fans in deregulated regions of Texas. Every new account will generate funds for the University of Texas and consumers will receive Longhorns merchandise, memorabilia, access to events, ticket discounts and other benefits as incentives, including likely co-promotions with other UT sponsors.

It may seem strange for an electricity provider to rely on

You know an armed robbery is ill-conceived when the local paper spends most of its article ridiculing the assailants for their shoddy effort.

In what the Philadelphia Daily News described as a "ham-fisted" plan that "kind of fell apart," Drexel basketball players Jamie Harris and Kevin Phillip allegedly broke into a female student's apartment on Wednesday night brandishing guns and demanding money.

Problem No. 1: The woman, like many college students, didn't have any cash, so all Harris and Phillip managed to steal was her iPhone. Problem No. 2: The entire incident was caught on tape.

Of course, the most important aspect of the story is that the victim avoided injury. Arrest warrants have been issued for Harris and Phillip, and NBC Philadelphia reports they're expected to turn themselves in to police on Monday. A third conspirator, fellow Drexel student Devin Bond, was charged Thursday with robbery, theft, conspiracy and related offenses.

Harris, Drexel's starting point guard,