Lane Kiffin might not have been able to entice Tennessee into a made-for-tv grudge match to kick off the 2011 football season, but that may not be his only opportunity to renew acquaintances with Vols fans in person.

USC basketball coach Kevin O'Neill half-jokingly suggested he may may bring Kiffin with him to Knoxville when the Trojans and Vols meet in hoops this December. Kiffin hasn't been back to Tennessee since hundreds of students gathered on campus the night he announced he was leaving for USC and burned mattresses and T-shirts with his face on them while chanting obscenities at him.

"I'm thinking I'm going to bring Lane," O'Neill told the Knoxville News-Sentinel on Wednesday. "We'd have to wear Kevlar instead of suits if we did. But at least we can stay at his house in Knoxville. It's never going to sell; might as well turn it into a hotel."

Bringing Kiffin to Rocky Top might be the equivalent of sending a BP executive to a Greenpeace summit, but the atmosphere in Knoxville

At a time when it costs $72 to get into Disneyland, $100 for general admission seats to a Jay-Z concert and $1,000 for tickets to the Super Bowl, here's one event that is worth shelling out a few extra dollars to see in person.

Bob Knight, the fiery former Indiana coach turned curmudgeonly broadcaster, will be in the hot seat on Sept. 18 when Horseshoe Casino in Hammond, Ind., hosts the Coach Bob Knight All-Star Celebrity Roast/Toast.

Florida International coach Isiah Thomas and New Mexico coach Steve Alford are two of the former Indiana players who get a chance at payback for all the profanity-laden tantrums they once endured from Knight. Former coaching rivals Digger Phelps (Notre Dame), Jud Heathcote (Michigan State) and Johnny Orr (Michigan) will also have a chance to deliver their best shots.

Maybe the two roasters with the most pressure from their colleagues to land some stinging verbal jabs on Knight are Bloomington sportswriter Bob Hammel and former Big Ten official Dan

When Morgantown mayor Bill Byrne and Durham mayor Bill Bell made a friendly bet on the outcome of this year's West Virginia-Duke Final Four game, more was at stake than which city would receive super high-speed internet connections from Google.

Also apparently on the line was a spike in approval ratings for both politicians.

A study published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences tested whether or not events irrelevant to government performance affect evaluations of an incumbent politician. Researchers from Loyola Marymount and Stanford found that a marquee victory from a local college football or basketball team can lead to increased approval of an incumbent politician's performance in the minds of fans of that team.

We find that a (college football) win in the 10 days before Election Day causes the incumbent to receive an additional 1.61 percentage points of the vote in Senate, gubernatorial, and presidential elections, with the effect being larger for

Only a month after John Wooden's death comes another depressing report about one of college basketball's coaching icons.

Dean Smith, who won 879 games and two national championships at North Carolina, is suffering from memory loss severe enough that he often doesn't recognize longtime friends and former players, according to the Fayetteville Observer.

Those near the UNC program say Smith has good days and bad days. On the good days, he is his cheerful, unassuming self, friendly and engaging and surprising people with his memory of little details about their lives.

But on the bad days, they say, Smith has great difficulty even remembering people he has worked with and around for years.

Smith, 79, remained the face of the North Carolina program even after his retirement in 1997, but in recent years he has become far less visible. The 300 ex-players and managers who showed up to February's Celebration of a Century of North Carolina basketball wondered whether that might be Smith's

One of the most intriguing aspects of UTEP's decision to hire Tim Floyd this spring was seeing if the NCAA's recent investigation into his recruiting practices at USC would cause him to adopt a more conservative approach.

We already have our answer. It's a resounding no.

Floyd did not break any NCAA rules last week by hiring Heat Academy coach Jason Niblett as an assistant, but the move stomps all over the spirit of a new piece of legislation designed to discourage package deals in recruiting. Maybe Niblett turns out to be a great addition at UTEP, but it's surely not a coincidence Floyd hired him two months after a pair of Heat players, Michael Haynes and Desmond Lee, signed in the spring.

Under a new NCAA rule that went into effect earlier this year, "an institution shall not employ an individual associated with a prospective student-athlete in any athletics department noncoaching staff position." Niblett's hire doesn't violate that rule since he will be a full-fledged assistant

In the four months since fired Seton Hall coach Bobby Gonzalez's turbulent tenure ended amid criticism over his tyrannical methods, everything we've learned about him has painted him in an even worse light.

Somehow, someway, however, Gonzalez has managed this week to make himself into an even bigger punchline.

Police have charged Gonzalez with shoplifting from a Polo Ralph Lauren store at a New Jersey shopping mall, an eyebrow-raising accusation for a man who brought home a six-figure income for the past decade. Worse yet, the item that Gonzalez allegedly stole? A $1,395 leather men's satchel that looks suspiciously like a man purse.

Gonzalez's attorney, Gerry Krovatin, told the Newark Star-Ledger that the arrest was "a misunderstanding" and his client "had no intention of stealing anything," but it doesn't look good that the bag's sensor tag reportedly was damaged.

In fact, the most intriguing question to emerge from this fiasco is not whether Gonzalez stole the bag but what a coach

The mysterious undisclosed medical condition that sidelined Stanford forward Josh Owens all of this past season apparently will not end his college basketball career as some initially feared.

Stanford announced Monday that Owens has been cleared to play next season, great news for the 6-foot-8 redshirt junior-to-be and for a Cardinal program in dire need of depth and athleticism in the frontcourt. Owens underwent a series of medical exams and consulted with multiple specialists around the country before the school felt it was safe to reinstate him.

Until Stanford announced that Owens would be unable to play last season, it seemed like it might be a breakout year for the promising junior forward. Owens had averaged 6.9 points and 3.6 rebounds as a sophomore after receiving limited minutes behind the Lopez twins as a freshman, but last season it would have been his turn to emerge as the interior complement to Landry Fields and Jeremy Green on the perimeter.

Instead with Owens on the

In the five years since Utah State left for the WAC and Pacific began its descent into mediocrity, the beleaguered Big West has desperately searched for a new program to assume the role of the conference's flagship basketball school.

UC Santa Barbara hasn't separated from its peers yet, but don't be surprised if the Gauchos finally take that step.

They won both the regular season and conference tournament titles last year for the first time in school history. They return every significant player from that team this fall. And leading scorers Orlando Johnson and James Nunnally both will be seniors at the same time as a pair of promising transfers become eligible in fall 2011.

Seeking more playing time closer to home instead of backing up all-Mountain West point guard Dairese Gary, New Mexico transfer Nate Garth announced in May he'd attend UCSB. And 6-foot-7 Colorado transfer and fellow California native Keegan Hornbuckle followed suit last month, turning down the Pac-10's Arizona State