SoCal traffic Aztecs’ lone drawback

It's the kind of money grab UNLV athletic director Jim Livengood probably wishes he could have made. But San Diego State's decision to leave the Mountain West Conference for the Big East for football in 2013 and move to the Big West for its other sports could turn out to be a stroke of business genius.

Not only will the Aztecs reap the short-term benefits of playing in a football conference that gets an automatic qualifying bid into the Bowl Championship Series, which will be worth a minimum of $6.4 million in TV revenue compared with the $1.5 million San Diego State currently gets, the Aztecs will save hundreds of thousands of dollars in expenses and travel costs for their other teams.

No more trips to Laramie, Wyo., to play women's basketball. No more baseball games in Albuquerque, N.M. No more tennis matches in Fort Collins, Colo. Instead, it'll be hop on a bus for a basketball game in Long Beach, Calif., a baseball game in Irvine, Calif., or a tennis match in Fullerton, Calif. And since we all know college athletics at the BCS level is big business, the financially strapped Aztecs' program actually might get to operate in the black from this move.

As for the successful men's basketball program, a move to the Big West doesn't necessarily equate to slippage. Part of the Big East deal reportedly means home-and-home basketball games with select Big East teams. A visit to Viejas Arena by Louisville or a game at Madison Square Garden against St. John's certainly would be better than playing Air Force or Texas Christian.

And select Aztecs games would be carried on ESPN instead of The Mtn. That might offset any negativity from playing in the Big West, though it hasn't seemed to hurt UC Santa Barbara or Long Beach State this year.

The lone drawback? That blasted Southern California traffic. In the time it will take the Aztecs to bus to Northridge for a basketball game, they probably could have flown to Colorado Springs, Colo.

■ STICKING WITH BASKETBALL -- The Clippers' Blake Griffin was bored during the NBA lockout. So he decided to try his hand at pingpong.

Griffin was serious about the sport. He trained for a couple of months and then went against South Korean professional player and fashion model Soo Yeon Lee.

But after being thoroughly whipped, Griffin's plans for world domination were put on hold. The lockout ended, and now Griffin can go back to dunking on guys from Turkey and Spain.

■ LOST, THEN FOUND -- Former NHL star Theo Fleury has had plenty of bad things happen to him off the ice over the years, including rehabilitation stints for drug and alcohol abuse. And when he lost his 1989 Stanley Cup ring 10 months ago, another chapter was added to his sad story.

But Fleury's Cup ring surfaced on Craigslist, not in the "For Sale" section but in the "Lost and Found" part of the website. The 43-year-old Fleury contacted the finder of the ring and confirmed it was his, and he and his ring have been reunited.

Maybe he can find a nice safe deposit box before he loses it again.

COMPILED BY STEVE CARP
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL