Two weeks left in the Pac-10 regular season. Must be time to complain about the conference tournament. The ACC tournament is great. Fans love it, and the ACC makes money hand over first. But it doesn't work for the Pac-10.

The Pac-10 has a perfectly balanced regular season. The 10 teams are split into 5 geographic pairs. Each week two pairs go on the road and play on Thursday and Saturday. The odd pair out has their rivalry game and an out of conference opponent. When it's all said and done, every team has played every other team in a home and away set. The team left on top is the true conference champion.

The conference tournament adds nothing. A great run by an underdog isn't going to get the conference another team into the NCAA tournament - the East Coast bias will take care of that. It's not good for the fans - not many fans from Washington and Oregon will make the trip to LA.

It's even be tried before. But this time is's going to be different. Pfui.

Team New Zealand's run of bad luck continues in the America's Cup. Down 4-0, TNZ needs to win 5 in a row to retain the cup. I'm pulling for them, but I think that I've heard the fat lady warming up for days.

While I'm sorry for the New Zealanders, I'm also sorry for the America's Cup competition. In the past, the national guidelines were an artifice by which the New York Yacht Club kept American technology away from the competition. But Australia's historical win in 1983 demonstrated that sailing technology ignores national boundaries. And I think that it will be a shame if the Swiss challenger Alinghi wins with a brain trust hired away from TNZ.

I rooted for America in the challenger round, not Oracle, not BMW, and not Larry Ellison. And I think that national loyalty is vital to the competition. If TNZ wins, then I would expect the rules to change to reflect a greater respect for national boundaries. I doubt that Alinghi would accept such changes, as land locked Switzerland is hardly a hotbed of sailing competition