Morning Briefing : Real Estate Is Pricier in Bay Area

Is it the Big Game or the Big Gouge?

A survey of the top-priced tickets to college football’s traditional rivalries reveals that Stanford-Cal will be the most expensive game to attend this season, costing $50 for a general admission seat.

That is $7 more than the average price for an NFL game last season, and $4 more than it will cost to attend the USC-UCLA game, which is second on the list compiled by Bloomberg News Service.

Neither Stanford nor California is ranked in any major poll, yet Florida, currently ranked No. 4, will charge only $25 a ticket when it plays No. 1 Florida State.

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Trivia time: What do soccer’s Stanley Matthews, Alf Ramsey, Matt Busby, Geoff Hurst, Alex Ferguson and Pele have in common?

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Enough’s enough: U.S. golfers seeking financial reward for playing in the Ryder Cup won’t get any support from European captain Mark James.

“I think anyone who’s made the American team can probably console themselves with the fact that they’ve made a couple of million bucks just getting there,” he told Golf World International magazine.

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Saucy: At home in Australia, fans call swimmer Ian Thorpe “the Thorpedo.” The San Diego Tribune’s Nick Canepa is equally impressed.

“Have you seen this fish?” he asks. “The kid shaves with tartar sauce.”

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More swimming: Australia’s coach, Don Talbot, pulls no punches in assessing why China sent such a weak team and performed so poorly in the Pan Pacific Championships in Sydney.

“They’ve been caught cheating so much they don’t know what’s up, what’s down or what’s sideways,” he told the Weekend Australian newspaper.

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Shrinking feeling: The South Bend, Ind., crowd of 80,012 that saw Notre Dame trounce Kansas was the largest to see a Jayhawk football team play in 20 years.

The next crowd might be a tad smaller. Kansas’ opponent Sept. 11 is Cal State Northridge.

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Trivia answer: All have been knighted by England’s Queen Elizabeth II.

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And finally: One last swimming note, this one from Richard Hinds in the Sydney Morning Herald:

“You could get 6,000 people to turn up to watch eight tadpoles race if they were painted in national colors.”