It Turns Out That Money Can Buy Love

Bruins and Trojans, we don’t think you’re ready for this.

In a 21st century version of free love, sports marketing style, Bay Area rivals California and Stanford have launched a joint advertising campaign.

Radio commercials and soon, print ads, feature the school’s mascots flattering each other and asking fans to attend not only their own team’s games but the other’s as well.

“The Tree, as it turns out, thinks Oski has nice handwriting. And Oski thinks the Tree has pretty eyes,” David Steele writes in the San Francisco Chronicle.

“Bet you didn’t think you’d live long enough to hear that.

“Next, we’ll be treated to the Giants complimenting the A’s’ rotation and the A’s praising the Giants’ ballpark.

“Or, the 49ers admiring Darth Vader masks and the Raiders hyping wine and cheese ....

“Is nothing sacred?

“Only the dollar, say the marketers at both schools who crossed enemy lines to concoct the ticket campaign.”

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Trivia time: Put the following schools in order based on their founding dates, earliest to latest: Cal, Stanford, UCLA and USC.

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Salt Lake 2003: If you want a souvenir from the Winter Olympics but don’t want to pay inflated prices, try waiting a year.

On sale at a U.S. Olympic team Web site: Sydney 2000 baseball caps, $6.88.

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Slice of life: Dave Perkins of the Toronto Star is indignant that golfers on the Senior Tour play for bigger purses than LPGA players.

“How can Annika Sorenstam and Co. play for less money? How can the Senior Tour have a better TV deal and slightly better numbers, plus purses that will total almost an extra 50% over the course of the year?

“The women’s show is far more compelling, it says here. The women promote their game well and, with the possible exception of Nurse Ratched Webb and a few others, are hugely media friendly. Yet the women show up at Angus Glen and play for $400,000 less than the 78 seniors go for this week, plus they couldn’t even get all four days of their event on local television.

“In the U.S., early coverage ended up on something called the Oxygen Network. Apparently, more homes now have the Oxygen Network than have original Rembrandts.”

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Slump talk: In light of the Minnesota Twins’ struggles at the plate, Jim Souhan of the Minneapolis Star Tribune dug up some of baseball’s pithy sayings.

“There are two kinds of people in baseball--those who are humble, and those who are about to be.

“Most slumps are like the common cold. They last two weeks no matter what you do.

“As Reggie Jackson once put it: ‘So many ideas come to you and you want to try them all, but you can’t.

“‘You’re like a mosquito in a nudist camp. You don’t know where to start.”’

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Trivia answer: Cal (1868), USC (1880), Stanford (1885) and UCLA (1919).

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And finally: Newly crowned PGA Champion David Toms doesn’t figure men of the cloth lead much of a life.

“It’s midnight and my pastor at home called, which shocked me. I thought he would have been in bed for four hours,” Toms told the Akron Beacon Journal.