Harris is fired by Stanford after 1-11 season

Stanford opened the season full of optimism based on a renovated stadium, an offense that returned nearly intact and progress that was made in Walt Harris’ first year as coach.

That quickly ended when the stadium was often half-empty, the skill players went down with injuries and the Cardinal finished with its worst record in more than four decades.

All of that played into the decision Monday to fire Harris after his second season and begin the search for a coach who can win under the difficult circumstances at Stanford.

“This has been a tough year,” Athletic Director Bob Bowlsby said. “In some measure this decision was not made as a result of being 1-11 as much as it was a result of not seeing the progress in some of the critical areas we would have hoped for ... “

Harris finished his two-year stint with a 6-17 record after losing 26-17 in the Big Game to California on Saturday. He had the shortest tenure of any Stanford coach since Rod Dowhower left after one season in 1979 with a 5-5-1 record.

Harris declined to comment before leaving campus Monday but did thank the school in a statement for the opportunity to come back to his native Bay Area.

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The 64 major college teams invited to bowl games this season are performing significantly better in the classroom than bowl teams from previous seasons, according to an independent study.

The report from the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport found that 86% of the teams are graduating more than half of their athletes. Sixty-three percent meet or exceed the NCAA’s relatively new academic performance standard.

The institute, at the University of Central Florida, noted room for improvement, especially in the gap between graduation rates for white (62%) and African American (49%) football players, but otherwise praised ongoing efforts by NCAA President Myles Brand.

Among the Pacific 10 Conference’s six bowl-bound teams, only USC and California scored well in relation to the NCAA’s Academic Progress Rate. UCLA, Arizona State and Oregon State were in the lowest fringes of acceptable scores. Oregon fell below the cutoff line.

Schools that do not meet the minimum APR score risk losing scholarships. In the future, the NCAA plans to introduce additional penalties.

-- David Wharton

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After weeks of speculation about his future, Rutgers Coach Greg Schiano decided to stay at home.

Amid talk he might return to Miami to take over the troubled program, Schiano told Hurricanes Athletic Director Paul Dee to take his name off a list of coaching candidates.

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Louisiana Tech fired Coach Jack Bicknell following a 3-10 season capped last weekend by a 50-23 loss at New Mexico State.

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Ohio State middle linebacker James Laurinaitis won the Bronko Nagurski Trophy, awarded to the nation’s best defensive player by the Charlotte (N.C.) Touchdown Club.

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UCLA’s 13-9 upset over USC on ABC Saturday was by far the most-watched sporting event in the Los Angeles television market over the weekend. The game got a 17.0 Nielsen rating with a 41 share of the audience and was being watched at any given time in an average of 951,000 households by 1.3 million people.

The next-most-watched sporting event in L.A. was the Dallas Cowboys’ 23-20 victory over the New York Giants on Sunday on Fox, which got an 11.2 rating and averaged 789,000 viewers.

-- Larry Stewart