Stanford, UCLA’s opponent Saturday at Palo Alto,...

Stanford, UCLA’s opponent Saturday at Palo Alto, might have the worst team in the Pacific 10 Conference, but it has the best stadium. . . .

If a similar facility were built on campus in Westwood, UCLA’s attractiveness to blue-chip recruits would skyrocket and the Bruins would never again play in front of empty seats at home -- provided, of course, that fans could make their way through the brutal Westside traffic to find the stadium. . . .

USC’s Pete Carroll, whose Trojans are overwhelming favorites to mash Idaho on Saturday night, can’t remember a team of his ever being on the wrong end of a 45-point betting spread but notes, “With the Jets, we might have been.� . . .

Carroll, 6-10 in one season with the New York Jets, is 65-12 at USC. . . .

Carroll lists his favorite boogie-boarding surf breaks outside California, where two weeks ago the 57-year-old coach “shot the pier� at Hermosa Beach for the first time: just north of Haleiwa on the north shore of Oahu (“There’s always a little reef break there, even when the North Shore’s dead�); Jaco in Costa Rica (“a really cool place�); Waikiki (“When there’s a big swell, you get great rides�); and Hanalei on the island of Kauai (“The most beautiful place I’ve ever seen�). . . .

Aren’t we getting ahead of ourselves when we assume that Alex Rodriguez, the youngest player to hit 500 home runs, will one day pass Barry Bonds?. . .

Arte Moreno is endorsing Rudolph Giuliani’s presidential campaign, but the Angels owner better not hold his breath waiting for the former New York City mayor to return the favor by supporting the Angels in the American League playoffs -- that is, if they’re matched against Giuliani’s beloved Yankees. . . .

The Angels appear primed to make it a Red October. . . .

But so do the Boston Red Sox. . . .

It’s great that Mike Krzyzewski finds Kobe Bryant to be so likable and “easy to coach,� but when the Duke coach had a chance to make mentoring Bryant a full-time gig -- at a considerable hike in pay, no less -- he turned it down. . . .

Even Sonny Vaccaro’s fiercest rivals in the so-called basketball-shoe wars must find it amusing that James Gandolfini, a.k.a. Tony Soprano, reportedly will portray the sneaker maven in the upcoming HBO movie, “ABCD Camp.� . . .

Justin Timberlake reportedly is set to take on the role of a Kings hockey player in Mike Myers’ new movie, “The Love Guru,� which raises the question: Who were those guys in Kings sweaters masquerading as a hockey team last season? . . .

Mathieu Schneider, signed by the Ducks as insurance when Scott Niedermayer hinted that he might retire, would be the first to say that he would gladly welcome back the now-wavering All-Star defenseman and Ducks captain. . . .

Among the Berkeley residents supporting the tree-hugging protesters trying to stop Cal from removing two-thirds of an oak grove to make way for a $125-million athletic training facility: Woodstock veteran Country Joe McDonald, most famous for his song, “The ‘Fish’ Cheer/I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die Rag.�. . .

You remember: “One, two, three, what are we fighting for?� . . .

Bristol Motor Speedway, where last weekend Carl Edwards won the Sharpie 500 NASCAR Nextel Cup race, looks like one of the coolest venues in sports, at least on television, with 160,000 fans seemingly right on top of the action. . . .

When USC basketball Coach Tim Floyd said last week that Manual Arts High graduate and new Trojans assistant Dwayne Polee was “the No. 1 player in the United States coming out of high school,� it must have come as news to fans of Patrick Ewing, who also was part of the high school Class of 1981. . . .

Mark Cuban, apparently not content drawing attention to himself only on NBA sidelines, will appear on the new season of ABC’s “Dancing With the Stars.� . . .

If they win the weighted-in-their-favor WNBA draft lottery and Tennessee All-American Candace Parker leaves school after next season, the Sparks couldn’t have picked a better year to suffer the worst season in their history. . . .

Michael Vick: sorry for what he did, or sorry he got caught? . . .

The dog days of summer can’t end soon enough for the NFL, which probably never before in its history has so eagerly anticipated the start of a season. . . .

The story of the Galaxy season: Mend it like Beckham.

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