The Golden State Valkyries welcomed a face familiar to Bay Area college sports fans by signing former Stanford center Nadia Fingall to a rest-of-season contract on Sunday. The team also waived forward Ndjakalenga Mwenentanda in a corresponding move.

The Mercury News reports that Fingall was named Pac-12 All-Defensive Team Honorable Mention as a senior while being second on the Cardinal with a career-high 5.7 rebounds per game. Standing at 6-foot-4 center, Fingall's young career has also included leading Spanish squads to two Liga Femenina de Baloncensto titles and two Supercopa de España championships. In 2024, she was named Supercopa de España tournament MVP.

A native of New Jersey, Fingall will become the second former Stanford Cardinal to join the Valkyries in short succession after the team signed Stanford freshman Ashten Prechtel to an injury hardship contract in early May. Once that contract expired, the Valkyries subsequently opted to retain Prechtel with a player development deal.

Fingall's most recent play came for Casademont Zaragoza, where the Mercury News notes she averaged 8.7 points, 5.7 rebounds and a 44.7 field goal percentage in 19 games.

The move to acquire Fingall arrives amidst a solid start to the Valkyries' sophomore season, with the team currently sitting at a record of 6-5. It also follows a nail-biting loss to the Las Vegas Aces on Saturday night despite a career-high 27 points from new Valkyries forward Gabby Williams.

Related: Golden State Valkyries Win Home Opener Against Mercury 95-79, Salaün Shines

Image: Nadia Fingall in action during Euroleague Women Final on April 19, 2026 in Zaragoza, Spain. (Photo by Borja B. Hojas/Getty Images)

Stanford University has reportedly reached a settlement to bring an end to a wrongful death lawsuit filed by the family of soccer star Katie Meyer, who took her own life in March 2022.

Katie Meyer, the star goalie of the Stanford Cardinal women's soccer team, was found dead in her dorm room on March 1, 2022, three months shy of graduation, at the age of 22. Meyer had been part of the team that had won the 2019 NCAA championship, and was standout player, and was known to friends as a perfectionist who held a 3.84 grade point average.

This was the fourth suicide on the Stanford campus in the span of 13 months, and the university admitted this was a problem, not long after Meyer's parents went on the Today show, the week after her death, and talked about the university's disciplinary actions against their daughter.

As KRON4 reports, Meyer was reportedly threatened with expulsion over an incident in which she reportedly poured coffee on a football player who had kissed one of her teammate without her consent. And the formal disciplinary notice had been sent to Meyer the day before her suicide.

As her father, Steven Meyer, put it in the Today show interview, "Katie, being Katie, was defending a teammate on campus over an incident and the repercussions of her defending that teammate [possibly led to the disciplinary action]."

The family subsequently filed a wrongful death claim against Stanford in November 2022, and now, over three years later, that is getting settled out of court.

Stanford and the Meyer family issued a joint statement Monday about the settlement, saying they had agreed to work together on a new initiative focused on students' mental health. And a new Katie Meyer Leadership Award is being established, to be given to one student-athlete each year.

The statement also refers to Katie Meyer's Law, which Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law in 2024, which mandates that public universities allow students facing a disciplinary issue to have an outside adviser in order for the schools to receive state aid for student financial assistance — even though, as a private university, Stanford is bound to following the law.

“In addition, Stanford will adopt the principles of Katie Meyer’s Law to provide support to students in its OCS disciplinary process," the statement says. "The number worn by Katie while she played soccer at Stanford, #19, will be retired in honor of the impact Katie had on Stanford women’s soccer."

“While Katie’s passing remains devastating and tragic," the statement continues, "the memory of her accomplishments and the uplifting influence she had on those who knew her lives on. Stanford and the Meyer family believe that working together on these initiatives will both honor Katie’s indelible legacy and help current and future students in meaningful ways."

Further details about the settlement were not shared.

If you are in crisis, dial the national Crisis and Suicide Lifeline at 988 on any phone, or text "BAY" to 741741 for free, 24/7, confidential crisis support from Crisis Text Line. And if you or someone you know is having suicidal thoughts, you or they should call the San Francisco Suicide Prevention crisis line at 415-781-0500.

Previously: After Star Soccer Player’s Suicide, Stanford Acknowledges It Has a Suicide Problem

• New research from Stanford University has determined that wildfire smoke is the most detrimental consequence of climate change on Americans' health. Forty thousand Americans are killed by wildfire smoke per year, and the number is projected at 70,000 per year by 2050. [KQED]
• Santa Rosa police arrested Felix Carreon, 50, and Robert McConlogue, 46, both from Sebastopol, in connection with the fatal shooting of Mollie Schefer, 47, at her home in Santa Rosa September 9. One of Shefer’s dogs was also killed, and a second dog was suffering from a gunshot wound. [KRON4]

• A new addiction recovery facility called Wells Place will soon be opening in SF’s Marina District at the former Marina Inn location at Octavia and Lombard streets. Residents at the facility, which consists of double and single-occupancy rooms with a total of 60 beds, will be required to go to school or work while at the facility. [NBC Bay Area]

• The Cupertino Whole Foods, which was shut down in April due to multiple pest infestations, passed its inspection and is set to reopen its doors September 29. [KPIX]
• Three parks in the East Bay town of Antioch — Contra Loma Estates Park, Marchetti Park, and Jacobsen Park — are getting major upgrades, which were largely funded by a $2.95 million grant through Proposition 68. [Bay Area News Group]
• Juan Aguilar, 44, was sentenced to 18 years in prison on August 29 for the human trafficking, rape, and forcible oral copulation of a 15-year-old girl whom he kidnapped from Honduras and trafficked from his San Leandro home for two years. [Bay Area News Group]

Image: Leanne Maxwell/SFist

• Oakland Animal Services is no longer required to accept all surrendered animals amid a 40% surge in intake and significant staffing cuts. [Bay Area News Group]
• Mark Jacobson, a professor at Stanford, says his self-built zero net energy home, which is powered entirely by solar, demonstrates how California’s clean energy goals are becoming reality. [KPIX]
• Firefighters quickly shut off water after a car slammed into a building at 24th and San Jose Streets in the Mission Friday, toppling a hydrant and causing minor structural damage. [Hoodline]
• Stanford robotics researcher Aaron Tan has unveiled Lume, a pair of $2,000 bedside “robotic lamps” that can also fold your laundry — set to launch next year. [KGO]

Image: Leanne Maxwell

In short order, UCSF may be one of the last, if not the last place in California for teenagers under the age of 19 to seek gender-affirming surgeries, with Stanford Medicine bowing out of the practice earlier this month.

Stanford Medicine has confirmed that it has "paused" providing gender-affirming surgeries for youths under the age of 19, effective June 2, 2025, due to the threat of legal action and funding loss from the federal government under the Trump regime. This decision comes just as one of the largest providers of such care to trans youth in the country, Children's Hospital of Los Angeles, has opted to close its Center for Transyouth Health and Development entirely as of July 1, citing "no viable path forward except to close" the center.

Stanford will continue providing gender-affirming care in the form of puberty-blockers and hormones to trans youth, the organization says. And as far as we know, UCSF's Gender Affirming Health Program will continue providing this care, as well as surgeries for those youths with extreme gender dysphoria.

The Stanford Pediatric and Adolescent Gender Clinic dates back to 2015.

As the Chronicle reports today, surgeries are rare and generally not recommended for youths under 18 anyway — with the most common surgeries for teens being "top surgeries" or breast removals for trans males. These account for maybe a few hundred cases per year nationwide, while fewer than 20 youths across the country undergo genital procedures before adulthood each year.

Trump's executive order which threatens the withholding of federal grant money to institutions providing gender-affirming care of any kind was blocked by a federal judge in March. But a Supreme Court decision last week affirmed the right of states of ban gender-affirming care for minors, allowing a Tennessee law — and by extension laws in two dozen other states — to continue denying this care and threatening legal action against medical providers.

This will most certainly cause more distress for minors experiencing gender dysphoria, as well as their parents, and is already leading some to relocate to states with less discriminatory laws to seek this often life-saving medical care.

California is one of those states.

In an opinion piece in the LA Times this week, USC journalism professor Gabriel Kahn suggests that the board at Los Angeles Children's Hospital made a cynical decision to cease providing care to trans youth in order to spare the rest of the hospital's patients from the Trump administration's wrath.

"In caving to blackmail, they have endorsed the administration’s bigotry," Kahn writes. "They have demonstrated that trans youth are expendable. The board has made it clear that this group of patients is not as deserving of care as others... This time, it was trans youth. Who will it be next time? Disabled children? Children born outside the U.S.?"

Previously: Supreme Court's Conservatives Let Stand Tennessee's Ban on Gender-Affirming Care for Youth

Photo via stanford.edu

A Stanford sophomore was killed over the weekend in a collision while riding an electronic bicycle on the school's campus.

The collision happened in the wee hours of Saturday, May 31, at 2:57 am, when Stanford student Aradshar Chaddar was riding an e-bike at the intersection of Palm Drive and Arboretum Road. Chaddar was allegedly struck by a Honda Accord, which was towed from the scene, as the Stanford Daily reports.

Chaddar was born in Maryland but grew up in a rural village, Chak Mano, in Punjab, Pakistan, per the Stanford Daily, and he contributed to the campus paper in his freshman year. He was president of the Stanford Democrats, and was also a member of co-ed business fraternity Alpha Kappa Psi, and the Pre-Law Society.

As NBC Bay Area reports, Chaddar arrived at Stanford from Pakistan in the fall of 2023.

The university's Vice Provost for Student Affairs Michele Rasmussen put out a statement Monday saying, "The circumstances of this tragic incident are currently under investigation by the California Highway Patrol."

"His family has been notified and we will be doing everything possible to support them in the days and weeks ahead," Rasmussen writes. "We hold Aradshar’s friends, residential community, professors, and loved ones in our thoughts as they process this very sad news."

Photo by daybreakwithray

A new COVID variant just dropped, one which has apparently wrought a fair amount of sickness in China, and researchers say it’s already been in California for a month. We’ll see how the new anti-vaxx leaders in Washington, DC handle this one.

We didn’t think we’d be writing these “new COVID variant” kinds of stories anymore, but with Trump back in power, perhaps this was inevitable. The Chronicle reports on a new COVID variant currently called NB.1.8.1, which that paper reports has been “a driving force behind a major surge in cases across China.”

And to make things a little more worrisome, that same Chronicle report says that the variant has been detected in California. In fact, it's already been here for more than a month. Stanford Clinical Virology Laboratory researchers now say the state’s first confirmed infection of what we now know as the new variant was documented in April 17.

CBS News first reported on the new variant being in California late last week. At the time, the CDC said in a statement to CBS News, “CDC is aware of reported cases of COVID-19 NB.1.8.1 in China and is in regular contact with international partners.”

Notably, that statement does not acknowledge the variant’s presence in the US.

But infectious disease experts are acknowledging its presence. "It's been reported in Europe and it's been reported here in the US and we've seen it here in our wastewater in California, so it's around," UC Berkeley vaccinology professor Dr. John Swartzberg told KGO.

Whatever possible threat may or may not be emerging here is now under the jurisdiction of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy, Jr, who has absolutely no background in medicine whatsoever. Kennedy is decidedly against vaccines and public health protections, and has recently been restricting vaccine access.

The new variant has been reported not only in California, but also Hawaii, New York, Ohio, Rhode Island, Virginia, and Washington.

Oh, and this news arrives right after Memorial Day Weekend, when in the past we have seen summer COVID surges begin.

UC Berkeley epidemiology professor Dr. Arthur Reingold told KGO, "Come the fall and next winter, respiratory season if you will, that we will see a resurgence, more people getting infected with the circulating variant, more people hospitalized and more people dying.”

Related: Five Years Later, Oakland High School Grads Reflect on How COVID Wrecked Their High School Years [SFist]

Image: COVID-19 new mutation variant Pirola (BA.2.86) - 3d rendered image. Pandemic wave. Viral Infection concept. Concept image for Delta, Omicron (B.1.1.529), Centaurus (B.1.1.529.2.75) (BA.2.75), Aeterna (BA.4.6) variant. Sars-cov-2, 2019-nCoV, Coronavirus. Antibody, Antigen, stealth, Vaccine technology concept. B117 - COVID-19 Variant, SARS-CoV-2 BA.2 Variant, SARS-CoV-2 BA.5 Variant, SARS-CoV-2 Omicron Variant, SaRS-CoV-2 Deltacron Variant

• Following recent deaths and multiple rescues, San Francisco officials are urging visitors to avoid entering the water at Ocean Beach this Memorial Day weekend. Instead, how about heading to the much more gentle bay side of the water, such as Aquatic Park or Crane Cove Park. [KQED]
• About 20 Stanford students are on the 11th day of a hunger strike, demanding the university cut ties with companies linked to Israel’s actions in Gaza. Protesters also want looser protest rules, dropped charges, and a stronger stance from school leaders. [SFGate]
• YouTube has hired longtime Disney executive Justin Connolly as its global head of media and sports, prompting Disney to sue YouTube for breach of contract and interference, seeking to block the appointment. [Bloomberg]
• A San Francisco boy with a rare bone marrow disease has been on the donor waitlist for over a year, facing challenges finding a match due to his Chinese and Vietnamese heritage. [NBC Bay Area]

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• The Southern California portion of Pacific Coast Highway reopened Friday morning for the first time since the January Palisades Fire, restoring a key route between Malibu and Pacific Palisades. [Chronicle]
• Just an adorable family of three enjoying their beers at the Giants game. [@SFGiantsFaithful]

National:

• At least 12 people were injured, including three critically, in a stabbing attack at a Hamburg train station, where a 39-year-old woman suspect was arrested. Authorities say she likely acted alone and may have been in mental distress. [ABC7]
• Boeing has reached a $1.1 billion deal with the Justice Department to avoid prosecution over two deadly 737 Max crashes in 2018 and 2019 that killed 346 people. While the agreement includes $445 million in victim compensation and safety reforms, families who have spent years demanding a public trial and harsher accountability strongly oppose the deal. [CBS News]
• More than 100 National Security Council staffers — including both career officials and Trump-era political appointees — were abruptly placed on administrative leave Friday after an email from NSC chief of staff Brian McCormack gave them 30 minutes to clear out their desks as part of a controversial restructuring led by interim adviser Marco Rubio. [Yahoo News]
• NOAA predicts an above-average Atlantic hurricane season beginning June 1, with 13–19 named storms and up to five major hurricanes, driven by unusually warm ocean temperatures and intensified monsoon activity. [NBC News]

Video of the Day:

• Watch rare footage from Sesame Street’s first-ever national tour with a stop in Golden Gate Park where Big Bird and the gang performed for 15,000 fans in what was called a “Preschooler’s Woodstock.”

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Still Making Weekend Plans?

In case you missed it, SFist let you know about the Chinatown Pride event as well as Saturday’s line-up at Yerba Buena Gardens. Here are a couple more big events happening this weekend.

• Carnaval San Francisco, Afro Mundo: Celebrate the African diaspora in the Americas with a weekend of music, dance, and food. Saturday–Sunday, May 24–25 | 11 AM–6 PM | Mission District, SF | Free
• SF Queer Art & Music Festival: Nine-day celebration across the Tenderloin featuring DJs, drag, and visual art. May 23–31 | Various venues, SF
• Crucial Reggae Sundays: Relax with live reggae music in Golden Gate Park's Music Concourse. Sunday, May 25 | 4:20–7:30 PM | Golden Gate Park, SF | Free

Image: Aquatic Park; Leanne Maxwell/SFist

The once-mighty Stanford football program just fired its coach amid a four-season tailspin, and some are clamoring for star quarterback Andrew Luck, who’s been recently hired to run the football program from an administrative standpoint.

You’d be forgiven for forgetting there was even a Stanford football team anymore, considering they’ve only won a mere three games in each of the last four seasons, and “the Calgorithm” has emerged as the trendy new Bay Area college football sensation.  

So if you had not noticed, current Stanford football Troy Taylor has been embroiled in a bullying scandal for the last week or so, with ESPN reporting that Taylor had made "inappropriate" remarks about women staffers’ appearances. And after a week of twisting in the wind, Taylor was fired Tuesday morning, according to the SF Chronicle.

And who did the firing? Former star Stanford quarterback and two-time Heisman Trophy runner-up Andrew Luck, now retired from the NFL and serving as the Stanford football program’s general manager.

And like many Stanford alums, the Chronicle’s Susan Slusser is calling for Andrew Luck to just hire himself as coach. He probably couldn’t do any worse!

It should be noted that March is hardly an ideal time to be starting your coaching search, all of the good candidates were already scooped up by late January. There’s been some talk the Cardinal could hire a one-and-done interim coach for a single season, or possibly an NFL position coach who’d just be happy to have a head coaching position.

So there is a leadership void on the Stanford football team, but really, there’s a leadership void at Stanford right now that goes beyond the football program. Stanford athletic director Bernard Muir stepped down last month, and that position is currently unfilled. Meanwhile, Stanford president Jonathan Levin has been on the job only six months, landing the position after an academic research scandal rocked the school.

So other than Andrew Luck, there just aren’t any credible names associated with Stanford anymore. It’s a far cry for the days when the school and football program boasted Luck, Christian McCaffrey, and Richard Sherman.  

Related: ESPN’s ‘College GameDay’ Coming to Berkeley Saturday for Big Cal Game [SFist]

PALO ALTO, CA - SEPTEMBER 7: Stanford Cardinal Head Coach Troy Taylor (white cap) leaves the field with his team at half time of an NCAA college football game against the Cal Poly Mustangs on September 7, 2024 at Stanford Stadium in Palo Alto, California. (Photo by David Madison/Getty Images)

A big blow to kids who hoped their family connections would get them into a prestigious college could be coming as one of Assemblymember Phil Ting’s last bills on his way out of office would ban legacy admissions at universities statewide.

When the conservative-majority US Supreme Court shot down affirmative action at colleges and universities last June, one unexpected backlash to that decision was a push to ban legacy admissions at those universities as well. Legacy admissions are sort of the opposite of affirmative action, as they’re college admissions that give a leg up to students who have parents or grandparents who are alumni of that university. The obvious ploy for the university is that those parents and grandparents tend to be wealthy, and therefore more likely to make financial contributions to the school, while the students that benefit from legacy admissions tend to be white and wealthy.

Several universities nationwide have since banned legacy admissions, and the states Colorado and Virginia have also outlawed legacy admissions at public universities. Maryland has banned legacy admissions at both public and private colleges. And now the New York Times reports that our own state Assemblymember Phil Ting has a bill in the state legislature that would ban legacy admission at California’s private universities.

California’s public universities already do not allow legacy admissions.

“It makes complete sense to now ensure that we don’t look at someone’s wealth or lineage with the university to decide whether to admit them,” Ting told the Times. He said his bill “doesn’t ban admitting donors’ or alumni children,” but “it just ensures that there’s no preferential treatment.”

It will probably not come as a shocker to you that the two California private universities with the largest percentages of legacy admission students are Stanford and USC, both with 14% of their incoming student bodies being legacy admitted, according to the most recent year’s data. The University of Santa Clara was not far behind at 13%.

Ting’s bill AB 1780 has already passed the state Assembly 55-0, and is currently in state Senate committees. The measure would have to pass the state Senate by August 31, and be signed by Governor Newsom, to become law.

Phil Ting, of course, is in the final months of his state Assembly term. He’ll be termed out at the end of this year, and SF Supervisor Catherine Stefani is running to be his successor.

Related: Affirmative Action Decision at Supreme Court Will Likely Mean Less Diversity at California's Private Universities [SFist]

Image: Palo Alto, CA, USA - Sept. 17, 2015: Stanford University Hoover Tower. Completed in 1941, the 50th year of Stanford University's anniversary, the tower was inspired by the cathedral tower in Salamanca, Spain. (Getty Images)

Photo: Ashim D'Silva

Image: LAS VEGAS, NEVADA - MARCH 08: Cameron Brink #22 of the Stanford Cardinal celebrates a play against the Oregon State Beavers in the second half of a semifinal game of the Pac-12 Conference women's basketball tournament at MGM Grand Garden Arena on March 08, 2024 in Las Vegas, Nevada. The Cardinal defeated the Beavers 66-57. (Photo by Candice Ward/Getty Images)

Stanford women’s basketball coach Tara VanDerveer overtook former Duke men’s basketball coach Mike “Coach K” Krzyzewski on the all-time wins list Sunday night, as VanDerveer’s 1,203 wins make her the all-time winningest coach in the college game.

As we noted back in August, after the PAC-12 athletic conference collapsed and Stanford and Cal signed up to join the Atlantic Coast Conference, the move may end up being most significant in the once-obscure but now increasingly popular sport of women’s basketball. After all, the Stanford women's basketball program has been a powerhouse program since the early 1980s, while over in the ACC, the Notre Dame women’s team is historically similarly elite, setting up what may be one of the new great rivalries of the game.

Since 1990, the Stanford women’s team has won three national titles, and made it to the March Madness tournament’s Sweet 16 twenty-three times. The Stanford Cardinal women’s team has now made the March Madness tournament an astonishing 34 years in a row, the only exception being the COVID year of 2020, when there was no tournament. And their coach for that while time has been Tara VanDerveer, who with Sunday night’s win, became the all-time winningest coach in college basketball history, as ESPN reports.

VanDerveer now has 1,203 career wins, passing former Duke men’s basketball coach Mike “Coach K” Krzyzewski on the all-time list.

Sunday night’s game was a fairly routine 65-56 win over Oregon State at Stanford’s Maples Pavilion, though one capped off with a star player Cameron Brink dousing Vanderveer with a Gatorade jug full of confetti. The pavilion then showed a celebrity-studded video address from Coach K, Warriors coach Steve Kerr, Billie Jean King, and others, seen below.

“I want to bring attention to the beauty of women’s basketball,” Vanderveer said after the game. "I'm so jealous because I never got to do what they get to do. but I'm able to watch a little girl's dream play out through them."

"I never got to do it,” she added. “But I get to watch it. I’ve got the best seat in the house and I love it.”

The 70-year-old VanDerveer first coached Idaho from 1978-1980, Ohio State from 1980-1985, and was hired by Stanford in 1985. While she’s the all-time wins champion now, it should be noted that UConn women's coach Geno Auriemma is only seven wins behind her, so the two may trade the all-time wins title for years to come.

Related: The Deep Roots and Family Ties Between Stanford Basketball Star Cameron Brink and Stephen Curry [SFist]

Image: PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA - JANUARY 21: Head coach Tara VanDerveer of the Stanford Cardinal celebrates with her player Cameron Brink #22 after Stanford defeated the Oregon State Beavers 65-56 at Stanford Maples Pavilion on January 21, 2024 in Palo Alto, California. Tara VanDerveer recorded her 1,203 NCAA career victory passing Mike Krzyzewski with 1,202 NCAA career wins. (Photo by Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images)

After a Muslim student was injured in a hit-and-run on the Stanford campus last Friday, the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office has released a suspect sketch and a vehicle description in the incident they’re calling a hate crime.

We learned last weekend that a Muslim student of Syrian descent was injured in an apparent targeted hit-and-run at at Campus Drive and Ayrshire Farm Lane last Friday afternoon, with the driver yelling “Fuck you and your people” as he fled the scene. A late Thursday night report from KGO identified the victim as Abdulwahab Omira. That report picked up a Thursday statement from the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office calling the incident “a hate crime,” as the victim says he was targeted for wearing a shirt that said “Damascus” in Arabic.

KTVU adds that the sheriff's office report also contained a sketch of the suspect and vehicle description, both of which are seen above. The suspect is described as an unshaven white male in his mid-20s, with round glasses and wearing a gray top at the time of the incident last Friday.

We should note that the car pictured is not the car used in the attack, it’s just the same make, model, and color. The Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office describes the vehicle as a “ a black Toyota SUV with a tire mounted on the rear of the vehicle,” and notes there would likely be damage to the passenger-side front bumper from this collision. The Chronicle’s report on the incident adds that the vehicle is a “black Toyota 4Runner, 2015 or newer, with California plates,” and that the tire mounted on the rear of the vehicle has a Toyota logo.  

According to KRON4, the victim Omira was taken to Stanford Hospital and treated for non-life-threatening injuries. KGO is reporting that Omira had been active in protests over the Israel-Hamas conflict “for about three weeks.”

NBC News got a statement from Omira this past weekend.  “As I lay in my hospital bed, grappling with a reality I had never imagined, I reflect on the importance of spreading love, kindness, and compassion in a world that seems to be steadily succumbing to hatred and prejudice,” he said. “This ordeal has solidified my resolve to advocate for love, understanding, and inclusivity.”

Anyone with information on the incident is asked to call the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office at (408) 808-4500, or the Sheriff’s Office Investigative Services anonymous tip line at (408) 808-4431.

Related: Arab-Muslim Stanford Student Injured in Apparent Targeted Hit-and-Run, Prompting Hate Crime Investigation [SFist]

Image: Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office

The Cal Bears and Stanford Cardinal just Transfer Portaled themselves to the Atlantic Coast Conference, effective in 2024, which was the best outcome possible for the two schools as the PAC-12 has turned into a dying husk over the last month.

Get ready for the geographic whuuuut? of prestigious Bay Area colleges UC Berkeley and Stanford playing their athletic program games in the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC). But as weird as that seems, it’s frankly a huge victory that Cal and Stanford have officially been added to the ACC, in an early Friday morning vote by the schools in that conference, according to the Chronicle.

This is an excellent soft landing for the two Bay Area college programs, after a tumultuous, existential-crisis month when Arizona, Arizona State, Oregon, Utah, and Washington all bolted from the PAC-12 on the same day. That left the PAC-12 a complete non-entity, with only four schools remaining. And with this announcement, the two Bay Area schools are leaving for another conference, too.

In the same Friday morning vote, the ACC also added Southern Methodist University (SMU). The ACC will become a mega-conference consisting of 18 teams, though just 17 in football, beginning with next year’s 2024-25 athletic seasons.

This almost feels like a billion-dollar bailout for Stanford and Cal, as their only other options were about as appealing as a styrofoam cup of someone else’s tobacco spit. They could have joined the far lesser conferences Mountain West or American Athletic Conference (AAC), they could have tried to rebuild a new PAC-12 stocked with much lower-profile teams, or they could have gone independent, which only works for a massive powerhouse program like Notre Dame.

Stanford and Cal now thankfully remain in a Power 5 conference, the elite set of top-earning, most watched conferences that includes the Big Ten, Big 12, and Southeastern Conference (SEC). Of course, the Power 5 is now a “Power 4” with the imminent vaporizing of the PAC-12, but these numbers don’t even mean anything anymore. The Big Ten now has 14 teams, the Big 12 also has 14.

The move is a gigantic financial lifeline for UC Berkeley and Stanford, both of whose athletic programs were experiencing massive financial difficulties. And as ESPN’s sources report from behind the scenes, the two schools reportedly had to surrender significant percentages of TV money revenue sharing to get the deal done.

“Cal and Stanford will each start out receiving just a 30% share of ACC payouts,” according to ESPN. “For Stanford and Cal, it will be 30% of a whole ACC share for the next seven years. That number will jump to 70% in Year 8, 75% in Year 9 and then full financial shares in the 10th year, per sources.”

You think that sounds like a bad deal? SMU, a small program that was desperate to get into the big leagues, will get 0% of the TV revenue for the first  nine years of this deal, per ESPN.

This head-spinning realignment all started with USC and UCLA leaving the PAC-12 for the Big Ten (which will become 16 teams when they join next season). Welcome to a new, huge-money, legal gambling era when geography, and the numbers in the conference name, are completely meaningless.

Boy would I love to explain how this new ACC is going to work, but I cannot, because they don’t even know yet. (At the end of this post, I will at least bullet-point all of the teams in Stanford and Cal’s new ACC conference, and it's a good bet some of those teams will also switch conferences for "greener" pastures.)

In all likelihood, the new ACC will probably be split into two sub-conferences, something along the lines of “ACC East” and “ACC West.” The ACC will become an 18-school conference, but only 17 in football, as member school Notre Dame plays independently in football. Cal and Stanford will now have the utterly despicable Duke program in their conference, so that sure becomes relevant when we get to basketball season.

This underlies the crucial problems here. While all the discussion of this matter is about men’s college football, no one’s talking about the implications for, say, the mighty Stanford women’s basketball and volleyball teams. You can laugh that off as a minor concern if you want, but those two women’s sports are quietly enjoying massive popular growth. Plus there are wrestlers, lacrosse players, tennis players, et cetera unwillingly being thrown into corporate America's pursuit of cash.

There are mind-boggling travel logistics with teams in the same conference playing regular season games at schools as much as 3,000 miles away, multiple times per season. That’s certainly going to affect performance. And it sure feels like students are getting the shit end of the stick here, because what kind of college kid is going to buy cross-country airline tickets to watch a crucial road game.

Oh, and as a complete afterthought, the college football season starts tomorrow! Stanford and Cal will still be in the traditional PAC-12 this season. But after this season, everything blows up, in an explosion of money, gambling, perhaps lawsuits, and probably some scandals that make it clear this is no longer just a game.

The New York Times details the college sports insanity on the horizon starting next season. First, the College Football Playoffs will expand from four teams to twelve. (That’s a great move, many of us have been clamoring for this for years.) But as the billion-dollar TV deals get more staggering, and these athletes are not paid a penny, the National Labor Relations  Board is considering classifying the students as employees who deserve benefits. Add to this mix the role of the explosive growth of legal gambling, and golly, you think there are going to be any game-fixing or point-shaving scandals?

But at least for Stanford and Cal, the move to the ACC puts them in a far better position to prosper in this lucrative and arguably more corrupt new landscape. The new ACC they will join next season will consist of the following teams:

• Cal (UC Berkeley)
• Stanford
• Boston College
• Clemson
• Duke
• Florida State
• Georgia Tech
• Louisville
• Miami
• North Carolina  State
• Notre Dame (But not in football)
• Pittsburgh
• Syracuse
• University of North Carolina
• Virginia
• Virginia Tech
• Wake Forest

Related: End of an Era? Pac-12 Faces An Unprecedented Exodus As 5 Schools Leave in One Day [SFist]

Image: PALO ALTO, CA - NOVEMBER 23: Members of the University of California Rally Committee carry the Stanford Axe at the end of the 122nd Big Game between the Stanford Cardinal and the California Golden Bears played on November 23, 2019 at Stanford Stadium in Palo Alto, California. The Stanford Axe is awarded annually to the winning school. (Photo by David Madison/Getty Images)