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The Fresno State athletic program has never seen a year like 2007-08.

The school year began in early July 2007 with a Fresno County Superior Court jury returning a multi-million-dollar verdict for former Bulldogs volleyball coach Lindy Vivas in her sex discrimination lawsuit against the university.

It ended in late June with the Bulldogs baseball team stunning the college sports world by winning the national title, then returning to the cheers of more than 11,000 fans at a campus homecoming celebration.

The intervening 50 weeks were filled with two other hard-fought legal battles, athletes' high-profile troubles with the police, the classroom success of hundreds of athletes, a historic conference championship by the women's basketball team, a strong effort by a young softball team, a dramatic turnaround by the football team, major changes to the athletic department's finances, and the university's first Commissioner's Cup signifying the Western Athletic Conference's top overall athletic program.

How to make sense of it all? Impossible.

It's all too big, too fresh, in many ways still too controversial to permit one person to definitively judge 2007-08. Let each follower of Bulldogs athletics decide the year's significance.

Here are 18 observations to provide context. I've followed Fresno State athletics for 50 years. This past year was one of a kind.

Nothing tops the baseball team

The year's top athletic feat? Is there any doubt? The Bulldogs have the best collegiate baseball team in America.

The value is as much in how the Bulldogs did it as that they did it at all. From the bottom of the third inning in the championship round's second game through the third game, Fresno State outscored No. 8 national-seed Georgia 25-6.

To describe the Bulldogs' textbook excellence under the highest pressure as "scrappy" is to damn it with faint praise. Don't be fooled by the four errors in the championship game -- Fresno State won the title because it was the best.

Women hoopsters excel

In any other year, Fresno State's first WAC women's basketball title would be the No. 1 highlight.

On Dec. 5, the same day as closing arguments in the sex discrimination trial of former women's basketball coach Stacy Johnson-Klein, the Bulldogs lost at Loyola Marymount to fall to 0-6.

Two of the Bulldogs' best players -- Tierre Wilson and Erica Henry -- had given heartfelt testimony during the trial. Henry at one point was moved to tears.

But the Bulldogs of coach Adrian Wiggins changed once the trial ended. They won 22 of their next 26 games to make "The Dance" -- the National Collegiate Athletic Association Tournament -- for the first time in school history.

Big stakes in SJK trial

Oakland lawyer Dan Siegel dramatically summed up the significance of the year's three high-profile sex discrimination lawsuits.

He represented the plaintiffs in all three: Vivas, Johnson-Klein and former associate athletic director Diane Milutinovich. Johnson-Klein and Milutinovich also were represented by Fresno lawyer Warren Paboojian.

Minutes before the Johnson-Klein jury returned to Judge Donald S. Black's courtroom on Dec. 6 with its verdict, Siegel swiveled in his chair at the plaintiff's table and surveyed the gallery.

"Equal protection of the laws," Siegel said to no one in particular. They are the final five words to Section 1 of the Constitution's 14th Amendment.

Johnson-Klein sought the laws' protection, saying she had been brutally treated by the university. Many of her former players testified it was they who had been treated brutally by Johnson-Klein, and the university was right to protect them by firing her.



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