Warszawski: Sports a woman’s world — at last

Enter the Warzone, woofing at the dog days of summer.

▪ The biggest star in mixed martial arts (Ronda Rousey) is a woman. There are suddenly two female NBA assistant coaches (Becky Hammon and Nancy Lieberman), one in the NFL (Jen Welter) and one calling preseason play-by-play for the Raiders (Beth Mowins).

All of which raises a very important question: What took so long?

▪ Rousey will reportedly star in and produce a biopic about her life.

Working title: Foregone in 30 Seconds.

▪ Last week Fresno State hired Franklin Alegria as senior associate athletics director for external development.

Money tree, meet your new shaker.

▪ Alegria comes to the Bulldogs after spending the past six years raising money for Oregon.

Which, believe it or not, entails more than picking up the phone and asking Phil Knight to look behind his couch cushions for loose change.

▪ The cover photo on Alegria’s Twitter page is a rendering of what Bulldog Stadium will look like in the future.

Err, what it might look like. No money, no upgrades.

▪ Just as Fresno State gets ready to install a 66-foot wide by 24-foot tall video scoreboard (total cost $892,000), Auburn unveils one that measures 190 by 57 and cost $13.9 million.

For that kind of cash, Auburn could buy three Cam Newtons.

▪ The Bulldogs open fall camp without an established starting quarterback, which puts them on par with just about every other Mountain West Conference school.

Except most of them have a pretty good idea who it will be. Fresno State is a four-way crapshoot.

▪ Here’s what Raiders GM Reggie McKenzie said about Derek Carr during his first media sitdown of training camp: “I don’t want to put all the pressure on him, but we’re looking for big things.”

In other words, win or my butt is toast.

▪ So far the receiving corps has been the talk of Raiders camp. Unlike last year, when McKenzie forgot to draft or sign any.

▪ Still skeptical of Jim Tomsula, but if the 49ers can actually snap the football before the play clock expires it’ll be a sign of progress.

▪ For better or worse, the 49ers this season are Colin Kaepernick’s team. Someone had better let Kapernick know. If they can pry those headphones off his ears for a moment.

▪ Mike Leake was enjoying a perfectly fine Giants debut. Until that pitch to Josh Hamilton leaked over the plate ...

▪ There were rumors the Red Sox tried to trade Pablo Sandoval to the Padres, but the deal collapsed under its own weight.

▪ James Harden has reportedly been offered $200 million to switch sneaker allegiances from Nike to Adidas.

Those underage girls in Southeast Asia better start sewing faster.

▪ Yosemite has many fine rangers. None of them finer than Jesse McGahey, the park’s search and rescue coordinator.

And not just because McGahey rescued some dummy who locked his keys inside his truck Thursday evening in front of the Tuolumne Meadows store.

▪ Before using an air wedge to pry open the truck door, McGahey ran our driver’s license through dispatch.

Must’ve come back clean, or we’d still be standing out there.

▪ Not sure what the appropriate punishment for a teenager who plays with a lighter and starts a 5,600-acre blaze, but it ought to be something stronger than a finger wag.

▪ For no particular reason: Jair Jurrjens

▪ The late, great pro wrestler Roddy Piper earned the nickname “Rowdy” long before an infamous night in Fresno back in 1986. But that body slammed it.

▪ Juan Olave, a goalkeeper in Argentina’s Premier Division, took two bites from a cheeseburger that was thrown at him during a match.

No word if the beef was grass-fed or merely grass-stained.

This story was originally published August 3, 2015 at 5:45 PM with the headline "Warszawski: Sports a woman’s world — at last."