Janie McCauley

SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- Quarterback Alex Smith signed a three-year deal Wednesday with the San Francisco 49ers that will pay him $8 million per season with $16.5 million guaranteed.

BERKELEY, Calif. -- First-year California women's basketball coach Lindsay Gottlieb gathers her staff in a conference room for a weekly "High Performance" meeting and welcomes the team's athletic trainer, strength coach, academic adviser and media relations representative.

The philosophy bred by athletic director Sandy Barbour is quite basic: Bring everybody who works with the Golden Bears' student-athletes into one place to maximize communication and ensure the players are getting the most out of their experience, and that Cal is reaping the benefits in performance, too.

DAVIS, Calif.-- Jim Les always thought his son might stay home in Illinois to play college basketball and join him at Bradley. It had become the family fallback plan.

Neither could have envisioned things going the complete opposite -- with father following son some 2,000 miles across the country to UC Davis, where Tyler is a sophomore guard and his dad is the Aggies' first-year coach.

That's just how it has gone for Les during a journeyman career in the NBA and as a coach: He keeps coming full circle.

Les has returned to the Sacramento area, where he became a fan favorite while spending four of his seven NBA seasons with the Kings and later worked as an assistant with the now-defunct WNBA Monarchs.

The 48-year-old Les used to have training camp at UC Davis under then-Kings coach Dick Motta.

OAKLAND, Calif. -- Love it or loathe it, Krazy George Henderson doesn't much care.

"The Wave" cheer he created is still rocking 30 years after he first performed it during the 1981 baseball playoffs.

"The Wave has still been going for 30 years and I still have my incredibly gorgeous good looks," joked the bald, 67-year-old Krazy George, who for decades has made his living as a for-hire cheerleader.

OAKLAND, Calif. -- Athletics general manager Billy Beane expects to hear "very soon" from Commissioner Bud Selig about whether the club will be allowed to move south to San Jose and build a new ballpark.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Ask Bruce Bochy if he has a dip and San Francisco's skipper offers up a standard response: "I don't do that anymore."

Bullpen catcher Bill Hayes answers the same way. Equipment manager Mike Murphy, too.

They've reached this point because of hypnotherapist Dr. AlVera Paxson, who is developing quite the reputation for helping the reigning World Series champion Giants kick some nasty, decades-old habits.