NEW YORK -- Renee Brown has been at the WNBA since its inception. Twenty years after joining the league, the WNBAs chief of basketball operations and player relations is stepping down this month.Its probably one of the most difficult decisions I made in my life, Brown told The Associated Press in a phone interview Monday. I love the WNBA, and was fortunate 20 years ago that Val (Ackerman), David (Stern), Russ (Granik) and Adam (Silver) allowed me to come in at the start of this league. Walking away, its sad but yet joyful at the same time.Brown is one of a handful of people still involved in the league since its beginning in 1997.Twenty years in, people didnt think wed be here, Brown said. I knew we would be. Its been fun watching the talent grow. I think the WNBA has been in great shape from the minute we came here. A lot to do with what the NBA gives the WNBA. From the beginning, I was very confident once the NBA allowed us to put the W in front of its name, wed be well taken care of.In her current role and through her work with the WNBAs competition committee, Brown has directly influenced how the game is played. This past season, teams set records for points per game, field goals made and attempted, field goal percentage, free throws made, free throw percentage and assists.Brown has also been involved with USA Basketball since 1996. She has served on its board of directors and chaired the selection committee of the senior national team.Renee has selflessly served USA Basketball as a coach, committee member and passionate supporter, said Carol Callan, director of womens basketball for USA Basketball. She first served as an assistant coach during the historic 1995-96 USA national team yearlong preparation for the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta.The U.S. hasnt lost in the Olympics since Brown got involved, winning six consecutive gold medals.Any time I put on a USA T-shirt or a sweatshirt, I put it on with so much pride recognizing were all representing our country, she said.Brown said she let WNBA President Lisa Borders know of her decision at the start of this season.Renees contributions to the WNBAs growth have been immeasurable, Borders said. It has been a pleasure working alongside her during this landmark season and I will continue to rely on her expertise. She will always be part of the WNBA family.Brown said she will continue to be involved in basketball, joining the Jr. NBA Leadership Council. The Nevada native plans to stay in New York for now.My goal is to stay in New York and look for other opportunities involved in the game, sports or women empowerment, Brown said. Take the skills Ive learned here and use them somewhere else. Its an exciting time for me. I thought Id be here three to four years. Twenty years later, Im here and its been great. Im looking forward to my next journey. Adidas Shoes Australia Cheap . -- Los Angeles Lakers guard Jordan Farmar will be out for roughly four weeks after tearing his left hamstring. Buy Adidas Shoes Australia . Thousands of Southern California fans enveloped the Trojans to celebrate an improbable win secured by an interim coach, an inconsistent kicker and a thin defence that wouldnt break. http://www.cheapadidasaustraliashoes.com/ . A forerunning sled crashed into the worker Thursday at the Sanki Sliding Center. The unidentified worker broke both legs and was airlifted to a nearby hospital. Cheap Adidas Shoes Online . Meanwhile, there were huge victories for Sunderland and West Ham over fellow relegation rivals, leaving the battle to avoid the drop up for grabs with the bottom 11 teams separated by just six points. Eden Hazard and Fernando Torres scored second-half goals to seal a fourth straight victory for Chelsea, which climbed above Arsenal and Manchester City in the standings ahead of their games on Monday and Sunday respectively. Adidas Shoes Australia Sale .com) - Yankee Stadium is the home of the Bronx Bombers, but on Sunday afternoon it will open its gates to host the latest addition of the Hudson River Rivalry. Nothing stamps a college football program with an identity more than how its administrators handle hirings and firings. What LSU, Texas and Oregon said about themselves in the past week speaks volumes, and not in flattering tones.At LSU, public support and the wishes of the locker room dictated the decision of the administration to hire a coach.At Texas, public support and the wishes of the locker room failed to sway the decision of the administration to fire a coach.And at Oregon, where loyalty has been prized for more than three decades, the administration took the final, graceless step to illustrate that it no longer wants to be the Little School That Could. The Ducks no longer do it their own way. They acted just like everyone else does in this win-now world.Laissez les bon temps rouler in Baton Rouge. Ed Orgeron got the job, and we all know how well the Peoples Choice worked out for LSU a year ago. Public demand extended the LSU career of Les Miles for an entire four games into this season. Thats when the ardor of the fan base cooled enough for the administration to extract him without burning itself.Coach O is the new Peoples Choice, and he has made residents of Louisiana feel good again, being one of their own, with that Cajun-dipped voice somewhere between a growl and a diesel engine.That warm feeling well may last beyond four games into next season. But it is apparent that LSU hired Orgeron without regard for history -- his own, and the rest of major college footballs since the 1960s.Its entirely possible Ive missed someone. But Ive identified only 19 Power 5 schools in the past 50 years that hired a head coach who had been fired or forced out by another Power 5 school. Of those 19 coaches, one won a national championship. One won a conference championship. They are the same man, Gene Stallings, in the same season, 1992, at Alabama. Thats it.Only one coach won more than one division championship at his second-chance school. Yep, Stallings, who won four SEC West titles in seven seasons with the Crimson Tide.Only five of the 19 have or had a higher winning percentage at their second-chance school than the one that fired them. Only two of them finished with a winning record at the second school: Stallings and Paul Hackett, who went 19-18 in three seasons at USC and was fired for, yep, not winning enough.To be fair, the late Dennis Green turned around Stanford in three seasons before he left for the NFL, and Mike Leach has done the same in five seasons at Washington State. But LSU isnt asking Orgeron to win. Hell, Miles was winning. LSU expects Orgeron to win championships.And the majority of schools who hired these second-chance coaches are the schools that never win championships. But that just supports the point that LSU has colored outside the lines here. They didnt go out and hire a proven winner, the way that schools in the upper echelon of college football typically do.LSU expects Orgeron not to be the same coach who went 10-25 at Ole Miss from 2005 to 07. The Tigers want the Orgeron who went 6-2 as an interim coach at USC in 2013 and the Orgeron who went 5-2 this season. Although if he loses to rivals as he did with the Trojans (Notre Dame and UCLA) and this season with the Tigers (Alabama and Floridaa), they wont want Orgeron for long.ddddddddddddMaybe Orgeron will be another Stallings, who entered into the perfect second marriage of coach and school. Stallings had been fired by Texas A&M in 1971, and fired again by the Phoenix Cardinals only weeks before Alabama hired him.If Orgeron cant win championships, he will discover that support among the fans and in the locker room is a foundation of Kleenex. All he need do is look west to Austin to Charlie Strong, a warm, compassionate man in a sport that is neither.Its hard to recall a coach who won over the public and the players without winning games in the way that Strong did. They wanted him to succeed, even as he went 16-21 in three seasons. If Texas had announced that Strong would coach the Longhorns in 2017, the public would have supported the decision.It may have been the force of Strongs personality, unfailingly polite and positive and straightforward as the Longhorns continued to disappoint.The Longhorns may have been young. They may have been tight, desperate to play well to save their coach. But what they were not in the last month of the season was very good. They couldnt shed blocks. They missed tackles. They couldnt create space at the goal line for DOnta Foreman, the biggest, most prolific running back in the FBS this season.Strong failed to hire the right assistants, judging by the way he kept replacing them. As much as Texas and its Orangebloods wanted Strong to succeed, Texas couldnt give Strong another chance. It couldnt, because its Texas.Texas loves saying, Were Texas, as if that means something in college football. What it means over the past 46 seasons is a school with the same number of national championships as BYU and Georgia Tech.In the end, Strong won some, but not enough. That will get him a second chance, perhaps even at a Power 5 school. So will Mark Helfrich, whose firing by Oregon on Tuesday night signaled the end of an era.Loyalty at Oregon not only has been a virtue but a trumpeted virtue. The university has been proud of how it treats its coaches. Rich Brooks won two games in his fifth season with the Ducks. He won two games in his sixth season. Brooks took Oregon to the Rose Bowl in his 18th season.Five assistants on the Oregon staff have been there at least 10 seasons, three for more than 20. We are different, Oregon said. We found good people and we stuck with them and look what it has done for us.Only Oregon didnt stick with Helfrich. Two years ago, Helfrich led the Ducks to the College Football Playoff National Championship game. Yes, the defense has stunk in the past two years, and this year the offense didnt play well enough to cover for it. Yes, Oregon lost the Civil War for the first time since 2007. Yes, the fans ended a 110-game sellout streak.So when times got tough, Oregon bailed on Helfrich. It chose the big-hitters way. Oregon threw money at the problem. It will pay Helfrich $11.6 million to take a hike. Thats not who Oregon has been. But thats who Oregon thinks it is now. The Ducks lost a head coach, and they lost their identity. That just may be harder to recover from than going 4-8. ' ' '