Here's a cool opportunity for any women's volleyball fans -- or anyone who likes to fill out brackets to potentially win free stuff, actually. Northwestern Mutual is sponsoring a Bracket Contest for the 2012 Women's Volleyball Championships, which start Friday. You could win a $500 gift card to the NCAA Shop, which you could then use to purchase six of these. The deadline to enter is Thursday at 12:30 p.m. ET. Stanford, which earned the No. 2 overall seed, hosts Jackson State on Friday at 8 p.m..

Centennial (Las Vegas) High School twins Marcus and Malcolm Allen (no relation to yours truly) verbally committed to Stanford this weekend. Marcus, a shooting guard, and Malcolm, a point guard, are both rated as three-star recruits by Rivals. Their mother was a gymnast at Stanford.

The Rice MOB (Marching Owl Band) took some shots at USC during halftime of last night's loss to UCLA.

Stepfan Taylor, Chase Thomas, Zach Ertz and Shayne Skov are all represented in the 12th edition of Kirk Herbstreit's Herbie Awards.