BRIEFLY : HOLMOE TO SUCCEED MARIUCCI AT CAL.

Moving quickly to fill the vacancy left by Steve Mariucci's departure for the San Francisco 49ers, California promoted his defensive coordinator, Tom Holmoe, to head coach on Saturday.

Holmoe, 36, a former NFL defensive back who played on three Super Bowl-winning teams with the 49ers, is Cal's fourth coach in six years. It is his first head-coaching assignment.

Mariucci resigned Thursday after leading the Golden Bears to 6-6 record in his only season at the school before moving to the 49ers, replacing George Seifert.

Meanwhile, Cal quarterback Pat Barnes threw for three touchdowns in the second quarter to lead the North to a 35-14 victory over the South in the Senior Bowl in Mobile, Ala.

Barnes led the North to touchdowns on three of the four drives he directed and made a good case to NFL scouts to join his old coach, Mariucci, in the pros next year.

BASEBALL

The Los Angeles City Council wants the Dodgers to go public. The Twins want to give the state of Minnesota 49 percent of the team's stock in exchange for stadium funding.

After a century and a quarter of privately held teams, some baseball owners are thinking about selling stock.

``It's going to be considered,'' said Chicago White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf, who's meeting this week in Scottsdale, Ariz., with other owners. ``I'm sure there will be a lot of discussion,'' said Reinsdorf.

OLYMPICS

The United States Olympic Committee will vote next month whether to pursue a bid for a third Summer Games in 24 years or to wait until at least 2012 to go again.

The committee's governing executive panel, meeting in Colorado Springs, discussed the possibility of bidding for the Games in 2008 and decided to place the issue on the agenda for the full board of directors meeting in Philadelphia on Feb. 15-16.

WINTER SPORTS

Austrian cousins Tobias and Markus Schiegl won their second straight world championship in luge doubles in Igls, Austria.

They had a total time of 1 minute, 19.732 seconds for the two heats, including a track record opening leg of 39.822 seconds.

Susi Erdmann of Germany, runner-up the past two years, won the women's singles title in 1:19.931.

In Whistler, B.C., Thony Hemery of France won a men's World Cup dual moguls event, getting a big lift when Olympic champion Jean-Luc Brassard was disqualified for a false start.

In Lahti, Finland, Marit Mikkelsplass of Norway won her first World Cup cross country event, and Jelena Valbe of Russia, a four-time series champion, overtook Stefania Belmondo of Italy in the overall standings.

Italy's Deborah Compagnoni, the reigning Olympic and world champion in the slalom rallied to beat Austrian Anita Wachter, who led Compagnoni by four-hundredths of a second after the first run. But Compagnoni sped through 45 gates on the icy Nordhang course for the fastest time in the second, winning the race by nearly a second.

In Wengen, Switzerland, Kristian Ghedina defeated Luc Alphand for his third downhill victory of the season, speeding down the sun-drenched 2.6-mile Lauberhorn in a record time of 2 minutes, 24.23 seconds.

ETC.

Organizers of a round-the-world solo yacht race confirmed that a brief voice transmission 48 hours earlier came from a Canadian sailor missing for 11 days.

Philippe Jeantot, a spokesman for the Vendee Globe race, said it was sailor Gerry Roufs who spoke for a few seconds by radio Thursday with the Chilean navy before the signal faded out. Roufs might be hampered by weak batteries powering his radio.

Chilean navy planes searched throughout the day Friday but failed to spot the missing yacht. A navy official said the search resumed Saturday.

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Photo: HOLMOE