I happen to only follow two current UCLA athletes on Twitter, and saw an interesting conversation back and forth today between both of them.  This might happen all the time between different players, but this one seemed telling in several ways. I thought it was worth passing along.

(Sorry, I don't know how to embed Twitter posts the cool way, so this will be a cut-and-paste job; if anyone wants to clean it up, the tweets can be found in the individual players' profiles.)

  BigJoeFauria Joseph Fauria  I think @Brehaut1216 didn't throw to me last week cuz he secretly wanted to get 1k followers b4 I did. Cmon Mu Fasa! #CatchesEqualFollowers9 hours ago 

 Brehaut1216 Richard Brehaut  @  @BigJoeFauria Nertha Grande! You know you're my boy. Was there even one call where you were involved in my read? #Thinkaboutit #GammaSig 9 hours ago 

 BigJoeFauria Joseph Fauria  @  @Brehaut1216 Zero calls for Grande. However I'm about to take it out on some Cardinal. #GammaSig 9 hours ago  

 

Brehaut1216 Richard Brehaut  @  @BigJoeFauria I'm with that! #Shocktheworldtour2011 9 hours ago 

ESPN, ever the paragon of investigative journalism, included a little snippet in an article about Pete Carroll cheering on the Los Angeles Marathon that caught my attention (HT Nestor who "fanshotted" the article earlier today):

Not only did Carroll help the university at the hearing, he also helped when it came to securing USC’s stellar recruiting class, which was rated by some recruiting services as the best in the country. He admitted he assured players on the fence that they were in good hands with Kiffin as well as Carroll’s mentor, Monte Kiffin, Lane’s father and USC’s new defensive coordinator.

“I tried to help [Kiffin] along the way and make sure [this recruiting class] happened,” Carroll said. “All those kids we worked so hard to get, we wanted to support him and give him any insight that he needed, and they did a fine job of finishing up and hitting on a couple of other kids we weren’t on. He really made it a great class.”

First of all, the article uses the word "admit", which makes me suspicious coming from someone I already expect to be trying to bend every rule he can find, and goes on to explain that Carroll had been in contact with more than one Southern Cal commit to extend his support of the new coaching regime.

I'm not entirely familiar with NCAA rules, but if Lane Kiffin was hired well after Carroll had fled Southern California for the rain and clouds of Seattle, far from the family he says he's already returned to Los Angeles more than once to visit despite the daunting heavy workload of his new job, I don't believe that Carroll would have still been legally allowed by the NCAA to contact recruits for the school he had just left.

I may be paranoid, but given that this school has a proven history of trying to skirt limits on the number of coaches allowed to work for a football program, I hope someone in the NCAA is at least making a couple inquiries into how, exactly, Carroll "assured players on the fence that they were in good hands with Kiffin as well as Carroll’s mentor, Monte Kiffin, Lane’s father and USC’s new defensive coordinator."

Nestor, I have to start this by saying that I mean no disrespect by putting the team we play on Thanksgiving weekend in this subject line, but the fact is that, although I haven't seen it discussed here on BN or anywhere else, my feeling is that a no-longer-as-scary Southern Cal team makes this weekend's game against the Sun Devils a little more dangerous.

A couple weeks - and a couple Bruin victories - ago, still trying to stay optimistic after not being there to see UCLA win a game in 63 days (couldn't travel to Tennessee, and went to a wedding at the last minute rather than the Kansas State game), a friend and I looked at the remaining schedule and discussed how it was still possible to become bowl eligible, because Washington, Wazzu, and Arizona State were all beatable teams, if the fourth quarter in Corvallis proved not to be a fluke.  In order to not sound like we were being overly optimistic, we were indirectly ceding the biggest game of the year because Southern Cal, even after its two losses at that point, was perceived as so dominant that you couldn't realistically expect to come out of the Mausoleum with a win.

Now, don't get me wrong.  I was there in 2006, the guy with blue hair running around in the parking lot after the game lighting red-and-yellow pom-poms on fire with lighter fluid.  (I still don't know why their fans were letting me have them after I asked - maybe they were trying to jump off the bandwagon as quickly as they could?)  UCLA never lost to the team across town during my years in college.  I know instinctively that you don't write off this game under any circumstances.  But it sounded more reasonable to say we could win those next three games than to say that we could beat what was at the time still a top-10 ranked team.

If we were to start that conversation today, though, I have to think that the last game of the regular season doesn't look as daunting as it did a few weeks ago.  If Karl Dorrell and his staff could beat the Hated Ones in a year when they would go on to win the Rose Bowl, they look much less scary under the current regime, and with a UCLA team that's starting to show that it might be gelling.  I'm starting to hear, more and more, about how UCLA has a decent chance to end the season 7-5, and I'm finding it harder to convince myself to think only of the game this weekend.  Even if we don't win this weekend, after all, we can still fulfill Rick Neuheisel's promise to Dan Patrick.

Just a couple minutes ago, looking at the standings, I was reminded that we are playing a team that is 4-6 going into the game at the Rose Bowl.  We have to assume that Arizona State also wants to finish the season bowl-eligible.  Unfortunately for them, that means they can't lose any more games.  Suddenly, if UCLA sees Southern Cal as a beatable team, Arizona State goes into the weekend needing this game more than UCLA does.

A couple weeks ago, watching Dennis Erickson pace the sideline as an ASU player was flagged for unsportsmanlike conduct after a sack that would have forced the Trojans to punt (on a drive that led to a Trojans score, arguably losing the game for Arizona State with that one stupid celebratory moment), I recalled the anger I felt watching a Toledo-coached UCLA playing against a Dennis Erickson-coached Oregon State years ago.  The guy doesn't historically seem to bring out the strongest character traits in his players.  (This was before he went on to continue the destruction of "my" 49ers, cementing Erickson as one of my least-favorite coaches.)  Erickson and his players will be doing whatever they think they can to win.  And UCLA had better be ready for it.

So now I'm torn.  I want to be happy that the Trojan dynasty might be falling apart.  I want to be happy that Pete Carroll is in a place where he's pissy that teams are running up the score on him.  (OT - I want to see that halftime show; I've always been a fan of the Stanford band since they got into formation and spelled out "USC SUX" for us at homecoming and sent a contingent downtown in the middle of the week to play "Fight On" as OJ Simpson walked into the courtroom my second year at UCLA.)  I want to be happy that I can feel like the game on November 28 is winnable.

But I want to be there when we win on November 21, first.

A Facebook friend who I don't believe to be a member of the BruinsNation community posted this tonight after attending the New York alumni tour with Rick Neuheisel:

Who knew Coach Neuheisel was so funny?! Best line: "First year, USC didn't want any of our recruits. This year, we got six of theirs. And we could've gotten five or six more if they could actually read or write."

I wasn't there, so it's not perfectly sourced, but I definitely found it funny and thought it worth passing on to everyone here.  (I wasn't sure if this shouldn't be fanposted, instead, but couldn't figure out a way to do it without a link.)

UPDATE II: Bumped again in light of the hilarious story of Carroll now recommending the SDSU job for DeWayne Walker. Originally published on August of 2006, the bumped again after December 6, 2006. -N

UPDATE: Bumped. pimp put up this post back in August. He called it. -N

From the diaries. No surprise here. The physical genius is a typical classy Trojan. - N

Sorry to post another diary so soon after the other, but I just spotted this article from Brian Dohn in the Daily News:

When DeWayne Walker was contacted about turning around one of the worst defenses in college football, he received advice from many colleagues.

One was his former boss, USC coach Pete Carroll. And in describing UCLA's defense, Carroll apparently did not hold back.

According to sources outside of UCLA, Carroll's assessment of the Bruins' defense was brutal, if not brutally honest, as he told Walker the Bruins' defense was soft and needed an upgrade in talent before it could be fixed and advised Walker not to take the job.

Walker, who was a defensive backs coach with the Washington Redskins, accepted the challenge anyway, shunning a larger NFL paycheck to become UCLA's defensive coordinator.

Walker declined comment about what Carroll said, saying it was a private conversation. "I spoke with a lot of people, and I received positive and negative feedback," Walker said. "Ultimately, I decided it was something I wanted to do. I could have stayed in the NFL, but one of the reasons I came back to college was to work with a guy like coach (Karl) Dorrell."

I love this development.  As the article continues to say, "Several UCLA players said they were aware Carroll did not have pleasant things to say about them," which can only be a good thing come December 2 at the Rose Bowl.

Does anyone envision any coach in this situation not revealing the details of a conversation like that just before the big game to provide extra motivation?

What we have here is a coach who can tell his team that he took the job because he believed in them, and Dorrell's system, despite all the stuff he was hearing from everyone else.  An "us-against-the-world" mentality is exactly what this defense needs following last year's performance.

Plus, it makes Carroll look like an asshole, his old employee calling to ask for advice and then completely ignoring it to go work for the competition.  If the defense shows the improvement we're told it will, Carroll looks like an idiot for years to come, with every crisp tackle any of the players on this year's roster makes.

What was the quote? "We just have to beat those f***ers"?

... and it occurs to me that I'm in a small group of people who are home at this time of day, and in California, which enables mail sent from Los Angeles to arrive this soon.

For those of you at work, here on the West Coast, know that you're probably going to arrive at home to find your football season tickets in your mailbox.

It's funny how, every year, I know football season is coming, but it's not until I hold the tickets in my hand that it starts to feel real.

Bumped. Wanted to make sure more folks got to read this excellent take that went up over the long weekend. GO BRUINS. -N

Really quick update here: I just read more closely, and realized that there was a mistake in my initial post.  Nestor rightfully made this a small point, because it was inevitable, and I had missed it.  Sorry, N.

It's not mentioned in his daily Bruin Walk post, so I have to assume Nestor is already writing a dedicated post about today's news reported in the Daily News that Kevin Love is hiring an agent and it is therefore about to become official that he is leaving.

Don't get me wrong, I like Kevin Love a lot, but I can't really bring myself to be all that sad about this.

When the season ended and it just came down to the waiting game until he announced that he would put his name in the draft, my biggest concern was that the basketball team did not have a proven center next year.  Unless Drew Gordon proved to be a major phenom - and in the few minutes of his high school basketball career I had seen, consisting of him confronting an opposing player after a foul and the two receiving off-setting technical fouls, I wasn't optimistic about that - there was going to be a big void left in the middle, and it was going to require that UCLA play a significantly different type of game next year.  (I had faith that Ben Howland would adjust and that we would still be competitive, but the streak of Final Four caliber teams seemed to be in danger.)

The fact that the article I linked above isn't just about Kevin Love, but is a shared article about the fact that our next center has magically appeared out of thin air and we appear to have found an adequate replacement in J'Mison Morgan, means that I can say that I'm not worried about the center position anymore, and I've realized that this means that I can say good bye to Kevin Love without really feeling like UCLA is going to miss him.

The thing is, UCLA made the Final Four before Kevin Love was here, and we have as good a chance to make it again next year without him as any other team in the country, from what I can tell.  Really, then, there is no Kevin Love legacy to speak of.  He was an affable big man who came down from Oregon, spent a year waiting out his NBA-imposed delay for eligibility, spent some time talking to John Wooden and hanging out in Los Angeles, and now he's gone.  Yes, there are some happy memories of things he did in games, and it was an impressive year, but UCLA is no better or worse off now than it was before he announced that he would attend, as far as I can tell.

I have to say, I do have a couple of small bones of contention I could pick up, which occurred to me in the wake of the comments made by Kevin's dad on a sports radio show in the past week.  Thinking about "promises" that Ben Howland may or may not have made to a kid who ended up being an All-American and winning the Pac-10 POY award, I remember - even if I can't seem to be able to word a search query that will help me find the link for it - a mini-controversy earlier in the season when Howland seemed to be calling out Kevin Love for being out of shape.  Kevin seemed to be a little upset at the insinuation at the time.  Now, with the draft approaching, I have seen Kevin Love saying  he has dropped several pounds and is in the shape he needs to be in order to do some things that are going to surprise the NBA scouts when he's going through draft try-outs.  If his dad is going to say that Kevin Love wasn't able to showcase the talents he had, I think it's only fair to put it on the record that Kevin Love did not put himself in the position until it was too late for Howland to showcase some of those particular talents.  Kevin Love had a year to goof off and play some college basketball, it appears, and waited until that year was over to get serious about getting ready for the next level.  Given how phenomenal some of the things he did in Westwood were, I'm left with a regret that we didn't get to see Kevin Love's best effort, and wish that somehow in challenging Kevin to get into better shape, as he tried to do, Howland had been able to speed that process.

Before it seems like I'm complaining too much, I should say that I've defended Kevin Love's right to go to the NBA in several conversations with friends.  Kevin Love does not owe us anything because he put on the UCLA jersey and played for our team.  I had fun watching him play, and wish him all the best.

And perhaps the best thing in all of this is that there are other UCLA players who set an example that make them easier to love as UCLA fans than Kevin Love is.  Perhaps in another sport, it would be easy to say that Kevin Love had to go pro now, because the owners are trying to limit rookie salaries and it would  be a matter of losing millions of dollars if he had stayed in college for another year and worked to bring that championship he said that he wanted to win with UCLA.

So I choose to save my love for a player like Darren Collison, who in this interview may have become my favorite player in the Ben Howland era.  This is a guy who never complained in his freshman year when he felt that he was not getting the playing time he deserved behind Jordan Farmar, led the team after Farmar left, and then decided to stay for his senior year despite the fact that he was hearing from scouts that he was a likely first-round draft pick.  I loved listening to him talk about how much he loves hanging out with UCLA students and being in college basketball.

I choose to love Lorenzo Mata-Real, who took us to two Final Fours before Kevin Love arrived, and - who knows? - may have taken us to a third without the much-hyped one-and-done player who took his starting spot in Mata-Real's senior year.  The next complaint I hear from Mata-Real will be the first.

The first post I ever put on BruinsNation was an attempt to vent my frustration when Jordan Farmar was leaving for the NBA, as it reminded me of the pain I had felt when Baron Davis had left after his second year.  I loved Jordan Farmar and Arron Afflalo because they had been the Founding Fathers of the new era in UCLA basketball, and even if they were leaving early, they had bought into a new age in the aftermath of Steve Lavin.

I love Ben Howland for bringing in that new age and several other players who will continue to wear UCLA jerseys and pursue national championships.

Kevin Love?  Seems like a nice enough guy.  Plugged into a new UCLA legacy that existed before he got here.  Hope he does well at the next level.  Nice of him to stop by.  I like him a lot.

I just navigated to the UCLA Athletics page (some friends are going to buy general admission tickets to the Oregon game - the Rose Bowl on any given Saturday is still a fun time regardless of whether or not we have much confidence that we can win) and noticed the top story is called "Statement From UCLA Head Football Coach Karl Dorrell" on the front page.

Here is the statement, in its entirety:

"This statement is to clarify issues arising from an article written about me this past Sunday. During the interview, the reporter asked a question regarding the issue of race in today's college coaching environment. I told the reporter that there still exist issues in this profession, with qualified minority candidates not receiving college head coaching opportunities. In college football, six out of 119 Division IA head coaches are African American. This was the context in which the subject was addressed during the interview.

"My comments regarding race issues were expressed in a general sense, and clearly not as an indictment about my experience at UCLA. I have seen a lot of issues in this profession over the last 20 years, but I have not had to deal with any such concerns during my time at UCLA."

I'm in the middle of a workday and can't offer much commentary right now, but thought I'd give credit where it's due.

(If someone makes a comment that this is already in a comment thread, I will gladly remove the diary entry; again, I didn't have time to search right now.)

From the diaries. GO BRUINS. -N

First, Southern Cal loses in what I hear is the biggest upset (in terms of point spread) since they started tracking point spreads.

Then, just a couple minutes ago, I see this.

One of the two erstwhile sports marketers who allegedly made improper payments to Reggie Bush while he was still at USC has agreed to meet with NCAA investigators and provide documentation of financial transactions between Bush and him.

<snip>

If investigators find that Bush received improper benefits while playing for the Trojans, USC could be forced to forfeit games. The program could face sanctions if it were proved that coaches knew or should have known about the alleged benefits.

First, they most likely lose their chance at a national championship a few days ago, and now it looks more likely they'll lose their one national championship from their recent "dynasty".  If this sticks - and everyone knows it should, because everyone knows that many rules were unquestionably violated - the NCAA has to throw the book at Reggie Bush, and the program, because otherwise they will know they've made a mockery of their own system.  I had started to think that they would get away with this because nobody would step forward with evidence, so I'm extremely encouraged by this new development.

Sometimes a little distraction from UCLA football can be a good thing...

UPDATE: And it just got better (for Bruins fans):

[Kevin Love] promised that he would not be too aggressive in throwing elbows -- or anything else -- in the general area of point guard Darren Collison. USC freshman and fellow high school superstar O.J. Mayo reportedly broke the jaw of Trojans point guard Daniel Hackett with a misplaced elbow during a pickup game last month. "An elbow, yeah, right," Love said. "Dan's a good friend of mine too. I'm never going to lay a hand or lay a fist or elbow on a teammate like that." Kevin Love, a "good friend" of Daniel Hackett, implying to the media that the supposed savior of Southern Cal's basketball team plays dirty? And implies that it was a punch and not an errant elbow that led to the injury? I'm wondering if this is something that Love has talked to Hackett about and if it reflects the opinion of the Southern Cal basketball team. To sum up:

1) The Trojans' present football situation just proved that it might be bleak.

2) Their past is tainted by the Reggie Bush scandal.

3) Their future might be adversely affected by the past in the form of scholarship penalties.

4) They can't (as we can) count on basketball to make everything less painful when games start in November.

It's still good to be a Bruin.

UPDATE II: -N As expected Yahoo! Sports, which did all the hard work of originally blowing up the story has some more crucial details on the latest development wrt to the Bush scandal at Southern Cal. Two things really stuck out to me. First was how the claims of Bush and his minions of "extortion" seem to have blown up in their faces:

Two sources told Yahoo! Sports that attorneys for Lake and Bush have not spoken since the failed settlement attempt in June. However, according to four sources, Bush angered both Lake and Michaels by accusing them of extortion in a recent interview aired Sept. 13 on ESPN's "Outside The Lines."

In that interview, Bush said of the NCAA investigation and his family's alleged impropriety: "For me, I look at it as – and my family looks at it as – extortion. Because these were guys we'd known our whole lives … when I was a freshman in high school, they weren't asking for money. When I was getting older, and then all of the sudden my year with the possibility of me coming out, all this stuff comes out."

According to a source at ESPN, that segment aired despite a threat from Bush's camp that the running back would halt future cooperation with the network if the interview was not pulled.

Sources told Yahoo! Sports following the segment that Bush might have violated his confidentiality clause with Michaels by directing claims of extortion at the New Era financiers. The FBI briefly investigated claims of extortion from Bush's attorney, including interviewing several of Lake's family members and acquaintances before a federal grand jury. After the depositions, a federal source told Yahoo! Sports that the FBI would not be pursuing the extortion claims. So, so much for all the extortion BS being peddled by the Bush clan and the immoral cowards (who will do whatever it takes to bury their head in the sand for the sake of some cheap wins against teams other than Stanford). Anyways. The other thing that was just amazing to read from that Yahoo piece was how Bush still seems to be in a complete state of denial: "So my parents struggled to pay bills here and there, one of those being rent. I think just like any normal average family, you struggle to pay bills sometimes, and that's all it was. And the media kind of blew it out to kind of make it seem like we were living in this nice gorgeous house – which I never lived there – living in this nice gorgeous house rent free, and it wasn't anything like that. Uh, Reggie if this was just a simple matter of paying regular rent, then why all the lollygagging? Why all the hemming and hawing and the refusal to cooperate with the NCAA? And, more importantly, if there was nothing wrong here, why the need for a confidentiality agreement?

Anyone? Scott Wolf, you there? GO BRUINS.

Bumped from the diaries. This is really great read even though I do not agree with the point that KD was the best option at the time he was hired. He was a result of a faulty hiring process that was farmed out to the incompetent Donahue shill Bob Field. Still some great points here about how DG might have been building the foundation for the next HC. I still believe in a happy ending to this mess. If I didn't I wouldn't spend the precious few time I have time writing about it. Again nice post. GO BRUINS. -N

I have not posted in quite some time, so please forgive me if I make a lot of seemingly unrelated points here, pouring out a lot of thoughts in trying to explain why I think that, for several reasons, we might be allowed more optimism than we have in years past that we will finally be able to make the long-awaited step forward in football coaching.

First of all, when talking about the money UCLA would have to pay for a competitive football coach, I don't think that the coaches' salaries are the only issue to consider.

Two years ago (I think), during the UCLA Spring scrimmage (I think), they also offered tours of the Acosta Center, which includes training rooms (for medical attention); speed, strength, and conditioning rooms (which most of us would simply call weight rooms); meeting rooms (including one large enough for the entire team to meet at once indoors and with theater-style seating, which the guide said had not previously been an option), locker rooms, and other amenities used by not just the football team but the whole UCLA Athletics Department.  During the tour, our guide made what seems to be a very important point that I'm not sure is discussed enough when it comes to discussion about whether or not UCLA would be able to hire a highly regarded football coach.

Several years ago, the story went, UCLA brought in an unnamed but well-regarded coach to interview for a vacant football coaching position, which must mean that it was around the time that Dorrell was also being interviewed.  Some time later, according to the tour guide, word reached the Athletics Department that this coaching candidate had been talking to other people in college football about the dreadful state of UCLA's facilities, which he had compared to a typical high school program.

Thinking back to when I attended UCLA, I remember that the football players used the same weight room in the John Wooden Center that the general student body used.  I don't know where meetings might have been held, or where the trainers worked, or where the football players' lockers were, but I do know that they now have an excellent location in the Acosta Center.  There is now an artificial turf practice field, built since I took that tour, and I've read about newly remodeled locker rooms as well as a couple other improvements to the Rose Bowl for home games for the current season.  While talk is just now finally leading to action on improving Pauley Pavilion, and while we're still waiting for an announcement about major improvement to Jackie Robinson Stadium for baseball, a lot of money has already been poured into football, which makes it seem as though it has remained a priority that the football facilities not remain the laughing-stock they once seem to have been.  [Thank God that we had Howland and Savage to improve those programs without the needed upgrades, because otherwise these would have been five very dismal seasons for those who love UCLA as much as most of the people who are spending the time to read this.]

With the diligent work done toward improving the facilities, the next well-regarded coaching candidate will find that he has the tools he needs, and lack of infrastructure will no longer disqualify us in the minds of the type of coach we might wish to hire.

Also, when it comes to the salary we might be able to pay the next coach, I don't have the specifics in front of me, but unless I'm mistaken, this is a "magic" year.  Shortly before his retirement, Pete Dalis signed both Lavin and Toledo to new contracts that sweetened their buy-outs, handcuffing Dan Guerrero by requiring that both be paid their salary for five years in the event that they were fired, minus whatever other money they were able to make in new jobs.  Don't get me wrong, because I hate almost everything about Steve Lavin, but he did help the Athletics Department by taking a job with ESPN which probably paid him enough money to take him off our payroll immediately.  Bob Toledo, on the other hand, spent most of the next five years after being fired sitting on his couch watching television and collecting his UCLA paycheck, finally taking an assistant coach position in (I think) the fourth year after being fired by UCLA and now, in (I think) the fifth year, a head coaching job.  I'm not sure how much Tulane pays him, but it's possible that we are still supplementing his income.   Even if he does make more than the UCLA minimum in his new job, this is the first year since Toledo was fired that we're not paying, in essence, two football head coaches' salaries.  If Dorrell had been fired after his first season, or his second season, there was no way to know if he, too, would go the "Toledo route", forcing us to pay for two former coaches as well as the current coach.  I don't think that Dorrell will do that when (I refrain from saying "if" out of hope) he is fired after this season, but I'm not the one who is on the hook for the money if I'm wrong, so I can't really fault the Athletics Department for being cautious if this has been the thinking in the Morgan Center.

To finally get to the point, my theory, which was not discouraged by the Athletics Department employee I was once able to corner in a bar and voice it to during a Friday happy hour just outside Westwood, is that throughout the Dorrell era, the Athletics Department has always been thinking toward the next football coaching hire.  It has been clear for quite some time now that Dorrell is not up to the task set before him.  At the time he was hired, I think that Dorrell might have been about as good a coach as UCLA was able to hire given their circumstances, including the facilities and the sweet buy-out deals for Lavin and Toledo.  (Thanks a lot, Pete Dalis!)  Throughout this time, while they can't have honestly been satisfied with the direction of the football program, they have been working on improving the situation in the ways they could while waiting out Bob Toledo's laziness, leading to the point where leaving Karl Dorrell as the caretaker for a program that has been stagnant under his leadership is now, finally, not their only option.

There just might be a happy ending to this story.  Stay tuned in December or January.

From the Diaries. GO BRUINS. -N

The poll results are in, and as expected, UCLA is now ranked number one in both basketball polls!

More exciting to me than the poll results, which are only what was obviously deserved, is this quote from the Los Angeles Times:

There was no chance, Howland said, that the Bruins would take any team lightly this season. Even though UCLA looked flat while leading UC Riverside only 26-16 at halftime, the coach said it isn't about the opposition but about the goals.

"Our guys want to win every game this year," he said. "They understand what's at stake. We have a chance to be No. 1 in both polls this week. That's great for our program."

...

Junior guard Arron Afflalo said it is realistic to consider having an undefeated season.

"I do feel, when you look at our schedule, that every game is winnable," Afflalo said. "So that's definitely something we can consider."

It's definitely been a good 48 hours for Bruins fans.  And while I don't expect it to happen, I'm glad to see that the basketball team seems to be striving for perfection.

With the team we have this year, and the recruiting class we have for next year, it feels like this will be a special time for Bruins basketball for quite some time to come.

GO BRUINS!

I saw this was in the comments to the bonfire post left by Nestor, but, seriously, it deserves at least its own diary entry.

The bonfire exists as the only football pep rally UCLA holds during the course of the entire year.  From what I can tell they don't hold Homecoming Week events at all anymore, with the ostensible reason that they want to save it all for "Blue and Gold Week" in the buildup to the Southern Cal game.

And since there isn't a Homecoming parade anymore (I may be wrong but if I haven't noticed it for the past several years, it would almost be sadder to learn that there is one) there is now a parade that leads into the bonfire rally.

I'll admit, I wasn't really in the parade mood, so I skipped that and went for a few beers at Maloney's instead in order to prepare for the rally.

The first bad sign was the number of people walking AWAY from where the bonfire was going to be held.  We asked a couple girls what was going on, and they pointed us in the direction we knew we should be headed, and didn't respond to our question of why they were leaving.

Then we bumped into someone we knew, who said that since she hadn't had a chance to drink before hand, and she was bored by the band playing, she was leaving to go get drunk elsewhere.  (I didn't see much of the band playing, but from what I did see they were very decent so I'm not dissing them.)

Awards were handed out for the parade for various things, and the MCs were trying to entertain from the stage.  Pretty typical pep rally stuff, really.

They held a mini-cardshow from Janns Steps while holding a Bruin spell-out, which was actually pretty cool.

Geoff got up and led an 8-clap, which was (as always) fun.

I was having fun hanging out with the people around me, and the atmosphere was actually pretty good.  I bought the newest version of the "a Trojan is only good once" t-shirt because I always buy a t-shirt from someone at the bonfire.  But clearly this was all supposed to be building until later.

They announced that some coaches were coming out, and out walked Ed "Coach K" ("Towel Guy") and someone else whose name I didn't catch.  (I'm sorry, this is nothing personal against him, I just didn't catch and didn't recognize the name.  I know it wasn't either Svoboda or Walker.)

They led the crowd for a minute, and suddenly it was clear that the night was about to change for the worse.

Coach K told us to be proud of 3 things.  One was that we go (in my case, went) to the best school in the country.  Good deal, and I cheered for that.

I forget what the second thing was.

The third left me laughing because the only choice was complete disgust: "WE'RE GOING TO COMPETE ON SATURDAY!!!"

COMPETE???????  THIS IS THE BEST THEY CAN DO?????

As the team joined these two guys on stage, something else became obvious.

KARL DORRELL DID NOT SHOW UP FOR THE BONFIRE.

I can't remember any time this has been true.  Maybe somebody else remembers better than me, but in this case, I find it atrocious.  For a coach with a reputation for not having any passion for the football team to not show up for the only pep rally of the year is ridiculous.  Here was his one chance before the game to prove that our feelings were wrong about him, and he doesn't even try to change our minds?

[I'm having sad flashbacks to a game about a year ago when the coach who should have been aggressive spotted USC many points while trying to play conservatively so as to not fall too far behind...]

A few players got up to speak, and none of them had the swagger of years past to say that they were going to come out to beat USC.  I don't know if this is because they're being told to not sound cocky, but it was noticeable.

We were still there to support the team, so we were still cheering, but between the comment that we were there to compete, and the lack of courage on the part of Dorrell to even try to show that he was pumped for the game, we were already starting to feel a little like we weren't getting the (figurative) fire we were looking for.

Only one thing was going to save this.  

A fire.

And they said the fire was going to start soon.

They built it up.

Told us to get ready.

The lights went out.

And CONFETTI shot out of the middle of the bonfire.

And we were waiting for something else to happen, for the flames to shoot to the sky.  They had told us that this fire was about to take off.

Well, they lied.

"This is a different kind of fire," or some other crap, came from the stage, with an excuse that the fire marshall had declared it unsafe to have a bonfire.

YOU'RE KIDDING ME.

If you're not going to have a bonfire, don't lie from the stage and say that the fire is about to happen, okay?

This was a perfect trifecta of disappointment, between no avowals of victory, no rousing speech by anyone we expected to coach the teams to victory, and then no bonfire at the, ahem, bonfire.

I lit my Zippo, held it above my head, and walked (okay, pushed my way) through the crowd toward  the barricade (there to protect us from the confetti, apparently) saying I was going to go light the thing myself.  The fact that I received some cheers for this is a little sad.  The fact that there was a chant of "BULLS---" from the crowd was fitting.

I walked my way back down to BrewCo with my friends extremely upset, along with every other stranger I spoke to.  Even the EMTs walking away told me they were as upset as I was.

The fact that I just received (while typing this loooong vent) an IM from a friend telling me that Pete Carroll led his bonfire (which actually consisted of flames and not confetti) is just insult added to injury.

I'm still going to be at the game on Saturday several hours early, but the drinking will be more out of necessity than out of confidence.  This entire experience leaves me hoping for miracles instead of resolved in solidarity with the team.

Those of you who weren't there tonight should almost consider yourselves lucky, even if I'm glad I was there to witness it.

The only good news from the night, I will leave with.  As I mentioned in my last diary, I have become convinced that Karl Dorrell is not the answer as a football coach.  I was downplaying the fact that I call for him being fired every time anyone gives me half a reason to say so, because that would admit (as I am admitting now) that I was wrong to ever defend Karl Dorrell.  And this has led to a series of arguments with my friend, who sits next to me at every football game.

His theory is that Karl Dorrell didn't show up tonight because he knows that his time at UCLA is running out, and this is coming from someone who hates to admit that Dorrell should be fired.  "He knows he's a lame duck," says the only Dorrell supporter I talk to anymore.  And even this friend of mine has already spotted a couple coaches he would prefer to the one we have right now who he thinks we might be able to hire in a wishful thinking sense.  "What's Goerge Siefert up to nowadays?"  "Have you seen much about the guy who coaches at TCU?  He seems like he could be Howland-esque."

I know the actual lack of a fire at the bonfire isn't KD's fault, but not showing up, and letting the academic coordinator for the team lead the rally into a support of competing, leaves me sick.

It doesn't help that I was going to go back out tonight and now realize that I won't because of the time I've spent typing this.

I'm still praying for a victory in about 37 hours, but this is the worst I have felt about our chances after attending a pep rally in my entire life.

GO BRUINS.

Please turn this whole experience into a footnote after a victory, and not one last sign that will show us with hindsight that we should have known better than to ever expect anything other than an eighth straight loss.

I guess they don't officially call it "Beat 'SC Week" anymore, because they want it to be about the pride as Bruins instead of beating the team across town, but whatever it's called, there are events happening all week.  Student Alumni Association girls running all around handing out flyers and stickers and the whole thing.  I guess we're actually going to try to win the game this weekend, even if everyone in the MSM is already booking their flights to watch Southern Cal get their asses kicked in Glendale, Arizona.  I'm probably a little old for it, but I'll be at all the events I can, rooting this team on against the evil empire this weekend.

I just got back from watching a little of the "Beat 'SC Car Smash" and, while I was walking away, saw Luc Richard walking in that general direction.  I don't know if that's where he was headed, but I'd like to keep a mental picture of the Prince picking up a sledgehammer and putting a few dents in the old Buick in front of a cheering crowd.

I was surprised to see the KROQ SUV there this early in the week, and they seemed to be broadcasting from the event.  I don't know if they'll be here more this week, but the more often they're here, I'll just be glad they're not broadcasting from that other campus dissing us like everyone else.  (I'd take KROQ as an official station of UCLA this week anytime, even if I'd pick Joe Escalante on Indie 103.1 as the official DJ, given that he gives UCLA shout-outs all the time.  Still no KIIS vans in Westwood since 1995, that I've seen...)

[By the way, in case anyone remembers my posts from before, I haven't posted here in quite some time, but I should say that while I still think some of the sentiment was premature earlier this season, I have drunk the BruinsNation Kool-Aid and now agree that it's probably time for Karl Dorrell to go.  But I'm all about beating Southern Cal this Saturday.]

I've been wondering why there has been so much agitation in Oklahoma since the end of the game on Saturday, considering the fact that any team in the country can find games that they have lost due to officiating mistakes, and I saw this in today's "Around the Nation" article in the LA Times.

Oklahoma would consider canceling its game at Washington in 2008 if the Pacific 10 Conference doesn't change its rule requiring league officials to be used at its home stadiums, Sooners Coach Bob Stoops said Tuesday.

The Sooners lost, 34-33, at Oregon on Saturday, and Pac-10 Commissioner Tom Hansen has since said that two incorrect calls by the league's officials on Oregon's behalf changed the outcome of the game.

On Monday, Oklahoma President David Boren sent a letter to Big 12 Commissioner Kevin Weiberg asking him to pursue having the Pac-10 remove its officiating policy.

"I think there's no question that [Athletic Director] Joe Castiglione and I and President Boren, if that rule is not changed that we may reconsider that game, and I think it's justified. We'll look into that."

It just makes me wonder if Boren wants an excuse to cancel the game, or if he's looking for a way to gain an advantage by having his own officials in Pac-10 matchups in the future.

Then again, this is Oklahoma, so I don't want to give him too much credit...

My friend works in the UCLA Athletics department, and invited me as her guest to the annual Behind the Scenes corporate sponsor night with the football team last night, and I figured I'd give a synopsis here.

The event started with the invitees watching the team practice, but I couldn't get out of work early and I missed that portion.  Next, there was half an hour to meet and get autographs from players.  I'm not much of an autograph person, and I didn't want to take time away from the kids in attendance, so I pretty much sat and watched.  It wasn't a huge crowd, and a lot of the players were spending the whole time talking to each other.  Ben Olson, of course, had a constant small group around him.

We then moved into the auditorium where Karl Dorrell holds his meetings with the football team, which has just recently been renamed the Terry and Andrea Donahue room.  Inside, facing the front of the room, the left wall has pictures of UCLA All-American players, and the right wall has (a much smaller group of) pictures of UCLA players who were Academic All-Americans.  Over the main entrance was a quote that says something like, "To be a Champion, you don't need to be the best team in the nation.  You just have to be better than every team on the day you play them."  Over on the left in the front of the room is a list of the goals of UCLA football.  They included, paraphrasing, "To build on UCLA tradition", "To build character", "To graduate", "To beat USC!" (which was the only one with an exclamation point), and "Contend for the Pac-10 championship".  In the front and on the right-hand side is a football schedule that goes in descending order, with the USC game on top in red and Utah on the bottom in gold.  (Dorrell later explained that the schedule is in descending order like that because he considers the entire football season to be like a climb, building toward the USC game.)  It's a nice little room with comfortable seats.

Someone from ISP spoke for a few minutes and introduced Dan Guerrero.  I can tell you that Dan Guerrero's speech gave little reason to believe what I've been reading in the comment sections lately, that DG is looking to get rid of Karl Dorrell anytime soon.  He made one comment, that in football "you can't press a button and go straight to the penthouse," to indicate that he's giving KD all the time to build the program that he thinks he needs.  True, this was a marketing event and it's not the venue he'd probably choose to air any dirty laundry, but his talk about giving Dorrell time to build each aspect of the team as it becomes clear that it needs more attention and eventually build a powerhouse team sounded genuine.  I assume that the comment about penthouses was meant to distinguish football from basketball, because basketball does allow a much quicker turnaround, given that you need only 9 or 10 players versus the 100 or so it takes to build a football team, all with very specialized skills.

Next, Karl Dorrell spoke for a while.  Again, this was a corporate event, so it was a pretty generic speech about the life of a coach.  Dorrell spoke of the fact that athletes' days are full for 14 hours a day, of the fact that they do weight training three days a week, and the fact that the coach is only allowed to take up 20 hours of the players' week, including the game itself, meaning that modern coaches have only 17 hours of preparation with players, which might explain why he will make comments about things that they haven't had a chance to cover yet in practice until after week two.  (At this point KD pointed out that Brian Bosworth was in the audience, and that this was not true in their college days.)  During his speech and during the Q&A that followed, Dorrell spoke about how he'd be happy to go 12-0 and win every game by one point, acknowledged again that there were some mistakes made in the Rice game, and spoke for about 20 minutes, walking around the front and working the room fairly well.  When asked about recruiting, he expressed his desire for UCLA to scout football games at all 400 high schools in Los Angeles County and make their presence known, said he personally spends two hours a day on recruiting, and discussed the fact that UCLA looks for a special type of player, indicating that he accepts input from current players when recruits make official visits, and saying that he very rarely competes against the school across town for players, given that we have to recruit players who can also perform well in the classes on one of the world's elite college campuses.  He also discussed his coaching style, which is to wander the football field during practice observing what the coaches are doing but not really saying much.  Having been an assistant coach for 16 years, he explained, he doesn't want to contradict anything that the coaches do in front of the players.  He explained that he coaches the coaches in their meetings, away from outside observers, and lets the coaches take care of their own jobs outside that room, which makes sense to me.

After that speech, we went out to have dinner catered by Tony Roma's with the players.  I assume it was Tony Roma's fault, but the food arrived at least 15 or 20 minutes late.  (As a funny side note, given what I've posted here previously, Cory Paus was in line for food a few people in front of me.  I didn't speak to him.)  The food was served up, and we worked our way through the line, and Coach K ended up talking to the person in front of me.  I wasn't going to say anything - he's earned the right to stand in line with someone he knows and grab his food ahead of me - but as we stepped to the buffet line he turned and apologized for cutting in front of me and let me go ahead of him.  I had a conversation with him for a couple minutes, reminiscing about the time I saw him forcing Ray Young to go to class back when I was an undergrad here.  This might be my favorite part of the evening.

Finally, there were tours of the Acosta Center, but I took one of those before the 2005 season after the open scrimmage, so we went home rather than wait in the line, assuming it would be as professional and cover the same points as it had one year earlier.

Sorry about the length of this post, but I figured I'd include everything I could remember and people could skip reading it if they wished.  Overall, it was a well-planned and enjoyable evening.

I know it's mostly in fun, but nobody else is asking this question, and I'm curious.

If we're making fun of Pete Carroll for running up the score against Arkansas, and Dorrell has shown every intention of not doing that by taking out the first-team offense and running out the clock against Utah last weekend, is it fair that the poll considers a 16-20 point victory this Saturday "nothing spectacular"?

Maybe it's because he's trying to make UCLA more like an NFL-type team, where scores aren't run up nearly as often as in college, but if, like last week, we never trail and victory never seems to be in question, I don't want anybody to criticize this team for winning by 2 1/2 touchdowns, and I'm afraid this poll is set up to create unrealistic expectations.

It implies that there's a positive spin to the troubles in Dorrell's first two years, so of course nobody here wants to mention this column.

If one of the few remaining Toledo players is willing to admit that Dorrell had to come in and rebuild an entirely different attitude, I'm willing to assume that they know more about the situation when Dorrell came in than I do based on reading some articles in some newspapers.  And I'm not finding any reasons so far to be less than excited about the season that starts in just over 2 days.

Nobody on the football team is backing down from saying that they expect this to be a big year, which I take to mean that they're truly confident that they don't need to hedge their bets against high expectations.

I haven't seen anyone else mention this, but I remember sitting in the first or second row of the student section for Baron Davis' last game at UCLA so I keep comparing the two situations in my mind.

The shock for me about Jordan leaving early was just to hear it might happen when he first announced he was going to put his name into the draft.  Much like Maurice Drew, we'd been promised all along that he'd be back for at least another year, so the announcement came out of nowhere.

Contrasting that with Baron Davis' last game at Pauley, I remember yelling loud enough that my throat hurt, and clapping enough 8-claps that my hands were sore, the whole crowd trying to will him to stay in school for another year.  Mostly, though, I remember one last cheer, and Baron turning around and looking at us as he walked off the court with a look on his face that let us know that he was gone.  I wish that we'd had some sort of similar good bye with Jordan, but I wouldn't trade this year's run to the national title game for anything.

Those were the Lavin years, and the team continued to deteriorate after he left, even if I have a lot of fond memories of Earl Watson in the next few years.

Given the make-up of the current team, I agree with those who are saying that Jordan leaving now might be the best outcome for all involved.  As good as Darren Collison was looking by the end of the season, Jordan probably would have had to split time with him next year, anyway, and it would be hard to make sure that Arron Afflalo, Josh Shipp, Luc Richard Mbah a Moute, etc., got their minutes too.  There's enough talent on this team that it might almost become a problem with keeping them all happy.

As for Jordan?  I don't follow the NBA since Kobe's mess in Colorado, but last I heard Baron Davis was still doing well.  It might bode well for the precedent of sophomore guards leaving UCLA.

Jordan says that he's still going to finish his degree at UCLA, so my biggest hope is that he remains a fixture around the campus while going on to play in a few all-star games.