October 27, 2006
Learning On The Job
Yet another example of our football program’s coach-in-training experiment not working out so hot. What’s amazing about this is OL coach Jim Colleto has already had similar coaching jobs in college football and the NFL for 39 years and he still has his training badge on.  Lonnie White of the LA Times talks about the problems Colleto is having:
If UCLA offensive line coach Jim Colletto were still working in the NFL and his team had the kind of problems running the ball that the Bruins have had, he would fix it the old-school way — with more work.
But the NCAA limits personal contact between college coaches and players during the week and that has been somewhat frustrating for Colletto, who has coached in college and the NFL for 39 years.
If Colleto has coached in college and the NFL for 39 years why is having a hard time dealing with a rule that hundreds of other coaches don’t seem to be having a problem with?? 7 games into the season and Jim Colleto is still working this out??!  Maybe if Karl Dorrell had checked his resume, that he’s been fired from every coaching job he’s had, we would not have this problem.  UCLA is 8th, near dead last, in rushing in the Pac-10. That would place us firmly in the lower half of college football nationwide (#77). And most of our rushing yards came against bottom feeders Rice and Stanford. These stats are staggeringly bad when you consider our OL was expected to dominate this season on the rush! So, Jim, maybe you should put a call into Toledo or Rice and ask them how they manage to gain more rushing yards than we do. Thanks Karl Dorrell for another great assistant hire!
We will give Jim Colleto credit for two things: first, he can talk smack over Jim Svoboda (thanks Jim S. for the #79 ranked offense in the country); and second, he took some of the blame himself:
We may have given them too many running plays, maybe too much information,” he said. “… I have to do a better job of not overloading them.
You have to do more than that Jim, but nice that you don’t throw your players under the bus like some other coaches on your staff.
