Sunday Roundup: Secondary Ranked 3rd By Sporting News

Speedpost today:

• Brian Price paperwork update: It appears Brian Price needed additional paperwork turned into the NCAA to process his application to be cleared to play and those documents only arrived at the NCAA just last week, Chris Foster of LA Time reports. It also turns out that UCLA received all Price’s documents in mid-July and thought it all looked OK. That was about the time CEO Karl Dorrell was out on the golf course getting interviewed for a fluff piece when he should have been “double- and triple-checking” the paperwork to make sure his prized recruit sailed through, as Price’s father said. According to Foster, if the NCAA doesn’t clear Price by September 24th when classes start he can’t enroll! Nice job Karl.
• Secondary ranked 3rd in nation: There is a big writeup in the LA Times by Chris Foster about how our secondary could be the best in the nation. Aside from the usual fluff, Foster points out that Sporting News ranks our secondary as 3rd best in the nation, behind SuC who is first in their minds. That is great news! And we expect great things. Lost in all the love however is the fact that our pass defense ranked 87th in the country last season. So to expect our defense to go from 87 to top 5 is expecting a bit much, regardless of the number of returning starters. Nevertheless, we expect great things.
• Recruiting as good as advertised?: Rivals top 101 recruits for ‘08 currently ranks only 2 UCLA commits on the list, tied for 13th with other programs. There are 12 programs that have more top commits, including Ohio State leading with 7 and Miami, Notre Dame and SuC trailing close behind with 6 commits each. We may end up top 20 but certainly not top 10.
• Lineman honored: 4 UCLA lineman have been named to the Lombardi Trophy “watch list” of 103 players. They include, DE Bruce Davis, DT Brigham Harwell, LB Christian Taylor, and OG Shannon Tevaga.
• Character at USC??: The other USC, University of South Carolina, is stepping up to the plate when confronted by issues of character. Coach Steve Spurrier has suspended indefinitely one of his best players who was arrested for possessing an unregistered gun (that was in his friend’s possession and wasn’t his). Sound familiar?? It should. While Spurrier won’t allow even a great player with an alleged gun possession charge (his first brush with the law) on the team, Dorrell will allow a COACH with two CONVICTIONS for unregistered gun possessions, with one as recent as less than 2 years ago, on his sidelines. Nice!

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