We will get to Stanford game notes but today we have some bullet items of note, a picture of an odd-looking Dorrell at his recent Monday press conference, and an announcement of The Bruin Show tonight at 6 pm.:
Stanford upset prediction: We expect to blow out a well overmatched Cardinal team that we blew out and blanked last year with essentially the same team we have this year. Yeah, new Stanford head coach Jim Harbaugh can make the team better than 1-11 but not against UCLA, although a San Jose reporter, John Wilner, thinks the Furd will go 0-12. Still, if you look hard enough (or if someone emails you, as is the case here) you will find that one genius who picks the unthinkable upset. Today's genius prognosticator: LawPundit. Yeah, completely insignificant but he's the first that we found to predict the upset so to him go the glories: "Indeed, we predict that to start out the season, (Stanford) will ambush a vastly more talented UCLA Bruins team still struggling with a new west coast offense." Oookay.- Pre-Season honors: More pre-season honors are being doled out. This time RB Chris Markey is on the watchlist for the Doak Walker award that goes to the nation's top running back.
- SuC dogfighting revisted: Amazing story found by BruinsNation.com poster Meriones about how SuC RB coach Todd McNair was arrested in 1996 for dogfighting and convicted of cruelty to animals. McNair also was intimately involved in the Reggie Bush scandal. Guess Eric Scott has a lot to live up to. Look for this story to hit the mainstream soon. Update: It has!
- Depth chart out: The depth chart for the UCLA Bruin football team has been released. UCLA can only take 65 players to a conference matchup that isn't a rivalry game, so the depth chart only goes so deep for Saturday's game. Of note, Christian Ramirez will travel to the Farm as a backup at RB and Fred Holmes will travel as a backup at FB. Both players were practicing in defensive positions as recently as last week. Also, Rasshan will be heading to the Farm as a 3rd string QB "for emergencies."
Rivals.com named DC DeWayne Walker Recruiter of the Year for the Pac-10. They claim he was responsible for 7 of our 10 recruits, including our top 2 Raymond Carter and Brian Price, for an average of 3.57 stars. We don’t have anything to add to what we’ve said before regarding recruiting. It was a small class and most of the recruits were committed before UCLA played one game or DeWayne Walker coached one game last season. It is odd that someone at USC, who had more 5 star recruits than the size of our entire recruiting class and who had the top or second best class in the nation, was not so honored. We have to tip our hat to Morgan Center on this one.
Next year we have 25 or so scholies to recruit for … that is when we will see who is a great recruiter. But we all know read more
In other news, Playboy has come out with its first ever ranking of the top 10 colleges with the best looking women. UCLA women are ranked #3 nationally. Congratulations and Thank You to our women. The ranking is based on a poll of Playboy photographers and photo editors, who for decades have photographed the best looking women in college around the US. top 10 list voted on by visitors to Playboy's site will be issued in February. Yeah, we don't get Playboy either but it's a well deserved nod to our women and so we'll take it. Since Florida State is ranked #6 we will take that as a sign, and make our prediction right now that we will beat FSU in the Emerald Bowl by the 3 points difference in rankings. Thanks to ChantRant for the heads up.
Here is the list: read more
Wake Forest head coach Jim Grobe was named the AP Coach of the Year for taking the Deamon Deacons to their first ACC title in 36 years. The ACC was horrible this year, but that doesn’t diminish the enormity of the turnaround for tiny Wake Forest. Never ever known as a football school, Wake was perennially a bottom dweller in the ACC along with Duke. In his 6th season Grobe took the program from worst to first. Wake did have 18 returning starters this season but they lost key players early on, losing his starting QB and tailback to season ending injuries. Grobe never let his team get down en route to an 11-2 record.
Karl Dorrell has 14 returning senior starters, only losing 3 starters in all, next year. There is no reason why he and UCLA should not have a great year and win the Pac-10.
The bandwagon is officially full. College Football News has named Karl Dorrell Pac-10 Coach of the Year, as reported on a web board. We cannot find the link on the CFN site itself but there is someone reporting this blurb:
Coach of the Year – Karl Dorrell, UCLA
The beleaguered coach of a year ago was the toast of the town after beating USC 13-9. Despite losing rookie NFL star RB Maurice Jones-Drew, QB Drew Olson, and starting QB Ben Olson, the Bruins got better over the course of the year thanks to a tremendous defense that should be ready to roar next year. Dorrell deserves the credit for keeping the ship afloat, even if the record was worse than 2005’s. The schedule was much harder.
If this report is true read more
Now that the season has ended with the epic win over Southern Cal we think it would be fun to look back at the top 10 plays of the year. Here is our list (plenty of room for debate):
Top 10 Plays of the Year
10 (tie). Verner returns interception for a touchdown (Sep. 2 Utah). Towards the end of the second quarter freshman CB Alterraun Verner steps in front of a Tommy Grady pass and runs 34 yards for a touchdown and a 14-7 lead that we would never relinquish. It was read more
As expected, Justin Medlock has been named to his first All-America team, the America Football Coaches Association (AFCA) All-America. Congratulations to Justin, a truly great kicker! He should do well in the pros. Congratulations also go out to coach Dorrell, the kicker’s coach, and OC Jim Svoboda (anyone remember him?!) for giving Justin so many opportunities to shine.  If you are a top high school kicker you need to sign up with coach Dorrell or Svoboda wherever they coach.
Expect this to be read more
How could we miss this? Dorrell won a coaching award at the end of last month. The Sporting News (Tom Deinhart) has crowned KD the coach “Desperately Seeking A Clue” after the home loss to Washington State. True that. Congratulations to coach KD.
From the obvious department: KD is not being considered for the Liberty Mutual Coach of the Year award. He is not on the list. That means no $50,000 bonus. Tedford is on the list, and anyone who watched our game against Cal knows that our offense, with KD taking 25% of the playcalling over from Svoboda (have you noticed he has disappeared?), ‘dominated’ Cal’s #92 ranked defense. With all the “growing” and “learning” this “young and inexperienced” team did this year under KD, many supporters will be suprised that KD is not on that list.
