Here are some answers at the presser from our new head coach Rick Neuheisel, according to Dennis Dodd CBS Sportline: read more

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It's all over ESPN radio, UCLA has hired Rick Neuheisel as the new head football coach!  Dan Guerrero followed through on his promise to hire a proven successful experienced head coach, just as we have been advocating here since we began, and exactly what we advocated in our Daily Bruin ads.  Dan Guerrero also ended 40 years of UCLA football hiring cheap inexperienced coaches to head the football program.  Our mission is accomplished!!!  More coming …

Update:  Here is a portion of the official PR:  read more

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It's Xmas … we are out with Santa and the girls.  Be safe yall.  See you tomorrow when the sleigh ride continues.  Go Bruins (and Lakers … hey its Xmas!)!!

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Well, we got busy with things so our afternoon post will just have to wait until Wednesday.  Hopefully soon we will have our holiday wish of a new successful experienced head coach.  Bless everyone, be safe and have a great Xmas and holiday!!  

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Editor’s note: ASU beat up on Washington to take sole possession of 1st place in the Pac-10. UCLA is in 2nd, one half game behind.

With Cal and LSU losing, following a third straight crazy week of football, only one big-time BCS school remains undefeated, Ohio State. Had we simply beaten two pansies in Utah and Notre Dame, we would be ranked probably #2 in the nation! Karl Dorrell and his merry band of kool-aid drinkers would probably be wearing those Champions Made Here shirts with pride (incidentally, its odd how Dorrell is not seen in any of those shirts this year!). So, we are now looking at sole possession of 1st place in the conference if Washington holds onto its lead (up 17-13 at the half) over final undefeated Pac-10 team Arizona State. The worst we could end up today is a half game out of the lead in the conference in 2nd place.

But that’s meaningless as we all know. We have to read more

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We have long pointed out how Karl Dorrell looks for scapegoats, coaches/players/refs/playing conditions/injuries, whenever we lose or have a bad season.  The evidence is far too long to list.  If you want to see what a real coach does when put in the same situation, you only have to look as far as Pauley Pavilion and Ben Howland. We have our own example of a real head coach taking ownership of decisions he makes and ownership of the outcomes of games his teams play in.  We are going to show you a few examples of what we mean, and maybe Dan Guerrero or Karl Dorrell himself will be reading this and get the message.

Our own Ben Howland, on losing at Oregon last year by 2 due to a blown final play call:  read more

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You may remember how Sporting News’ Matt Hayes has already picked UCLA as his “sleeper pick” to win it all in an aside in one of his columns. He is a known Dorrell cultist and apologist - remember his piece about Dorrell making UCLA a threat again before LAST season, and his ridiculous piece about Training Jay Norvell being the greatest offseason coaching acquisition (better than Bama stealing Nick Saban or North Carolina signing Butch Davis?!). He takes his Dorrellian love a step further this year … he’s outlined in an entire article why he thinks UCLA is going to win it all. You know when a guy says something a little foolish, and then to pick himself up he tries to explain the reasoning for his remark in more detail … only to crash even harder. That is what this piece is.

Now, we think this team with a good coach CAN win it all … but not for the reasons Hayes states. He gets a number of things wrong. To wit:

The loss to Florida State in the Emerald Bowl was an aberration.

Was it? We got slammed, our defense got slammed … by an OC who read more

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49 years ago today, Aug. 14, 1958, the great UCLA football coach Henry “Red” Sanders died suddenly of a heart attack at the young age of 53. He remains UCLA’s great football legacy, a legacy that brought us a national championship and a tradition of winning. Rich Perelman of LAT has a great perspective on Red today on his blog, What’s Bruin. Red reminds us of what we can be and should be in football. Perelman:

When Sanders came to UCLA from Vanderbilt in 1949, he turned around a 3-7 team from 1948 into a 6-3 team in 1949, finishing second in the Pacific Coast Conference. Bruin teams under Sanders never finished lower than third in the PCC and won three titles (1953-54-55) in a row, had four second-place finishes and was third twice. His Bruins played in the 1954 and 1956 Rose Bowl games.

And, his undefeated 1954 team (9-0) won the 1954 national championship in the UPI poll while Ohio State won in the Associated Press poll. The two teams couldn’t meet in the Rose Bowl because of the PCC’s “no-repeat” rule of the time.

Perelman also reminds us that Sanders was a great character too. He gave football and Americana a couple of it’s greatest quotes: read more

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While Dorrell cultists find numerous excuses for why Karl Dorrell has cemented our football program in mediocrity, two other coaches are going about doing exactly what they were hired to do, without excuses.  We all know about Ben Howland and our basketball team. Two Final Fours in his first 4 years, top recruiting classes, from a program that had its first losing season in half a century, that had 20 losses.   John Savage, our baseball coach, has taken a moribund program and in his first 4 years took UCLA to the College World Series Regionals in ‘06 and then the College World Series Super Regionals in ‘07, one game away from the CWS.  And that is after having sustaining key injuries.  Now, Rivals is calling Savage’s program the #1 rising program in college baseball!  Here is what Rivals has to say (HT to rybreadraz at BN):

Why are they rising?
After four seasons as the head man at UCLA, coach John Savage finally has the Bruins thinking Omaha on a consistent basis. The Bruins have yet to break through and reach the College World Series, but the future prognosis looks promising. The Bruins turned some heads by reaching the Regional round two seasons ago. But in 2007, they overcame adversity at times throughout the season and faced in-state foe Cal State Fullerton in the Super Regional round. UCLA took two giant steps forward during the past two seasons, but now they’re aiming for more. Just look at the Bruins’ returning roster. Sure, they must replace talented right-hander Tyson Brummett. But left-hander Gavin Brooks finished his freshman campaign on a high note. Additionally, reliever Garett Claypool was a Rivals.com Freshman All-American, while fellow sophomore Charles Brewer should be outstanding if he can stay healthy. The Bruins also have much to look forward to offensively with the return of Brandon Crawford and others.

“Bruins thinking Omaha on a consistent basis.”  And Howland has Bruins thinking Final Four on a consistent basis. That right there says it all.   Does Dorrell have Bruins thinking BCS on a consistent basis??  Hardly at all. How about just Pac-10 championship on a consistent basis? How about a Pac-10 championship just once??  Exactly. The differences between good coaches and a bad one could not be more striking!!

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According to an article on Yahoo Sports, it looks like the players feel the same way we do, that this season it is BCS or Bust (HT to Nestor at BruinsNation). We, of course, add Pac-10 championship to that expectation, but it's good to see that the players know what they can do.

In talking with the players' it is BCS or bust in 2007. The players' have high aims for the coming season. What was notable is they are approaching the season one game at a time. More than one player said that anything less than BCS will be a disappointment. That kind of mentality is important. These guys want to win and they want to win a lot. Anything less will not be tolerated. This is the first time in the Karl Dorrell regime where there will be solid depth across the board.

We agree, anything less than a BCS bowl should not be tolerated. Nowhere to hide, no more excuses! Too bad Dorrell couldn't speak with the same confidence as his players at Media Day last week, saying only that the team has "worked very, very hard to get ourselves in the position to factor into the Conference race." Huh?! Looks like the players expect more than Dorrell. Having been embarrassed by his own misplaced optimism the last 4 years (including having the team wear ridiculous bracelets with "Pac-10 Champions" on them last year), and in fear of losing his job, Dorrell downplayed expectations this year, as we expected. Pathetic. This rah-rah article, by the way, was written by Rick Kimbrel of BruinBlitz writing for Rivals.com and published on Yahoo Sports. Last week he wrote a touching piece on how Eric Scott is a great man and he should be reinstated. Just a little bias there.

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