Maybe Notre Dame's head football coach Charlie Weiss has to state the obvious. His team is 1-9 and is being hailed as the worst team in that school's long and illustrious history. They may not win another game. There certainly are questions about his ability to coach the college game, despite his first 2 years at ND being positive, but there is one thing Weiss is very capable of doing. He is taking the blame (from Stewart Mandel, Sports Illustrated): read more
This will be a bit obvious today, given yet another embarrassing loss to Notre Dame yesterday, but we will stick with it because we must be relentless until the outcome (Dorrell is fired) is secure. For those who are new to DD or are coming back after a hiatus, we have been using Dan Guerrero's own words to assess Dorrell's performance during the season. Here is what Guerrero said he expects this season:
"The important thing this year," Guerrero said, "is that we don't beat ourselves, that we play with consistency, that we're an excellent second half team and that we improve as the year progresses."
As we have posted all season and will continue to do, here is our assessment of Karl Dorrell's performance yesterday against Notre Dame with Guerrero's clear points of analysis in mind (obviously this won't be surprising): read more
Karl Dorrell has not been fired yet … we just want to keep you all up to date. Also, that was not an asteroid that hit Los Angeles last night … it was not an earthquake. It was not an act of God warning us of the apocalypse. The city of Los Angeles just plained sucked last night. What kills us is that on the day Dorrell should be hammered in the press, SuC hands it to us again … an epic loss to lowly Stanford at the Coliseum … taking most of the press and pressure from Dorrell. Unreal. Notre Dame beat us with only 140 yards gained!! We hate writing about this.
But Dorrell cannot hide from this loss. TJ Simers: read more
For the second year in a row Karl Dorrell has allowed Notre Dame to shame our football program. For the second year in a row Dorrell lost a game we should have won against the most storied college football program. Two games that will live in Dorrell infamy.
Someone explain to us why Dorrell would have freshman walk-on MacLeod Bethel-Thompson passing more than he ever had Ben Olson pass?? When he never let MacBeth throw even 1 pass during the entire 4th quarter against Washington when that game was already in hand?? Notre Dame was getting NOTHING done against our defense … read more
It's Saturday and Notre Dame is coming to the Rose Bowl to play our Bruins. Could there be any less hype?? Talk about anti-climactic, this game should be a headliner and it's barely recording a blip locally. Given the highlight status last year's game in South Bend got for some over-rated over-hyped QB and his coach, and given the storied history of Notre Dame AND the Rose Bowl combined, this game should be front page news everywhere. And yet, it won't be shown in maybe 85% of the country.
Morgan Center has been pimping this game since last Spring, forcing read more
The spread on the game has widened in the last couple of days and has UCLA favored to win by 21.5 to 22.5 points. The line started out at 22 then tightened to as much as 20.5. 3 touchdowns is a huge spread for a Dorrell coached team. It's surprising with his record that bettors feel they can trust him with such a big margin. But the numbers look so strongly in our favor. The last time we saw this was against Utah. And we all know how that turned out.
Could it happen again, twice in one young season?? Sure. But it won't happen this Saturday. Notre Dame is that bad and we are at home. All we have to do is maintain possession and time of possession and we will win. That is not hard to do against this Notre Dame squad. If ever there was a time to run the ball, go for easy pass plays, it's this game.
This week's Stat of the Week is one that we haven't used before in the 1.5 seasons we have been doing this. Before we get to it lets review last week's Stat of the Week: +2 in turnovers. Obviously, turnovers were key to our winning the Oregon State game. We never imagined we'd be that right. That makes us 5 for 5 this year.
This week's stat that will be key to our winning the game is: time of possession. Look for read more
We finally have our chance at making things right with the Irish. Payback, redemption, revenge, some score to settle … whatever you want to call it … we got to do it. Last year, as you all remember, we coughed one up to Notre Dame in South Bend in the final moments in embarrassing fashion (snatching defeat from the jaws of victory), giving Brady Quinn several million dollars extra per year to play with. And how can we ever forget Karl Dorrell thanking Notre Dame for the loss.
We still don't have any desire to break down the opponent or the game. We can't summon up the interest … Karl Dorrell has ruined it for us this year. He needs to beat some real teams to get us interested enough to look deeply at matchups. So we'll bring you some notes. You know already that Notre Dame has set a record for futility in starting out 0-5 for the first time ever in their long and storied history. What you may not know is that Notre Dame can match their worst losing streak in their history at 8 games with a loss to us on Saturday. In 1960 they started out 2-0 then ended the season on an 0-8 streak. Given the place football has in Notre Dame history that would be a monumentally bad achievement to match. And they play top 10 ranked Boston College and top ranked SuC in their following 2 games. They need this win or their record losing streak will go to 10 games. Their backs are against the wall and we cannot come out playing the way we have every single game this year so far and expect to walk away with a win.
Another interesting note comes from poster KernBruin on bruinzone: read more
It's going to get real y'all. The Bruin Show live online radio program begins at 6 PM Wednesday PDT and this week will welcome famed Notre Dame bloggers CW from Rakes of Mallow and Frank Vitovitch from Uhnd.com. You can listen in live from ANYWHERE on the planet that has an internet connection. There will be Notre Dame homers tuning in and calling in from everywhere. Don't be a fool and miss it. Call in or chat live with Notre Dame nation and talk your best smack. Bring it!
DumpDorrell will be on the show so if you must show your man-love for Karl Dorrell then this is the time to let it all out. Just make sure your never-been-laid, left-at-the-alter, man-hatin', once-a-week bathing aunt from a third cousin aint around because chances are we are going to talk PAYBACK! Obviously we are going to be talking about the Notre Dame game and their disastrous start - show some hospitality to our unfortunate foes, although that doesn't mean you can't be happy about their demise! "Brady Quinn and Jeff Samardzija aren't going to walk through that door!!"
Go Bruins!! (graphic from BruinRoar)
The two worlds of college football are at odds again concerning UCLA football and Karl Dorrell. There is the MSM reporters and columnists love affair with Karl Dorrell no matter how awful his numbers are and then there are the analysts that don’t give Dorrell any respect. We saw it last year with the MSM hyping Dorrell to challenge USC for the conference title while analysts had us finishing no higher than 4th. We know how last season turned out, 7-6 and 4th in the conference during an average conference year. The analysts, including DD, were right and the MSM were left with only the win over SC to fuel the Dorrell hype.
Now, analysts have our ‘07 pre-season national ranking all over the map with 4 ranking us top 20 and 2 not ranking us at all, but one analyst, ESPN’s Greg Schlabach, doesn’t even have us finishing in the top 2 of our conference next season. You may recall that Schlabach is the only analyst saying that Dorrell is on the hot seat in ‘07. But it may be even more significant to point out that read more
