Update: Ryan Mallett's mother is saying that her son has not made any decision yet. Calls reports of his transferring to UCLA false.
Rick Neuheisel has been on a tear. As we pointed earlier this week, Michigan 5-star freshman QB Ryan Mallett is expected to transfer to UCLA. There were rumors all day on the boards. Now, AM 570 just reported that the transfer will happen. For the rest, we will send you to BruinsNation who has the scoop. Wow. UCLA football is exciting again! Go Bruins!!
The initial reports of the big recruiting weekend, when 18 or 19 of our commits made their official visits, contain the usual story lines. Some recruits are saying they will stay committed if Walker stays, and some recruits are saying they are committed to UCLA, not the coach. There is more Walker hyping too. We won't get too much into the recruit story here because that talk has been around for some time.
What we want to highlight are the quotes from current players, Chris Foster LAT reporting: read more
Dan Guerrero has some tricky business to attend to this weekend. Brian Dohn, among others, is reporting that DG will be interviewing Norm Chow tomorrow. Also, there are 19 of 21 committed recruits coming to UCLA for their official visits this weekend. One player who made his official visit already, Hubie Graham, has already committed to Illinois. 2 players who have committed, Milton Knox and Cory Harkey, won't be making the trip, according to Scout.com. Knox instead will be headed to Florida for a recruiting visit and Harkey has a basketball tournament to play in.
Nevertheless, DG will be very busy this weekend. There is so much riding on him making the right choice he better be busy.
… this is not over. Brian Dohn apparently continues to think this is not over. And Karl Dorrell … he met with all the '08 recruits on Monday and, according to Dohn, the meeting went well and the recruits remain committed:
This is a bit dated, but because of blog issues, I didn't get a chance to post it until now. Many of the committed players were on campus Monday to meet with coach Karl Dorrell and the coaching staff. From what I understand, Dorrell was tremendous during the meeting, and all the recruits remain on board. That said, the feelings of the recruits could change if there are any changes with the coaching staff.
We will work on something action oriented next week once the first ad is placed in the Daily Bruin. We have people submitting many ideas on this, but it won't be anything you probably couldn't imagine yourself. We will let you know how to help out then. In the meantime, give us your thoughts and ideas on the updated draft ad copy.
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!
At the rate Dorrell is pissing people off and stretching the definition of integrity and character to murky levels he might leave himself with the slimmest margin for error possible for this season. Today we are finding out that not only did Dorrell screw up the handling of star recruit Brian Price’s paperwork to the NCAA, making Price ineligible to even be on Spaulding Field, but apparently someone in CEO Dorrell’s tight run ship leaked the details of Price’s legally protected private information to a website (we don’t know which site) to explain the hold-up. And that has Brian Price’s father steaming mad and he’s going public with it (Brian Dohn, Daily News):
“I told Coach Dorrell that it’s not my place to deal with the leak. That’s his responsibility,” Frank Price said. “I didn’t really want to deal with the leak. But I did express my displeasure in the fact that, first of all, you dropped the ball with your No. 1 dude, and then you leak information that’s not totally accurate.”
This can’t be good for anybody, especially Dorrell and the team. To face such vocal parental discontent and accusations of a breach of trust and negligence at the start of a special season has to be read more
Brian Dohn, Daily News, is reporting that prized 5 star recruit, Brian Price - the messiah of the Dorrell cult, is weeks away from joining the team. After having endured endless off-season jabber about how great Brian Price is and how his signing is a SIGN that Dorrell is “turning the (proverbial) corner” … that Dorrell is not only fighting the recruiting war but WINNING it … that Brian Price was going to come in and make a huge difference right away and challenge the nation for the sack title, we are reluctant to state the obvious. He isn’t part of the team yet. If Karl Dorrell, the CEO, the coach who, it was reported by Lonnie White (formerly UCLA beat reporter for LAT), likes the administrative part of the job and who is turning this program around finally can’t get his top top recruit’s paperwork sorted by Training Camp what are we to think?? Who goofed? Who is to blame? We’d seriously like to hear from the Dorrell cult on this.
Anyhow, not to pound too obvious a point, but Price isn’t going to be contributing most likely for the first few games at this point. After that it’s up in the air. He could redshirt. Anyone else see an excuse forming here? Dohn:
UCLA freshman defensive tackle Brian Price, the gem of the freshman class, returned to practice Wednesday, albeit not in the way he would have liked.
Before meeting with members of UCLA’s coaching staff to get an update on his NCAA Clearinghouse issues, Price stood atop a parking deck adjacent to Spaulding Field and watched the morning practice.
Whereas a few days ago UCLA was optimistic a resolution was close, sources said it could now be a few weeks before a resolution is reached.
Price did not want to comment about the specifics of the clearinghouse issues. UCLA coach Karl Dorrell said earlier this week the NCAA had all the documents needed.
However, particulars with the case could slow down the ruling process for a few weeks.
Hopefully last post on football while we are in the middle of our true basketball season. Another article of note regarding our ‘08 commits, noting that all the commits, in their own words, are solid. It’s a love-fest written by a UCLA fansite representative for rivals.com. As we have noted before, give credit where credit is due. If these commits do sign a year from now, great. We do have a ton more scholies to give out, and a lot can happen in such a long period, so the story of ‘08 is not anywhere near complete … but great so far.
The article does point out three important things: read more
Speedpost for today’s Monday Roundup.
1. Congratulatory piece about recruiting in the Daily Bruin giving very recently hired WR coach Eric Scott a ton of credit for helping bring in our ‘08 recruiting commits. We will give EScott his due, but we remain on the sidelines on ‘08 recruiting and against the EScott hiring for WR coach.
2. Speaking of recruiting, anyone catch CSTV’s Tom Lemming piece on our ‘07 recruiting class?? While Morgan Center, the Daily Bruin and all the Dorrellistas were praising Dorrell for his 10 signings, others weren’t so hot on the class. Read Lemming’s view on our ‘07 class and the rest of the conference. Hint: He has us ranked 7th. Ouch.
3. Spring practice will be opening up late this year in April. We will be talking about it soon. We have received some interesting emails on this. More later.
4. We are in the Sweet 16 … Win And Move On!! Go Bruins!!
Just days ago everyone was hyping the 08 class with the 8 early commits, praising Dorrell, Walker and even EScott for their recruiting bonanza. So much can happen in a year as we have seen many times. Yet, in only a couple of days we get our first de-commit in safety EJ Woods of Crespi, as reported by Scout.com (membership required). Brian Dohn of the LA Daily News, who has pushed the great recruiting agenda a little too enthusiastically, has more on the de-commit which he is saying is actually NOT a de-commit but a “re-opening” of his commitment. What is a journalist doing mincing words for the subjects of his articles?? Whatever … Dohn is getting away from objectivity a little bit here. Woods is now talking to Miami and Ohio State, and lets not forget he is a teenager. What exactly about that sounds like a commitment?
Now if Woods picks up his grades to qualify academically for UCLA, Dohn quotes Woods as saying he will enroll here. Yeah, and Dohn will put up his lunch money on that happening. Hey, we don’t know what the kid is thinking any more than Dohn, but we sure as heck know that a teenager of the 08 class talking to other schools in March 07 certainly isn’t a commit. It’s also only 1 of 8, and since that big commit announcement there have been a few more commits, but it shows how precarious this 08 stuff is. Nevertheless, the coaching staff has to be out there getting commitments … we have to reload in a big way in 08. There has to be progress there in a significant way to deal with the mass 07 exodus, but to get all hyped up about 08 commits is a bit far-fetched.
Recruiting is a largely thankless process … there should be no praise until recruits sign, yet there can be hell to pay if there are no commits. But getting paid a million dollars a year to do it should lighten the worry some.
