Totally unrelated sports commentary, but this was something I just needed to share:

I was waiting at the gas station this morning, earnestly soaking up everything that NPR had to offer on the radio this morning about Obama's historic victory last night, and also likely reveling in the fact that during my absence, gasoline prices had dropped to $2.59 a gallon (woot!)

As I was getting ready to step out of my car, I heard a dull thud and crash from behind my line of sight. A Ford Explorer and an older Buick had been involved in an accident right behind me - the Explorer had actually run off the road and smashed directly in to the pole holding the sign at the ARCO station. The bricks next to the sign smashed apart and came within several feet of landing on my car. Thankfully, nothing happened to myself or the car.

I couldn't exactly tell what had happened - the driver of the Explorer was a younger gentleman and visibly angry at the other driver - almost irrationally so considering the amount of damage to the cars (which was rather significant, and would have led me to first ask if everyone was all right instead of getting out of the car and screaming "FUCK" at the top of my lungs, and then proceeding to bitch at the other driver. I probably would have done that second.)

The left three lanes of traffic were all dead stopped heading up towards the 405, and the far right lane was open, which led me to believe that the Explorer was likely barrelling down the right-most lane and the Buick was trying to cross all the lanes of traffic to make a left turn, and the Explorer didn't see the Buick until it was too late, and...well, there you go. The driver of the Buick was a younger black woman, who was visibly upset and also somewhat angry at the Explorer driver.

As I'm sitting next to all of this rather incredulously, I notice a middle-aged gentleman in a late model Ford filling up in front of me. He looks at the accident, and mutters something about "those stupid big cars."

What he says next floors me. As he notices the younger woman getting out of the car, he laughs to himself, and then remarks to me "Well, now that one of them has been elected President, they think they own the roads."

While yesterday was a watershed event, that doesn't mean that everyone's work to remove the ugly stains of racism and fear should cease. That event sure crystallized that for me, that's for sure.

So that was my morning. The drive in to work was a little less fulfilling than I expected it to be.

Labels: Obama, Random Useless Stuff

Blah, blah. Work. Busy. Etcetera. Expect this to continue.

However, given that I was theatened to be slapped with various species of toxic mushrooms by Twist 'N Hook over at CGB unless we pulled together the Pac-10 roundtable. Also, something about a coup. Anyways, the questions:



1) The Ty Willingham experiment at UW is mercifully over. What went wrong? Why couldn't he replicate the success he had at Stanford?

Really simple answer here. Because he paid not attention to recruiting. Recruiting in Washington is far more difficult than recruiting in California, if only because you have to poach kids from California. Imagine your selling points here for a moment:

"Yes, I understand that its' 75 degrees every day in Santa Barbara and the women are incredibly hot there, but what you really want to do is come somewhere where it rains 300 days a year and all the women are covered in nine layers of clothing. Doesn't that sound awesome? No? What the hell is wrong with you?"

Also, Keith Gilbertson killed that program. No one wanted to play for Washington during that whole time period, and it almost looked as though Willingham could never recover from that. Willingham is not a real rah-rah guy, and Washington really needs a rah-rah guy to inject some life in to the program. It really is too bad that Jim Mora, Jr. is getting ready to take over the Seahawks, because I always thought he would be a perfect fit at U-Dub. As such, you can probably expect Washington to go after someone younger (though not necessarily Lane Kiffin, despite what many people may think).

2) Who do you see as a possible replacement for the Huskies? Any idea how close this team is to being relevant again?

See above. I know a lot of people are talking about Kiffin as a potential replacement, but I'm not sure he's the best available option. The Huskies really do need someone a bit fiery and who can inject life in the program - I'm not quite sure Kiffin has that sort of personality. I see him ending up somewhere like Syracuse, but maybe that's just the crazy in me talking.

I've always thought Mora would be perfect in this role out at U-Dub, but there's pretty much no chance the Huskies land him now that he's taking over the Seahawks next week (although admittedly, both the Huskies and Seahawks have been playing about as poorly as they could lately).

Could the Huskies make a play for Tedford? It's a possibility. Tedford's the best thing to happen to the Bears in the history of their football program, and yet the fan base often takes him for granted up there. The potential exposure and more elegant history of the Husky football program *may* be a lure for him, but I honestly doubt it. Just like Belotti's 'faux' discussion with UCLA last year, I wouldn't see this going far.

If I had to pick, I'd be reaching for one of the names at the mid-majors - someone like Mendenhall, Pat Hill (bad pick, but it's a possibility - one that I would laugh at), or Chris Petersen.

Right now though, I'm sure the boosters would kill for Mora, and I'd be doing the same thing. He's a perfect fit.

3) As a visiting fan following your team, what do you think is the best venue in the Pac-10 to attend a game? What is the worst? Don't consider travel distance, but everything else is fair game.

I really need to pass on this question - I've only been to two Pac-10 stadiums - the Rose Bowl and the Coliseum, and it'd be pretty obvious which venue I would pick. Taken as overall experience, however (I've been to the following collegiate stadiums: Sanford Stadium, Neyland Stadium, Jordan-Hare, Bryant-Denny, Williams-Brice, Notre Dame Stadium, Death Valley (Clemson), Tiger Stadium/Death Valley (LSU), Vaught Hemingway, Bobby Dodd, and Doak Campbell), I only have this to say:

There is only one stadium out of all of these where you tailgate on a golf course. That would be the Rose Bowl. When I explain to my friends back east that you actually tailgate on the golf course, they look at me incredulously and ask, "How come UCLA tailgates aren't world renowned?" And well, the answer would be...this is the West Coast. That's why.

I've heard Autzen Stadium is pretty cool, but I can't imagine tailgating in such crappy weather.

4) Besides your own team's, of course, who's got the best mascot in the Pac-10? Lamest?

I hate to say this, but Traveler's pretty fricken' pimp. Tommy Trojan's an idiot, though. Real humans shouldn't be mascots - that right only lives with Chief Osceola, and that's only because he's got an official endorsement from the Seminole Nation. Tommy Trojan is just retarded. But Traveler's awesome.

Worst Pac-10 mascot? It'd be way too easy to pick on the Stanford Tree, so I'll instead pick on their rival's mascot up the road:


It's....my grandfather. In a costume. Your California Golden Bears mascot. Certainly enjoying the 'golden' part of the mascot, if by 'golden', you meant 'old'.

5) Male cheerleaders: yea or nay?

Nay, nay, a million times nay. I'm embarrassed that UCLA has male cheerleaders. Another really interesting question/statement: I feel very sorry for the UCLA yell crew for about the first four months of the season. They have to wear these insanely long sweatshirts in 90 degree weather. That. Has. Got. To. Suck.

I consider it punishment for having male cheerleaders.

Labels: Pac-10 Roundtable, UCLA Football

You may have heard a little bit about Ashley Todd over the past 24 hours. Ms. Todd was a McCain campaign volunteer who was apparently mugged at an ATM and robbed, ostensibly by a very violent man who supported Barack Obama, and let Ms. Todd know all about how he didn't appreciate her support of John McCain.

Only one small issue....Ms. Todd kinda' made up the whole story. Oops.

But here's the real kicker, as I was perusing the pictures at CNN.com:



What the police don't want to tell you is that she was beat up because she had a Phil Fulmer bumper sticker on her car as well. I think that's all something we could potentially get behind.

Labels: Crazy McCain Supporters

Yes, it's late. Yes, I've been busy. Yes, I will continue to be busy over the next week - at least. But! I'll still put in my civic duty and respond to the Pac-10 Roundtable. Dave over at Addicted to Quack is hosting this week. On the questions!

1. While Arizona's victory over California certainly caught most of us by surprise, perhaps even more surprising was the 42-27 score. With many of us thinking that Cal was the second best team in the conference, this result throws a huge twist into the Rose Bowl race. Is Arizona really that good?

Probably not, no. After all, this is Arizona. Cal is continuing to shoot themselves in the foot by rotating their quarterbacks. Unless Tedford can nail down a 'true' starting quarterback, that team is going to struggle. I wouldn't be surprised to see UCLA pull a major upset against Cal this weekend given the uneven nature of Cal's quarterback play.

All that said about how erratic Cal has been, Arizona is not terrible. Tuitama has stopped making some of the dumber decisions he often made earlier in his career, and that Arizona running game has not only relied on Grigsby, but Keola Antolin just ran all over the Bears defense last Saturday as well.

Arizona's definitely going bowling this year, but if I still had to pick, I'd think 7-5 is where they likely end up. That all changes if they can beat USC this weekend. Unfortunately, while I earlier thought USC could stumble against Arizona on Saturday, I don't think that's happening now that the Cats have surprised Cal. USC should be ready for this game.

1a. Is Cal's defense really that terrible?

It's starting to look that way, isn't it? Their pass defense was torched against Michigan State, and Arizona ran all over them. There just doesn't seem to be any consistency there. What worries me about the Cal defense is their apparent lack of preparation. While I don't fault the coaches for not focusing on tons of Arizona's players, this quote caught my attention:

Asked if the Bears had prepared to face Antolin, Cal linebacker Anthony Felder shook his head and said, "No. 2? We didn't see any of him on tape. The whole thing was Grigsby."

That doesn't exactly inspire confidence in the coaching staff that they're doing their absolute best to prep the kids for the weekend. There's no doubt that Cal's defensive line is not a strong suit on their team, and that's starting to wear on their more talented players in the secondary. That could be a real reason why the defense has appeared so poor this year. If you don't have strength at the defensive line, the rest of your defense is going to look pretty silly.

2. USC's 69-0 beatdown over Washington State rates among the worst losses in the history of the sport. The Cougars had a total of four first downs, three turnovers, and 28 passing yards. If there are any Washington State fans left out there, what do you say to calm their existential crisis at this point?

I'm not quite sure. You're in the first year of the Paul Wulff era, and as I've mentioned from the start, he's not going to be the answer up there in the Palouse. I get that Washington State has pretty much no talent this year - but let's be honest, you would have at least hoped that the Cougs weren't getting hosed every single weekend.

It's not even depressing at this point - it's just embarrassing. This year's Washington State team is easily the worst team to play in the Pacific 10 Conference since its inception in 1978 - and it's not even really close. The 1979 Arizona State Sun Devils finished 1-11, and that's probably the closest that any team gets. The year included a 49-0 loss to Toledo of Ohio and a 45-0 loss to Oregon State. The Devils' lone win, however, was a 45-7 thrashing of West Virginia, and Washington State probably wouldn't beat many weekend rec league football teams by that score.

Bad, bad, bad. But hey, at least you guys have that whole College Gameday thing. So there's that.

3. Oregon State is at it again. Despite being the butt of jokes at the beginning of the year, the Beavers now look to be rolling and headed toward another top three finish. Are the Beavers primed for another late season run, or were victories over the Washington schools just smoke and mirrors?

I've come to the conclusion that Oregon State needs to just play a bunch of Div-2 cupcakes to start the year - maybe that way, they can actually enter the middle part of the season undefeated and improve from there.

I tend to take any victories over the Washington schools with a truckload of salt this year, but I still think OSU can translate some of this momentum in to late season wins. The Beavs next two games are very winnable (Arizona State and UCLA), before a showdown against Cal. If the Beavers can take care of business against the Devils and Bruins, there's every opportunity for them to slot in at #2 or #3 in the conference.

4. Stanford's bowl dreams just took a major hit when they laid an egg at the Rose Bowl. While Stanford is 4-4 at this point, Washington State looms as their only easy game, and they still must play at Oregon, at home versus an SC team that will be looking for revenge, and the Big Game in Strawberry Canyon. Given the brutal schedule, is it too early to bugle 'TAPS' on their bowl chances?

Nah, it's probably not too early to declare their bowl ambitions on life support. That loss against UCLA probably kills their chances. Their only likely chance to steal one would be against Oregon following their gimme against Washington State this year. And just watch - they'll go and do something stupid like lose to Washington State this year. Jim Harbaugh still has this team on the right path - they've been competitive in every game they've played in this year, and they're only going to get better.


5. At this stage in the game, USC is Barack Obama, and the field is John McCain. Make the best case that you can for SC not winning yet another conference crown.

Is USC found in bed with a dead woman or live boy? Because that's about the only way this one's gonna turn around. USC just isn't losing the Pac-10. Cal's not going to be able to get past their quarterback issues. Oregon already got spanked by USC....about the only team that has a real shot right now is Oregon State, and does anyone honestly think Oregon State isn't going to slip up somewhere? I think they do at some point - and that gives USC the edge.

I just don't see how USC doesn't win the conference. Who knows, though, I guess.

Labels: Pac-10 Football, Pac-10 Roundtable, UCLA Football

Yeah, it's a few days late. But the boys at California Golden Blogs were kind enough to pitch in this week and come up with the questions. Let's just hope they didn't also provide me with mascot advice this week, either.



Anyhow, on to the questions:

Is it possible that USC puts itself back in the national title race? Is it deserving to be back in the national title race?

Here's news for you: USC is already back in the national title race. Their early season loss to Oregon State wasn't going to keep them out of the picture - it's not like their loss to Oregon State in 2006 or loss to Stanford in 2007 did that, either.

The Big 12 and SEC schedules are brutal for most of the top teams this year - Texas still faces a rough road, as does Alabama. These teams are very likely to lose at least once, in which case USC is right there - lurking. However, there's also nothing in USC's recent history that doesn't say they won't trip up again for no reason during the course of the year, and I fully expect them to.

They're not losing this weekend, though. They play Wazzu. I think I could play Wazzu and win.

The season is 7 weeks old, nearly half over. What's the biggest surprise in the Pac-10 so far this year?

How about the fact that the conference is pretty darn awful, especially given the fact that the conference was so strong last year? I don't think anyone quite saw the drop-off in conference quality coming this year. We knew a lot of teams would be in transition, but there's just a feeling of singular awfulness to many of the lower-tier teams in the conference.

Even then, the upper echelon teams have often looked just as bad on a week to week basis - suddenly, people are referring to Oregon State as a 'pretty good' team, despite the fact that they just looked atrocious in the early part of the season. Arizona State has been a major disappointment, and both Oregon (Boise State) and Cal (Maryland) have lost head-scratching games.

As for the bottom half of the conference....oy. UCLA's quarterback situation is just embarrassing. Kevin Craft has all the arm strength and accuracy of a blindfolded one-armed midget. His coaching staff apparently keeps him on the same gameplan that I would be kept to in a collegiate football game: throwing balls no more than 7 yards downfield at any given time. Washington has no skill players outside of Jack Locker, and Washington State would have a hard time competing in the Big Sky Conference this year.

After dispensing with Oregon and Arizona State, USC seems to have righted itself back onto the path towards another Pac-10 championship. Obviously everyone's looking to Cal as the last serious challenge, while no one expects this weekend's trip to Wazzu to be anything but ugly, but 3 potentially tricky road trips remain: Arizona, Stanford, and UCLA. Where are the Trojans most likely to be tripped up?

As I've mentioned before, I'm going with Arizona to be the trickiest of these remaining matchups. And yes, I really have no idea why. My only line of thought with this is that those games in which USC is looking ahead are typically the ones where they get tripped up. I highly doubt they'll be looking past Stanford or UCLA this year - as for Arizona, that just smells like a look-ahead game.

USC's had troubles on the road against Arizona as well; in 2006, it took a second-half flurry of points for the Trojans to come back and win by less than a touchdown, if memory serves correctly.

Nothing in the matchup says that Arizona should have a shot in this game, though. But just call it a gut feeling.

Although it's still too early to make bowl predictions with any sort of accuracy, it seems at this point in the season that the Pac-10 is unlikely to fill its 7 contractual bowl slots. How many Pac-10 teams do you think will eventually become bowl eligible?

6, most likely. You can pencil in USC, Oregon and Cal, but from there things start to get a little murky.

Both Stanford and Arizona are sitting with four wins, but Arizona's loss last week to Stanford really hurts their chances. I had them penciled in at about 7-5 without the loss to Stanford, but now their margin for error is essentially dialed back to zero. Between the two, I probably like Stanford better at this point, but I'm willing to wager Arizona finds a way to sneak in as well.

And now, things start to get really dicey. Oregon State's at 3-3, but I'd pick them to finish strong (as they are wont to do) and make a run at a bowl game.

UCLA's not going to go bowling - they're 2-4 and they've already played Washington State. IE, not gonna happen. I figure UCLA likely finishes the season with 5 wins, if they're lucky. And I'm not buying Arizona State to recover. They've just got too many issues on their offensive line and with their running game to compete in the conference.

Arizona State has obviously been a massive disappointment so far this year. Dennis Erickson has never been one to stay in a "rebuilding situation." How long do you anticipate Erickson staying for and what can be done for next year to rebound from the disaster that is 08?

The Devils have no strong lineman - either on the offensive or defensive lines. That's apt to kill you, and that's what we're seeing this year. Skill position players can only do so much when the trenches are falling apart all around them.

Erickson needs to do a better job of recruiting beef to the desert, and I'm sure he's going to make it a priority. I've always been of the mindset that Erickson's success last year was a bit of a mirage, and Arizona State was never truly as good as they believed their record indicated last year. Arizona State barely beat UCLA last year when Osaar Rashaan was the starting quarterback. They had a ton of flaws - and those are just catching up with them this year. This isn't to say that I don't think Erickson isn't a good coach - he is - but the rebuilding process in Tempe is going to take some time as well. This wasn't going to be a one-year turnaround, and I think the Sun Devil faithful are starting to come to terms with that.

Labels: Pac-10 Roundtable

I will get to my college fotball recap a little later this week.

In the meantime, relating a little story from my excursions this weekend:

My girlfriend's parents happened upon two extra tickets to the Dodgers/Phillies game tonight, which we just returned from. At the game, the following occurred to me:

1) I encountered a fight between no less than seven people in the bathroom.
2) I was paid five dollars to return a half-eaten hot dog (that I had been given for free, mind you) to a Phillies fan, and
3) I saw a Phillies fan fall from the railing of the Loge Level down to the Field Level, about three rows in front of us, as we were leaving the game.

This was the single weirdest sporting event I have ever been to in my entire life. And Phillies fans just need to calm the hell down. Seriously.

Labels: Dodgers, MLB, Unrelated Sporting Events

As you may know (if you're a Georgia partisan), the Senator has pulled together his own quasi-poll that requires far less thinking/ranking than the actual Blog Poll, so my reduced mental capacity has decided to take part.

(Really, I just don't have the patience for the BlogPoll. Who cares who the 23rd or 24th ranked team in college football is? I don't, and I can't imagine spending the time ranking the teams. Also, I'm lazy.)

He's named it "The Mumme Poll" in honor of our dear towel-wearing friend, Hal Mumme. Really, he's like the SEC's equivalent of Ed Kezirian (see, I even included a little UCLA joke in this thing. That's got to score me some points.)

By the way, totally unrelated: did anyone else know that Ed has a Wikipedia page? Good lord, do I feel insignificant now.

The voting? Oh yeah, the voting. So the rules, just to get this out of the way: We rank the top 5 teams, and name twleve total teams. Ostensibly, the 6th through 12th ranked teams are kinda' named in order, but they're not really in any true order, and we don't attach numbers to them. The point isn't to say that BYU is ranked 'ahead' of USC - it's merely to show that both USC and BYU are on the outside looking in. Here's my first ballot:

1. LSU
2. ALABAMA
3. OKLAHOMA
4. MISSOURI
5. PENN STATE

Texas
BYU
Georgia
USC
Florida
Texas Tech
Ohio State

My primary rationale for ranking LSU ahead of Alabama lies in the fact that I think LSU has a stronger offensive and defensive line than Bama, and better depth. We'll see if LSU is for real this weekend against Florida, and I still tend to think Alabama outperformed slightly against Georgia (yes, they wholly deserved to kick our ass, but I don't think that game's 31-0 at the half if the game is played again).

Labels: Mumme Poll, Pac-10 Football, SEC Football

Well, good week for UCLA. You may have noticed I've been somewhat negligent in updating this week - work is keeping me busy this week, so it'll be hit and miss. In the interim, I'm the lucky soul who gets to host this week's Pac-10 Roundtable; maybe I should do it every week.

At any rate, on to the questions!

1. Every week we take a look at the Pac-10 scoreboard, and every week it just seems to get worse for the teams at the bottom of the conference. Just how bad is the bottom of the conference this year? In historical terms, can you name a year in which there were so many poor teams at the bottom of the Pac-10? What do you think is the primary factor for this huge drop-off between last season and this season in the conference?

I honestly cannot remember another year (in my recent memory) in which the bottom of the Pac-10 was this awful. Washington is just abysmal, and Washington State is all kinds of awful. It's almost to the point where it is somewhat embarrassing; I feel sorry for them - it's just a terrible year. I don't see the Cougs winning a single game. They would have a tough time breaking .500 in IAA.

If I had to pick another year in which the Pac-10 was this terrible top to bottom, I would have to go all the way back to 1963. Washington won the Pac-10 with an overall record of 6-5. Washington lost to Air Force, Pitt, Iowa, UCLA, and Illinois in the Rose Bowl. Their conference victories, however, point to how truly awful the rest of the conference was: a 34-7 shellacking of Oregon State, a 22-7 trucking of Southern Cal, and a 16-0 blanking of Washington State in the Apple Cup.

Here was the New York Times headline from the Huskies' defeat of the Trojans: "Washington upsets U.S.C. with passes". Apparently the Trojans were thrown off by the forward pass in the game, as if it were some form of alien offense.

As far as what led to this year, a lot of it has to do with personnel. Washington State just has no one on their roster to speak of, and they have recruited extremely poorly in the past few years. The same applies to Washington as well - they have Jake Locker, and a bunch of nobodies.

Willingham is gone after this year; I feel more sorry for Washington State fans, who are stuck with Paul Wulff for some time. Hint to Coug fans: Paul Wulff is not the answer. You're going to be in for a rough four to five years.

2. Coming in to the season, many people thought Arizona State would be a dark-horse contender in the Pac-10. Things haven't exactly gone according to plan so far in Tempe. What does Arizona State have to do to get back on track, and can Erickson replicate the same sort of success he saw last year with the team?

Wow, how quickly this team has come back to Earth. I always thought Arizona State's performance last year was a bit of luck and a lot of smoke and mirrors. You can't survive very long in any conference without strong lines, and Arizona State has neither a strong offensive or defensive line. That showed in both the UNLV and Georgia losses. In addition, the Devils' defense wasn't nearly as strong as it appeared to be last year - the talent just really isn't there on that side of the ball - at least the type of talent that was there back during the Tillman days in the mid-90s.

It'll be tough for the Devils to do much more the rest of the way. I figure they'll probably muddle around against the middling teams, and end up somewhere in the neighborhood of 5-4 in the conference, and make a fabulous trip out to San Francisco for the Emerald Bowl.

The next couple of years are likely much better for the Sun Devils, however. Erickson's a damn good coach, and the Devils have some strong talent coming up and heading to Tempe. That defense needs to get better before they really can compete in the conference, and you know that's where Dennis is going to be focusing from a recruiting and talent development standpoint.

3. Well, so much for the other Oregon school beating USC. Does USC's erratic nature open the door for any other teams to surprise the Trojans the rest of this year, or do you think USC's got it out of their system at this point? Out of the Trojans' remaining opponents, which team do you feel will give USC the most trouble, and why?

I still hold to my belief that USC is going to win the Pac-10 with a conference record of 7-2. That means I think they're going to lose another game. I have about as much chance of guessing this game as I do of picking the stock market bottom.

There's nothing that USC has shown so far this year that tells me that they've learned how not to lose head-scratching games. They've been doing this ever since 2006, and they're going to continue doing it, even against a somewhat weakened Pac-10. You could still see flashes of this against Oregon last week - start out slow, and then the light switch clicks on, and they go "Hey, we're better than this. Perhaps we should win the game", and from there is was 34 straight points against Oregon and a 44-10 whitewashing.

There are still days where USC forgets to hit the on switch. At some point, it becomes a trend, and I think it's easily reaching that threshold. USC is a very talented team. They should have been undefeated this year, but shoulda's don't buy you a whole lot in college football.

(Alright, if I had to really pick; USC loses to Arizona. Yeah, I have no idea why, either.)

4. Answer: 2. 5. 10. Question: The number of years it will take for UCLA to challenge for the Pac-10 title. Discuss.

I know I'm going to get a lot of flak for the other guys for coming off as a total homer here, but I'm going to say it: Two years from now, UCLA will be challenging for the conference title.

Lemme give you a couple of reasons: first, both Norm Chow and DeWayne Walker are here for three years. This would mean they both are in the final years of their contracts in 2010, and both will undoubtedly be looking to put in their best efforts in order to polish up both of their resumes. Don't kid yourselves: those guys probably aren't going to be around forever.

Secondly, Neuheisel's teams have been very good at outperforming in their early years (let's just go ahead and ignore the under-performing in later years part until we cross that bridge, m'kay?). If anything, Neuheisel has shown that he can get an awful lot out of limited talent.

Finally, UCLA's talent influx is going to be hard to ignore at some point. Almost every quiality player right now is a freshman or sophomore on the UCLA squad. Two years down the line, these kids are going to be juniors and seniors, and make no mistake, these are good kids on this team. Brian Price is a beast. Datone Jones and Akeem Ayers have the ability to be special defensive players. That defense on UCLA is simply going to be stacked in two years time, and a quality defense is the first major step in challenging for the conference crown.

The offense will also have quality at the skill positions, but it's on the offensive line where Neuheisel has the most work cut out for himself over the next couple of years. That goes the farthest towards determining if this team can make strides, but I fully believe they will.

Now, that said - what does that all hold for UCLA long-term? I'm not sure. I'm not in a position where I can foresee UCLA dominance in the Pac-10 any time soon - but seven years ago, I would have said the same thing about Georgia in the SEC.

5. So, does Cal's rotating quarterback bingo have any chance of succeeding during the rest of the year? Can Tedford continue to alternate Riley and Longshore on a game-to-game basis, and perhaps more importantly, do you think he will?

I actually have some experience as a fan in this situation - one year ended well, the other year did not. The first was the 2002 Georgia Bulldogs, in which DJ Shockley spelled David Greene as the 'Dawgs starting quarterback. Perhaps not coincidentally, this was also the year that Georgia broke their 20 year drought of SEC championships, and Mark Richt was masterful in controlling the games between handing the reins off to both Greene and Shockley.

The second year was 2004. This year didn't go as well for us, and a lot of Georgia fans pointed to the constant spelling of Greene and Shockley as a reason (if we had known that this was merely setting us up for Shockley to school everyone in 2005 en route to another SEC title, maybe we would have been a little happier at the time. But I digress.)

My concern with Cal's situation is that Tedford still hasn't picked 'the guy'. It was fairly obvious that Greene was 'the guy' and Shockley was there to help out. As of now, with Tedford switching to Longshore to start against Arizona State, there is no 'the guy' in Cal's locker room. That's a little disconcerting. I would have been much more comfortable with this whole situation if Tedford had continued to spell Longshore with Riley, but now I fear every time Riley starts to press a little bit, he's going to get the hook.

And really, if there's anything Cal fans should know by now, it's that Longshore is exceedingly erratic as a qurterback. This sort of situation is onl going to accentuate his erratic nature, and I don't have good feelings about this ending well.

If for no other reason than that everyone else has looked bad, I'm still going to pick Cal to finish second in the conference. But there's no way they beat USC with this two quarterback thing.

6. Don't look too closely, but Mike Stoops may actually be in the process of saving his job out there in Tucson. What do the Wildcats need to do in order to continue their early conference success?

Can they continue to play UCLA and Washington? That would help - a lot.

On a more serious note, it's been Arizona's balance that has helped them this year. Grigsby has finally emerged as a viable alternative threat to Tuitama, and Tuitama has shed himself of that case of the stupids he always seemed to contract at crucial points during games. In short, the offense is just more fluid.

On the other hand, that defense ain't exactly the Desert Swarm, and that's why I think it's going to be tough for Arizona to compete for much longer in the Pac-10. Washington without Locker and UCLA are hardly offensive juggernauts. Arizona gave up 221 yards rushing...to the New Mexico State Lobos. What exaclty, pray-tell, do you think USC is going to do to them? Yeah, not good things. That's your answer.

All that said, Arizona's set up perfectly to make a run for 3rd place in the conference, and I'm sure that saves Stoops' job - at least for this year. Most of their tough games (USC, Cal, Arizona State) are at home, and there's a nice bye week built in between USC and Oregon (AKA, playing Washington State).

8-4 is a reasonable stretch goal. 7-5 smells more likely.

Labels: Pac-10 Football, Pac-10 Roundtable, UCLA Football

Over the past couple of weeks, you may have noticed that I've been more than a little annoyed at DeWayne Walker's defensive gameplans in both the Arizona and Fresno State games.

The good news is that he's starting to recognize some of the issue and it appears he's working towards mixing and matching the personnel to try and resolve some of these issues:

"Where we're struggling is third and (2 to 6 yards)," Walker said. "There's some things we've been successful on the last few years, and I think teams are picking up on it, so we have to figure out how we can do better from the third and 2 to 6. We're awful right now, and we've got to get it fixed."

To that end, Walker is going to be replacing Viney with Anthony Dye in nickel packages. It's nice to see that the new personnel is getting a catch to step up. I'm sure there will be growing pains, but it's nice to see that Walker is realizing that what we're doing right now simply isn't working on the defensive side of the ball.

I also mentioned that a lot of the problems in the secondary also are stemming from a lack of an effective pass rush. Walker's also going to be trying some different combinations and personnel at the ends as well:

"It's kind of hard to replace guys like Davis and Hickman," Walker said. "Those are special guys. Even when we were not bringing pressure, they were able to get to the quarterback. We'll look a little bit at personnel."

Walker said that Ayers and Jones were players who could help the pass rush.

"It's something where we either have to blitz more or use more guys to cover," Walker said.

It's nice to see that the coaching staff is going to start mixing up the defensive personnel. I don't expect all the freshman to be perfect and without mistakes, but it also should help push some of the veterans to realize that their job isn't safe, and if they want to continue to start, they're going to need to perform better than they have been over the past three weeks.

Labels: UCLA Football

Gold....just pure comedy gold. Whoever concocted this sucker deserves a large medal and a hug. It's hilarious:

Labels: ACC, Bad Coaches

Consider for just a moment how eerily parallel UCLA and Tennessee's years have been so far:

Both teams are sitting at 1-3.

Tennessee was largely expected to be a Top-25 team, while UCLA was clearly expected to be no better than a middling Pac-10 team. Talk about totally falling on your face and not living up to expectations. Tennessee has just been truly awful this year. Jonathan Crompton looks no closer to having an understanding of the offense than he was in week one. The 'Clawfense' has brought out the Photoshoppers, including this gem from EDSBS:


With games remaining against Alabama (#2), Georgia (#11), Vanderbilt (#19?! Really?!), it's really tough to see how the Vols get to six wins without a serious upset....just like UCLA.

Labels: Pac-10 Football, SEC Football, UCLA Football

Yeah, yeah - so we all took a week off the Roundtable - probably just an attempt for the Pac-10 to hide following two awful weeks for the conference. This week was thankfully better - well, for some at least.

Conquest Chronicles is hosting this week. On with the questions!

1. Let's start off with a conference wide question. With USC's loss to Oregon St. on Thursday, is the myth (which I never believed) of USC and the 9 Dwarves finally shattered? Does this game help give the Pac-10 more credibility nationally? If not, why are those anti-Pac-10 bigots wrong?

I don't think USC's loss to Oregon State does anything to further the argument that the myth is simply that - a myth. The last time the East Coast remembered seeing Oregon State, they were getting summarily crushed by Penn State on national television. In addition, USC has made a habit out of losing games they have no business losing - to Oregon State this year, to Stanford last year, and (to a lesser extent) to UCLA in 2006. That didn't make Stanford, UCLA, or Oregon State good teams. It just made USC look poorly prepared and kinda' sloppy in these look-ahead games. Oregon State's still not a good team, just like Stanford was a pretty awful team last year.

If anything, this sort of loss reinforces the notion in a lot of people's minds that USC would have a tough time competing in a supposed 'more difficult' conference (I disagree, but think about it). If USC has problems taking care of business against teams like Stanford or Oregon State, what would they be like against a Vanderbilt or Kentucky? One of life's unanswerable questions, but if you asked a lot of folks out on the East Coast, I bet you'd hear a lot of people saying "If USC played in the SEC, they'd go 9-3 every year at best." Given USC's performance over the past three years in middling conference games, it's kinda' hard to argue against that.

2. Now that we are 5 weeks into the season, everyone should have a pretty good feel of how their team is performing. Tell us one or two things (good or bad, on offense or defense) that you're seeing that has surprised you about the performance of your team.

First, the good news. UCLA is making steady progress on a week-to-week basis; the offense is beginning to look more comfortable, the offensive line is starting to show some more flashes of life, and the running game is finally starting to get in gear. It's frustrating that hasn't translated in to more victories at this point in the season, but it's good to see the steady progress finally occurring, as opposed to the manic nature of the team following the Tennessee victory.

Derrick Coleman has been a somewhat pleasant surprise, and I think it's also fairly safe to say that pretty much everyone loves Taylor Embree as a receiver at this point. I figured it would be Rosario who would step in to that slot receiver role, but Embree has really stepped up and impressed in a big way.

As for the negatives, well, obviously, there are a lot of them. The defense has really regressed from the first week of the season. UCLA's secondary is young, inexperienced, and just not very good. While we have both Harwell and Price on the inside, we lack an elite pass-rusher this year that we've had in years past (Hickman, Davis). As a result, opposing teams have been able to pick apart our corners and safeties.

The offensive line, despite their progress, still remains a concern. We've rushed well over the past two weeks, but Fresno State and Arizona are hardly known for their stout defenses. This week's game against Washington State isn't likely to tell us much more about the true grit of the unit, either.

2a. More important, how much more of a snapshot do you need to really see where your team is headed this season?

Well, I have a general idea of where the team's headed this year - and it's not necessarily to a good place. However, I think it's not going to be until the end of October until we now if the team is progressing to a point where they have a chance to finish at .500 and become bowl eligible or not. Following what I hope to be a gimme' game against the Cougs, UCLA faces Oregon, which will be a huge test. With the remaining schedule, it's difficult to point to where UCLA can pick up 6 wins. WSU should be a win (2), but then where? The remaining teams are Oregon, Stanford, Cal, Oregon State, Washington, Arizona State, and USC. If you see 6 wins in there, can I have what you're smoking?

Regardless, I think we'll know whether the team is making the type of strides we've seen in the past two weeks and can translate that into stealing some victories against some of the middling members of the conference. If there's anything that's been shown in the Pac-10 so far, it's that no game is a 'gimme', which is good news for UCLA.

3. As evidence of Thursday night's big Oregon St. win, it's pretty clear that the Beavers have USC's number up in Corvallis. Who's got your team's number in the conference, and why?

Pretty obvious for us - that answer is USC. USC's had a great run against the Bruins - 8 of the past 9, and some truly epic beatdowns during that time-frame. It's interesting that UCLA doesn't really struggle against many of the other teams in the conference on a year-over-year basis; Cal can't win down at the Rose Bowl to save their lives, Arizona State has struggled against UCLA in the past as well - despite the fact that Arizona has beat us two years in a row and their rather nasty 52-14 beatdown in 2005, that was the Wildcats' first victory against us since 1999.

It's interesting to look at the conference matchups and realize outside of USC, no one has really 'owned' UCLA like the Trojans have over the past ten years. If anything, that highlights the inconsistency of the Bruins' run under Dorrell more than anything else. There always were 3-4 games every year you could count on the Bruins to wet the bed, but it was never the same 3-4 games each year. Just really, really weird.

4. Everyone has a bad loss so far this year, even if it's just one. What did that one loss expose about your team, and how has your team bounced back?

I wouldn't exactly say we've 'bounced back', considering that we haven't won a game yet, but again - as I mentioned - we've at least seen progress since that debacle.

What debacle, you may ask?

Seriously, why are you even asking? You know which game I'm talking about.

More than anything else, that brutalization at the hands of the Cougars showed the inherent weaknesses in both UCLA's offense and defense. Nothing went right. It was a picture of everyone's worst nightmares about UCLA's offense and defense coming in to this year. The offensive line couldn't block, the defensive line couldn't generate any pressure, our quarterback resembled a barely functional retard, and our secondary appeared to be taking direction from the Florida Gators.

While the defense hasn't shown many signs of life following the game, the offense appears to be turning the corner. We're running the ball, we're giving Craft some time to throw the ball, and the offense is actually staying on the field for longer than 20 seconds at a time.


5. To me, play-calling from play to play is over emphasized, when adjustments over the course of the game are key. How are your coaches doing throughout the course of games? Are they doing an adequate job of making the necessary adjustments, or do you feel they are hampering the players in their efforts?

I think both Rick and Norm are doing the best with what they have available. The jury is still out, in my mind, on DeWayne Walker's ability to make halftime adjustments. The defense got progressively worse against both Arizona and Fresno State, and I don't think the excuse that the defense got 'tired' holds a lot of water, particularly in the Fresno State game, where UCLA held the time of possession advantage.

Norm's ability to make adjustments and play to the strengths of his available (and limited) personnel has been admirable. He's playing Craft out of the shotgun fairly frequently, something he had never done before in his offensive sets. I loved the offensive play-calling against Fresno on Saturday - a lot of reverses and misdirections that caught Fresno off-guard because the packages hadn't been used in previous weeks. It was a great way to mix up the personnel.

Same old story for the defense, however. I get that the defense is also young, but I'm still not seeing adjustments - if anything, the scheme should start poor and get better throughout the game, but that's just not happening. I think Walker's being out-coached in many circumstances.