Well, we have Norm Chow working as our offensive coordinator. This might be a slap in the face for USC, but it’s not for Pete Carroll. The two never got along really. So how did UCLA pick up Norm Chow?
He was recently fired from his job with the NFL team, the Tennessee Titans. He wasn’t NFL material, but he has a proven track record for college football. That makes him a good candidate for UCLA’s restructured football program. On top of that, Norm Chow still has a 2-year contract, worth more than 1 million dollars a season. Whatever the difference is between what Chow is owed on the contract and UCLA pays, the Titan franchise still has to pay. UCLA can pay Chow next to nothing for two years and have him on board. Thanks, Titans!
UCLA has fired coaches that don’t meet up to its historical athletic excellence. In recent years with the help of the Internet, UCLA fans have expressed their desire to get rid of coaches with poor performance records. Domains like loselavin.com, firetoledo.com, and firedorrell.com have been used to oust these coaches. UCLA’s newest football coach, Rick Neuheisel, will be much harder to get rid of in this same manner. No one is going to know how to spell his name. Can you imagine trying to type www.fireneuheisel.com into a browser? I just hope he is a sorely needed gem of a coach, but I don’t want to have to find that website. Go Bruins!
I don’t know when the last time I had a weekend to do nothing. I always say that I’m going to do nothing but end up doing lots of fun stuff. This weekend was no exception. Be sure to read the whole post for all the pictures and video highlights.
It started out Friday night with a trip down to Cal State Long Beach’s Pyramid to watch Michelle’s cousin Ashley play volleyball. She is on the women’s volleyball team, and her birthday is this week, so the whole family went to watch her play. They wiped the floor with Cal State Bakersfield, which was just what I wanted to see, because afterwards we got to go eat pizza. I haven’t has a victory pizza party in so long. Perhaps that is because I haven’t won anything in a long time.
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It’s not over yet, but if Major League Baseball heads into a World Series with Colorado and Cleveland, no one is going to care. No one from the west coast is going to root for Colorado, and no one from the east coast is going to root for Cleveland.
In the NBA, the eastern conference has teams coming up as potential powerhouses, and Kobe is still complaining. No one cares.
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Today started off like any other day. I was running late to work but not caring. I was stopped at the stoplight on the offramp, blasting my radio and singing. As I turned to my left to see who was stopped next to me, I noticed it was a grown man with tears running down his face. His face wasn’t contorted in anguish, but he definitely had tear trails on his cheeks. I began pondering what could possess a man to cry on his drive to work.
The only thing I could come up with was that he was a USC fan. Those poor bastards. It’s beating a dead, Trojan horse, but I have been saying all along that you would have to be an idiot to wait for a chance to play behind so many great starters. Mark Sanchez was one of the more notable idiots in the coveted quarterback position, but Booty’s horrible game may just be his chance. Even Carroll noted, “We could have made a change but we went with our guy. I don’t know about next week.” You can defend Booty and the Trojans, saying he hurt his hand during the game, but the end result is what matters.
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I called it. It’s currently happening to USC. They’re slowly losing their ability to recruit the best players. It is not because of a lack of a good football program. Simply put, they have more good players than they know what to do with on their team. The kids are finally realizing that when they sit behind half a dozen running backs, they are not going to get to play. They are slowly transferring to other school’s in spite of having to lose a year of eligibility.
This is not USC’s fault. They accept players not knowing who will decide to attend their school. It’s the players’ faults for being stupid. It doesn’t matter how good the program is if you don’t get to play.
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Am I disappointed? A loss is always disappointing. I am still impressed with the Bruins and the way they played. It’s tough coming against a team you lost against the previous year. On top of that, the Bruins played against a team that brought back its top seven scorers.
I was particularly impressed with Josh Shipp’s performance in the game. He proved himself to be a useful scoring tool for the Bruins. Unfortunately with Afflalo, Mata, and Mbah a Moute all in foul trouble so early in the game, it really hurt the Bruins. The Bruins’ defense is heavily based on hedging, and the officials weren’t allowing physical basketball to be played.
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As I drove to work today in my rental Chrysler Sebring, it is no surprise Daimler is trying to get rid of them. While the car is a vast improvement on American cars I have driven in the past, the focus is in all the wrong places. Listening to Wagner’s Flight of the Valkeralkyries on Sirius Satellite Radio through Boston Accoustic speakers and singing, “Kill the Wabbit,” they still have a car that drives like ass and looks like ass. While cars of the future may be about entertaining and less about the driving, we are nowhere near that. Get a clue and make a car that doesn’t suck.
Well we’re down to the Final Four. Really, that is all you can ask for in a college basketball program. March Madness used to be a complete crapshoot. Anyone could take it in the tournament, but now with the NBA rule, kids can’t go pro right out of high school. This means that kids that are good enough to play pro ball are forced to go to college for a year, and they end up at schools with big basketball programs. There will be fewer Cinderella stories and fewer upsets.
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For those of you that have been watching the tournament this year, it has been some incredible basketball. Teams are performing very well. Just yesterday’s games were intense with 3 out of 4 games coming down to the last seconds. It was raining 3’s, and blocks were everywhere.
I have been very pleased with UCLA’s performance in the tournament. They’re not the highest scoring team, but they know how to put a stop to the other high scoring teams. Even though it seems contradictory to what a Bruin should want, I am secretly rooting for USC and Oregon. Why would I do this? I want PAC-10 money. When UCLA beat USC in football this year, they cost the PAC-10 a whole lot of money by taking the championship away from a PAC-10 team. That was totally worth it though.
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Most people don’t realize how much I follow sports, possibly because I don’t talk about it much. That’s mostly due to the fact that most of my friends aren’t as interested as I am in sports. Today I’d like to write about sports.
Every year, when the men’s basketball tournament happens, productivity drops across in the nation to a total of millions of dollars. I’d like to be part of that productivity drop and share with the few of my readers that are interested in the NCAA tournament my views on this whole tournament.
Let’s start off with UCLA, my team. The have a phenomenal team, but they are lacking in size with the biggest guy on the team being Lorenzo Mata at 6′9″, a tiny man by basketball center standards. I expect them to win their bracket, only running into problems with teams with large center. Unfortunately, this is Florida again this year if they make it to the finals. Then it will be a face off of the ugly centers.
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