Will it help UCLA to get a higher quality recruit?

I don’t really care what Weasel—Slick says if he gets a kid with that line the kid has to be pretty stupid so why would USC what him. I feel if Pete comes accross this that type of Question, he says look how many players have been drafted in the NFL. Every year USC has a greater # then the year before, I don’t that has happen in a long long time.

Tell us then, please!!!! What are your REAL feelings regarding Neuheisel? You’re leaving something out, it seems? (read: a totally sarcastic tenor and tone)

Neuheisel’s nut-huggin’ on Pete Carroll, it would seem- is written in his contractual obligations. That is, until. . . . .Neuheisel’s teams actually WIN SOMETHING. For all intents and purposes, this charlatan has GOT TO talk about ‘SC. It’s become his barometer for his professional and personal success as a football coach.

It certainly beats the approach of the previous regime at UCLA: “Oh, you have interest from USC? Well, if they change their mind and don’t offer you a scholly, please consider giving us a call.”

If you have the talent to start at USC… you would have to be an idiot to pick ucla if you want to end up in the NFL. Right now the scale is tipped far in favor of USC. ucla has a lot of ground to make up in recruiting, and on the field.

 I like Neu’s enthusiasm, but if you are going to go back 30 years, why not go back all the way and compare. Why not go back 10 years and compare. You can say that if you look at the 90s only ucla ruled Los Angeles. Its pretty irrelevant. You have to look at who is coaching now. Right now USC is in good shape. What happens at ucla remains to be seen. They have a solid staff over there, now all they have to do is deliver on the field.

Looking at ucla’s remaining schedule, I don’t see too many easy wins for them. Washington State is really the only pushover this year. Washington, Oregon, Cal, Arizona, are all going to give the bruins some trouble. With Prince coming back off the jaw injury, its going to be hard for ucla to win half of those games in my opinion.

But the “get in on the bottom floor” pitch works best when you can either stick with a company for a while, or when you are going to flip in a couple of years and sell out for a bigger contract. College players realistically can’t take the long view – most are going to spend 4 years max on the field – so you have to hope that someone who’s taking the shorter, “built to flip” approach can 1) really deliver that fast, and 2) really comes through in a hurry to get more people of his ilk as recruits chase success.

It can be done, but I think the disadvantage for Neuheisel is that the base recruiting for UCLA in a relatively down period has worked much better on defense than offense. Notwithstanding whatever inspiration Pete Carroll may have had in his first couple of years, he inherited a decent level of talent from Hackett as a result of the reputation of being a football school that SC had been coasting on for some time. I’ll freely admit I don’t pay enough attention to be definitive, but it seems like Neuheisel had further to go with the players he’s inherited.

Still, I don’t count the guy out. He’d look silly if he didn’t acknowledge where SC has been, and a wasted hire if he made modest noises about being the best second best team in LA. And he’s smart, and seems to have learned from prior mistakes. Time will tell.

I get your general point Paragon, but dismissing UCLA as nothing but a regional power in the 80’s and ’90’s is a bot of overstatement, don’t you think? A regional power to me implies a team that has local success (winning their conference, I suppose) but does not play in major bowls games and has no influence on the national scene. I suggest that when UCLA was racking up the Rose Bowl wins in the 80’s and the other bowl wins like the Fiesta against Kosar’s Miami team and the Cotton Bowl in Aikman’s last year, that UCLA was very much a national power. I see UCLA’s situation as similar to some of the mid-to-upper tier SEC teams; most people would accept that Georgia is a national power even though IIRC they have won one national title since 1950 or so. A national power, to my way of thinking, need not win national titles to be considered a national power. Winning conference titles, playing in major bowl games, recruiting nationally, and placing players in the NFL-these are hallmarks of national powers. National titles figure prominently in determining rankings of programs, but I don’t see how you can reasonably argue that UCLA was not a national power in the 80’s and ’90’s and only a regional power. I guess it depends on your definition.

No argument on our Trojan dominance. 44-28-7 overall for USC head to head. We’ve won 9 of the past 10 games. We have all the Rose Bowls, National Titles, Heismans.

BUT – UCLA football is perceived as ahead of Washington and Stanford by a lot of midwesterners/easterners who are not Pac 10 alums because of its huge name recognition. Also, UCLA took us with 8 straight wins in 91-98, a recent enough time frame to be imprinted in football fan memories. And many people in the midwest remember UCLA knocking us out of the BCS title game with the huge 13-9 upset in 2006.

We can spout the facts all we want – yes, UW and Stanford actually do fight for no. 2 in conference and yes, only UW can really claim a national presence – but perception is its own reality. I submit the above as reasons for UCLA’s heightened football perception.

remains undefined. I still think UCLA qualifies as a national power, although that claim has slipped rather dramatically since 1999. It’s not just winning conference titles that places a team in national power consideration; looking at Tennessee and Georgia (again) many’s the time neither have won the SEC but won (or at least played in) major bowls-this I think by definition makes them national powers. If you are suggesting that UCLA has fallen back because of recent ineptitude-I don’t disagree, but it will take IMHO more than a decade to make UCLA completely fall out of consideration as a national power.

I’m not suggesting that UCLA historically mesures up to USC in football-it’s patently obvious we don’t-but suggesting that UCLA is a regional power (like Fresno State?) is very, very debatable.

As for which program is the Pac-10’s no. 2, UCLA has won the second-most conference titles (17) whereas the Huskies have won 15, Cal(!) has won 14 and Stanford 12. Washington has done better than anyone else at going all the way, with four national titles to UCLA’s one; yes, Stanford claims two but for 1926 and 1940?Stanford and UCLA are tied for Rose Bowl appearances and wins. More recently, Stanford hit the Rose Bowl in 2000, but before that, you’d have to go back to 1971 and 1972 and before that, to 1952 to find Stanford playing in the Rose Bowl, and a quick search shows Stanford has never played in any major bowls other than the Rose Bowl, whereas UCLA has certainly played in many big bowl games other than the Rose. I certainly think that it’s close between UCLA and Washington for no.2; Stanford is a relatively distant 4th.

If you want to call out their title for being out of date, then you should not count ucla’s. A couple of Fiesta Bowls, and a couple of Cotton Bowls account for many major bowls? I don’t agree. You aren’t talking about Sun Bowl, or Las Vegas Bowl appearances are you?

Sorry Washington is the Pac-10 #2 clearly. ucla and Stanford is a toss up. Ill say it again. The golden years of ucla football was Tommy Prothro and Gary Beban in the 50s. The spurts of success in the 80s and late 90s are not enough to propel them into the national light. The truth is that ucla is the 3rd or 4th best program in the Pac-10.

The hottest selling t-shirt in Seattle. In U Village across from stadium this afternoon before the game and probably every third Husky fan I saw was wearing it.

Bark for Sark. It’s catchy, give em that.