Your thoughts on the Mora Hire

With his limited cfb experience.

but it seems this one is more than most. I too don’t see the Carroll comparison but at the most superficial of levels. That UCLA had $4M to spead and couldn’t land a home run hire says so much. That DG went and hire Mora after BN called Jihad says even more. Mora needs to over come so many more things than Carroll did at USC, it’s hard to see this turning out well for the gutty little ones.

for making a home run hire beyond luring Petersen out of Boise. It’s incredible for me to believe, but the facts support that Guerrero had only two names, maybe three on his list, and all (Petersen, Golden and maybe Sumlin) were going to be tough gets, regardless of money. The troubling thing for me is Guerrero’s failure to take a look at Leach, or apparently any of the attractive options with successful college records. I presume that Leach wasn’t considered because of the mouth, but he had a good record at a major conference, graduated his kids and brought a truly exciting offense around. So we blow that off for Jim Mora?

Mora could turn out to be a very solid coach, but the odds are against it. More likely than not he keeps UCLA mired in (at best) mediocrity for another 4-5 years, by which time Guerrero won’t be around since he will have gone on to work for the NCAA and UCLA finally hires someone who can restore the program to a shred of respectability.

I always wanted to know how Cub fans felt, since I live only about one mile from Wrigley, and it looks as if my idle curiosity will be satisfied.

I’m wondering why no one has at least taken the time to look at Mora’s offensive, or defensive philosophies. I get it, he coached the Falcons to within one game of the Super Bowl, and then some sub par seasons before spending a terrible season with Seattle, but no one has ever actually looked at the way he’s game planned, and seen if maybe it would fit at the college level.

All I’ve read or heard from BN is "Chianti Dan", "#nomora", and so on, but no substance. The national media seems to hang on to his record, but nothing more. Of course in order for me to actually have faith in this hire, I’d have to believe that Dan Guerrero actually completed a thorough and well thought out process, but that would probably be asking too much.

Anyhow, does anyone actually have any information on what kind of systems Mora runs, or has run in the past? I know he coached Michael Vick for a good minute, so would there be any way to incorporate Brett Hundley into that?

I couldn’t be happier with this hire for ucla. Mora was clueless, lost his players, blamed everyone but himself for the troubles etc etc. The guy didn’t exhibit any leadership capabilities at all.

Mora needs to not obsess over USC the way Neuheisel did. Neuheisel spent too much time trying to call out, compare, and challenge USC, that he didn’t stop to think about what ucla’s identity as a team was. Mora should start the focus on his players and his school, and get those guys playing with each other, and for each other. Do not give USC or any other team any more importance than the team you are playing that Saturday.

Also Mora needs to avoid embarrassing ad campaigns that contain the word “monopoly,” and by all means never use the word “gap” in relation to anything other than a place to buy clothes. If he steers clear of those two words he doesn’t risk providing annual bulletin board material for USCs team, and comedy material for USCs blogs.

Also I wouldn’t address the student section after games like Neuheisel did. That wore thin after the third year.

He refused to make any bold statements regarding his opponents, and just said he wants to make ucla football something that bruins can be proud of again. It was the polar opposite of Neuheisel’s “we’re not scared of USC” speeches. The bruins have many more problems that are more important to fix than how to deal with USC.

I don’t believe that Mora is incompetent the way Neuheisel was. He’s a real coach. Whether or not he can be successful in college remains to be seen. There are a lot of NFL Head Coach busts in the college ranks, and ucla doesn’t exactly have the greatest talent pool at the moment.

I have to agree with him that the UCLA job is not very attractive these days. When you consider that UCLA shares many of the aspects that your program offers (location, recruiting base, weather, good school, and a decent history if you skip the 2000’s), it is easy to see the difference in the jobs. The lack of support from the UCLA admin, the buffoon running the athletic department, and the 80 yard field you highlighted recently are only some of the reasons that a lot of other jobs far more attractive to a prospective coach.

I think Bruins fans, including those on BN (ducking…) have come around supporting Mora and want things to turn out well, while still acknowledging that the search process was poorly planned and poorly executed, and that the program will never reach its potential while the admin fiddles and Guerrerror is the AD.

Is the entire shift of personality over on BN.

Before this hire, the bners seemed to be in some weird competition to out-do one another in a sick attempt to degrade and belittle Mora. They heaped all manner of scorn on him as a coach from his competency to the fact that he didn’t meet the bn “minimum acceptable requirements” to be their coach. They lambasted anyone over there who dared to offer even the slightest positive comment about him, and essentially concluded he was a pathetic loser unfit to even come within 10 miles of their 80-yard practice field.

Now, of course, they are suddenly lauding him as being very smart in his hiring of assitant coaches, and are offering begrudging positive comments about him and his attitude.

The funny thing is there isn’t the slightest bit of self-awareness of this internal contradiction. As if they never behaved in a despicable manner during this hiring process, nor showed their ugly side when discussing him as a potential candidate.

Personally, I’m glad that at least now they are behaving in a polite manner toward him. But it really does expose the childish nature and mob-mentality of some of the folks over there.

Klemm’s OL at SMU allowed 27 sacks in 2011, ranking 81 out of 120 teams.

Martin’s secondary at UW gave up 283 passing yards/game, ranking 116 out of 120 teams.

Not exactly lights out…