college football thread

their team is pretty terrible -- their offense makes no sense

they need to stop the bleeding and go for a guy that can revitalize the program

That's what Neuheisel was supposed to be! All "The Football Monopoly in Los Angeles is Officially OVER" and whatnot.

Except, you know, the football monopoly actually just rolled us 50-0, but otherwise...

Yep, he just broke his arm

i luv u UCLA

That's what Neuheisel was supposed to be! All "The Football Monopoly in Los Angeles is Officially OVER" and whatnot.

i feel bad for neuheisel on that one. someone in marketing screwed that up.

ucla now waiting to hear back from miami's al golden about the bruins job?

hm. golden just signed a 4-year contract extension with UM, announced -- by the way -- during the middle of an embarrassing loss that ended our 6 -- 6 season.

al golden isn't going to UCLA unless they drive a dump truck holding $20m cash up to his driveway. if he turned down an opportunity at penn st, he's gonna turn down an opportunity at UCLA.

they aren't really comparable, tho. PSU is facing massive uncertainty about the future of its football program. i imagine it's a toxic position now.

is UCLA even facing NCAA sanctions?

and i think the article said they're offering somewhere in the neighborhood of 3M a year. i'm guessing that equals or beats golden's salary at miami, even after the contract-extension.

i think they would have to more than equal or barely beat his salary at UM to get him to move all the way across the country to undertake a massive rebuilding project at a school where football plays second fiddle

in some ways that's a benefit tho

UCLA isn't facing any sanctions, but they have little to no talent and one of the least tended to programs in the entire pac-12

it's a terrible job, which is why the last time around they forced to hire a guy who had been fired by his old school for gambling on the ncaa tournament

al golden is gonna leave someday, but it's not gonna be to UCLA in 2011

i think it's a fallacy to think that a big time college football coach would go to a school because there's little pressure due to the sport being second fiddle. the sport being second fiddle goes hand in hand with the job being difficult because there is less money devoted, less fan support, less prestige etc etc

what you say makes sense, especially if UCLA is considered to be a "terrible job." bear in mind, tho, that when (like now) miami isn't a nat'l power, the stadium is half-empty and very quiet.

it can be discouraging to a coach, i imagine. and UM is facing sanctions soon (even if they took the sting out of the forthcoming penalties by voluntarily removing themselves from bowl-consideration this year). there's a reason UM hastily cobbled-together that contract extension for golden.

there's also a reason why he signed that cobbled together contract extension

the sport being second fiddle goes hand in hand with the job being difficult because there is less money devoted, less fan support, less prestige etc etc

I think that's true on some level (and I don't think he'll go to UCLA) but otoh 'football schools' are never easy jobs and generally don't give you much time for building

ha! fair-point. (xp)

I think that's true on some level (and I don't think he'll go to UCLA) but otoh 'football schools' are never easy jobs and generally don't give you much time for building

― iatee, Friday, December 2, 2011 11:13 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

yeah -- my point is that miami and ucla are roughly analogous situations (insofar as being schools in fertile recruiting areas that can't put up the money or fan support to hang with the alabamas and ohio states every year) and unless they're just lining up a boatload of cash for golden, i don't see why he would, or why it would make sense for him, to drop a rebuilding project that he's already a year deep into.

and if UCLA has enough money to pull that off, they may be better off hiring someone w/ a stronger track record than al golden

But sitting here in this ice box at Podunk U., fans going crazy when they shoot off a few fireworks as if it were the highlight of their lives, how does Oregon become better than UCLA?

t.j. simers is a huge asshole AND a fucking idiot

how did they become better than UCLA? how about the CEO of nike poured tens of millions of dollars into the program, for starters.

I think the difficulty when they hired Neuheisel was that they were unable/unwilling to drop the money it took to land one of the big fancy names (I want to say the going rate then was like $3 mil), whereas Neuheisel I think was willing to come in at like $1.25 million. I doubt they are willing to do that now, but it's possible that they're willing to take a huge gamble. I think Neuheisel was able to get guys who had talent, but he didn't do a whole ton with any of them, so there would be flashes of talent or isolated good games followed by regression and inconsistency.

The Pistol was a weird idea to begin with (hey let's make Norm Chow run an offense nobody knows much about other than Chris Ault, and do it without Colin Kaepernick!), and seemed to indicate a lack of faith that they would ever be able to establish a credible enough passing game to attempt a pro-style or spread. (Similarly, Karl Dorrell went to his doom trying to run the West Coast without sufficiently dumbing the timing routes and down to suit the limited practice time and skill level of college players). I would not expect it to stay unless somehow they actually hire Chris Ault (who is the father-in-law of the UCLA baseball coach, but isn't leaving). The 3-4 games a year where the Pistol worked really well (usually against crappy teams) were always balanced by the 3-4 games a year where the running game never got going and UCLA looked like the most horrible team imaginable.

But I think UCLA will always have the potential to improve in a pretty short period of time, given they're sitting in one of the three best states for recruiting; they probably won't ever be able to get past USC until they win consistently, but one of the weirder aspects of Neuheisel's regime was how he would pursue national prospects and let SoCal guys go elsewhere in the Pac-12. Some of them are gonna be off limits because of grades, but Harbaugh's time at Stanford pretty much destroyed the idea that you can't contend unless you lower your entrance requirements.

I think if UCLA is willing to drop market rates for the right guy, they could do fine, and if they wanna gamble with someone cheap, then it's entirely possible I'll be reflecting on that guy's crappy tenure four years from now, shaking my head sadly.

Harbaugh's time at Stanford pretty much destroyed the idea that you can't contend unless you lower your entrance requirements.

this isn't entirely true -- stanfrod's resurgence under harbaugh had as much to do with a once in a lifetime quarterback prospect being interested in architectural design or w/e and wanting to go study that at the highest level while still playing college football, instead of just shuffling off to the best football school and bolting for the nfl draft whenever possible

yeah if anything I was thinking outloud about how if I were a coach I might prefer a ucla head coaching job to a michigan head coaching job - like at a football #2 school that still had saome institutional and geographic advantages that you could potentially build but w/o the pressure

xp

I would say stanford's resurgence had to do w/ two players not one player, but yeah

UCLA definitely has potential, any school in LA does. but college football more than ever is about finding the right coach and continually investing in him. hiring guys on the cheap because they have a strong tie to a school really just doesn't work. you either need to pay big money upfront to get a proven coach (and then keep paying him) or hire an up and comer and pay him to stay there. chris petersen is a very, very rare bird.

wait who is the other player? gerhart?

yeah

yeah idk. gerhart was good but prob a bit overrated. the stanford running game is just about as good now, but it's spread across a few guys.

stanford would've been good under harbaugh without luck. he definitely would've taken them from under .500 to a very solid pac-12 team, but i don't think they go 24-2 over the past two seasons w/o one of the two or three best quarterabcks in the entire country.

it's hard to look at the stanford running game isolating the 'best passer in the country' threat - like it's good, but idk

yeah that's true, also their offensive line is gonna have like three guys go in the top 2 rounds

Clicked on this thread just for kicks and I gotta say it's really weird to read about the big news in my town and the construction near my office in the article linked in the first post.

Washington State is in the smallest market in the Pac-12. It has the smallest football stadium, the lowest average attendance, smallest athletic budget, and hasn’t had a winning football record since 2003.

All this is true, but I'd like to see it broken down on a per-capita basis. On game days if the tiny stadium is full there are more people there than live in the town. It's just insane even with such a shitty record.

Luck and Gerhart (who was apparently a three-star recruit looking back at old Rivals rankings--take that for what it's worth, given one of Andrew Luck's fellow 5 star prospects his year included UCLA JC transfer Kevin Craft) helped, but Stanford's defense has been pretty good (better than UCLA's, even though we put four dudes in the NFL over the past couple years) over the past few years as well, for comparison. The pre-Harbaughian Stanford teams were awful in all facets (although I guess Trent Edwards did technically go on to be an NFL Starting QB somehow), and it turned around really, really quick.

The BruinsNation people (who are INSANE) want Petersen badly, and so it is always super-creepy when you talk about what you need to bring him in. Like people were pointing out that we have an advantage because his son's doctor ended up coming out to Los Angeles recently.

i really don't see why petersen would go to ucla

the guy has had any pick of jobs over the past three or four years including ucla once before, idk.

i think ucla is wasting their time and with them directly competing with a few other schools right now for jobs, they should zero in on good candidates that aren't one in a thousand shots.

I dunno if it's possible to be USC/Ohio State/LSU/Alabama and expect to compete for the National Championship every year with the higher admissions standards (does Texas have them? You think of UT-Austin in the same academic plane as Cal/UCLA/Stanford/Northwestern/Vanderbilt/Duke/etc., but then their football program makes more money than God has, so I dunno. Does Michigan?), but I think you can win 8-9 games a year consistently with those players if you find the right guys to coach and the right guys to play, and make runs at the championship when Luck-quality guys stumble in. There's a limited number of really smart, really good football players, but it's not like only one place gets to have them all.

Apparently we are now targeting Sumlin from Houston to be our dude. Which seems like at least we'd be more fun to watch on offense.

they'll def have to fend off texas a&m for him

i think

re admission standards, there are some schools i think like miami and michigan and i think texas that have higher admission standards than a school like LSU or alabama but are still a notch below the admission standards of stanford and notre dame and schools of that ilk.

We apparently offered Petersen $4 million before he officially pulled his name out, though, so at least we're gonna spend the money this time. I think he always gets called because he is probably the best bet for an aspiring big-money school to turn their program around, so even though he's going to stay in Boise for as long as he wants, it at least gives you the chance to say "We tried to get the best guy."

Most hilarious name I've heard thrown around: Herm Edwards.

i'm scared for UCLA that they're

gonna end up hiring an NFL guy (i.e. del rio)

If they hire Mike Sherman I am probably gonna start weeping.

yeah i don't think you have to worry about that

hiring guys on the cheap because they have a strong tie to a school really just doesn't work.

See Mike Shula.

Good points brought up though that UCLA really doesn't value their football program as much as their basketball program, and while they're in an incredibly fertile recruiting area they're content to just take what comes their way. What probably ends up happening is that they take a gamble on some buzzed about assistant coach (who? no idea) and ride him for a couple seasons. I don't see any current head coach who's worth a damn leaving the program he's got and taking on the burden of UCLA.

This Houston loss is rough...

i didn't really wanna see them in a bcs game, but i don't wanna see tcu in a bcs game either

^otm

i wonder if there were undecided heisman voters who watched & now are def off keenum, not that he deserved v srs consideration imo

Southern Miss is just a logo/uniform/lettering disaster

Furious Bradley & Larry Fedora are A++ names

ugh as I was saying,

Carnival of errors this game.

it's absurd that we have any chance at all to win this game

more of a chance if we stop them here

anyway loved that spin move

okay 11 pts gonna be hard at this rate

loss is all on maynard's back

I think we totally deserve to lose, I just wish there were a way that could involve texas losing too :(

the game is just a hair faster than he can keep up with

almost disappointed that wasn't a pick 6 so I could go to sleep

fuck it I'm done w/ this one

last night was an overnight bus ride w/ one hour of sleep = too tired to pretend to care

I got caught up in Baylor vs. U. of Washington game because I hadn't seen RG3, yet. That was one fucking crazy offensive game. Final score: 67 - 56. New bowl game records for combined total offensive yardage (1300+) and for total number of TDs scored (17). The 123 combined points were just 3 short of setting a new bowl record, too.

It seemed like every other play went for big yards all night.

yeah looking at the stats I'm pretty sad I missed that

price threw for 4 tds and ran for 3

how many times in your life can you personally score 7 tds and still be bummed cause you lost a game? outside of a video game.

i went to bed during the third quarter of that Baylor game convinced I'd seen enough, Baylor was through. woke up amazed

Washington has a 6'6 260lb freshman TE. :-0

also got a dose of my nephew's Wisconsin t-shirt parade on Christmas Day (I'm a Michigan State guy). worst christmas morning in a long time. thank god I drink on every holiday.