Ken Norton Jr. Breaks Bruin Hearts Again

You know Ken Norton, Jr. All-American linebacker at UCLA. The only player in NFL history to play on three consecutive Super Bowl-winning teams. Wanted to coach at his alma mater after his playing career but was told by Karl Dorrell that there was no room on the staff, he decided to take a job with his former defensive coordinator Pete Carroll at USC. Is now the linebackers coach for the Trojans, a squad that makes it their mission to destroy UCLA offensive players on a yearly basis, almost like someone had something to prove or an axe to grind.

Well, Rick Neuheisel decided to try and make a "big splash" by convincing Norton to come back to UCLA in the same position. And, just like you would think would happen, Norton listened and waited long enough to get Bruins' hopes up, before driving a stake through their hearts by announcing that he's not leaving USC after all.

At least Norm Chow is now available after he received his pink slip from the Titans today. (I found it interesting to read about his firing in the LA Times one day after they said he wasn't a serious candidate at UCLA because he had "just signed a contract extension." Am I missing something here?) Bringing him back as offensive coordinator to compete against Carroll, whom he had a "frosty" relationship with, could be one way to needle USC a bit. Then again, Chow is under the perpetual notion that he's just one interview away from becoming a head coach somewhere, when in fact Chow Yun Fat has a better chance of becoming a head football coach than Norm Chow.

Posted by The Duke of Everything at 10:16 PM 0 comments  

NCAA Places UCLA Football on "Proactive Probation"

LOS ANGELES – The NCAA announced on Monday that the UCLA football program was the first-ever school to be placed on “proactive probation,” following the Bruins’ hiring of former Colorado and Washington head coach Rick Neuheisel.

“In light of the multiple recruiting violations and lack of institutional control that will surely occur at UCLA within the next 12 months, we’ve decided to take action in advance and issue our punishment now,” said an official statement from the NCAA.

The statement from the NCAA including a laundry list of infractions that Neuheisel – who had a checkered past at both of his previous head coaching jobs – will “possibly to probably” commit in 2008. Included on the list:

• Exceeding number of recruiting visits
• Illegal contact with boosters
• Illegal contact with parents of potential recruits
• Illegal contact with hot sisters of potential recruits
• Sneaking underage recruits into NC-17 movies
• Larceny
• Participating in an underground street racing organization
• Wire-tapping Pete Carroll’s personal phone
• Selling graduate assistants into white slavery
• Taking the team out for ice cream after a tough loss

The punishment includes the loss of five scholarships over the 2008 season and a reduction in recruiting trips. UCLA athletic director Dan Guerrero said that while they were unaware that the NCAA had the authority to issue punishment in advance of any infractions, they accepted the decision.

“Frankly, we knew this was a possibility the day we hired Coach Neuheisel, but we just didn’t know it would happen literally the day after we hired him,” Guerrero said. “At least this way we can plan ahead instead of waiting for after the season to find out what the punishment would be.”

Posted by The Duke of Everything at 12:34 AM 2 comments  

My Christmas Gift to the UCLA Bruins

Now, you might expect me to be the last person to give UCLA advice on how to conduct a head coaching search. You would think that as a loyal USC alum, the last thing I would do is help out my rival. That I would just chuckle at the fact that the head coach of Boise St. would rather stay there than come to coach at UCLA, meaning that somehow the Broncos job is now more prestigious than the Bruins job.

And normally yes, I would. But in the car this evening, I had a flash about who would be the perfect hire for UCLA. The head coaching candidate that would send some shock waves through college football and actually scare the living crap out of USC. It's such a good idea that I have to share it, even if it means that I am betraying my school.

UCLA should go after and hire Jim Harbaugh.

Think about it. If you want to send a message to USC that you mean business, what better way than to bring in the guy who beat them this season at Stanford and pulled off one of the biggest upsets in sports history. Pete Carroll might seem unflappable, but if UCLA were to hire Jim Harbaugh, I promise you that even Coach Carroll would have his pulse rate go up a few ticks immediately.

It's not going to happen. But it should. And it would be AWESOME if it did.

Posted by The Duke of Everything at 1:08 AM 1 comments  

USC to the Rose Bowl...permanently?

On Tuesday, USC made the startling announcement that it had begun negotiations with the Rose Bowl to move from the Coliseum and begin playing home football games there starting next season. You can read the story for the full details, but the gist of the situation is this: USC wants control over running the Coliseum (and scheduling), and wants renovations to be made. They are willing to kick in $100 million over the next 10 years towards the renovations. However, the Coliseum Commission has been putting this issue on the back burner and hoping it goes away, mainly because they are still committed to the pipe dream that the NFL is going to be back in the Coliseum someday.

Bill Plaschke's column in the LA Times on Wednesday does a fairly good job of summarizing how I feel about this. This is clearly a lot of political posturing and muscle-flexing being done by USC to let the Coliseum Commission know that "it means business". It's almost inconceivable that USC would anger so many of its alumni by destroying 80+ years of tradition by forcing them to move from their home just off-campus to a new site 20 miles away with lousy parking and freeway access (and would be second tenant to their arch rivals).

However, this is the Coliseum Commission we're talking about, and if anyone can screw something up royally, it's them. Plaschke's column gets into it in a little more detail, but the Commission has directly or indirectly lead to the Rams and Raiders leaving Los Angeles and the O'Malley family selling the Dodgers.

The indirect good news in all of this is that the brouhaha has forced LA mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to stop sucking face with news anchors long enough to finally, publicly state that he's given up on the NFL ever returning to the Coliseum and that the Commission should too. And the general outrage this has caused has pretty much put the Coliseum Commission into such a bad spot than even they seem to be forced to admit defeat at this point. (Well, except for exceptionally stubborn Commission members like current City Councilman and former really lousy LA Police Chief Bernard Parks, who "must keep the door open for a professional team."

And just who is the Coliseum Commission? As you can guess, a bunch of bureaucrats! More specifically, a nine-person panel made up of: four politicians (the afore-mentioned Parks and three LA County Supervisors) and five "private citizens", including the widow of Aaron Spelling and the wife of City Councilman Herb Wesson. (Apparently, being married to old, white guys is excellent training for deciding the fate of one of LA's major landmarks.)

And just how effective is the Coliseum Commission? I'll let a current City Council member tell you:

"There is nothing that that commission has [accomplished] in the 30 or 40 years that I know of," said L.A. City Councilman Greig Smith, who offered a list of teams that have left the Coliseum and neighboring Sports Arena. "One government agency can screw up. Three government agencies can screw up a lot."

I'll leave with an interesting article from the LA Times' architecture critic about the situation. I think it's a good overview of the challenges faced in maintaining the Coliseum, and LA's older stadium structures in general. I'm going to let my USC alum bias show here for a second in response. I've been to both the Rose Bowl and the Coliseum, and frankly, in terms of "watching the game" aesthetics, I prefer the Coliseum. The site lines are better and the seats are wider. I always have a sense of being more "on top" of things at the Coliseum from the upper deck, versus being lower and further away at the Rose Bowl. And I can still find free street parking at the Coliseum (and never had any issues with break-ins, etc.) on game days, even on sell-outs. At the Rose Bowl? Not so much.

But the Rose Bowl does have a pretty view of the mountains...I guess that counts for something.

Posted by The Duke of Everything at 10:26 AM 0 comments