Spaulding Report: UCLA Football Beat $c Week Media Interviews
As you wait for today's game to kickoff, we've gathered all of this week's UCLA Football interviews for you in one place.
Before we get into this week’s media interviews, there’s some breaking news regarding Chip Kelly’s job status. Highly respected reporter Bruce Feldman had a report on the situation this morning on Fox Big Noon Kickoff. First, he mentioned the Orange County Register report in which Casey Wasserman called the notion “ridiculous.” But, that was just a rehash of what we already know. Feldman, then, mentioned that he had a conversation with UCLA Athletic Director Martin Jarmond on Wednesday and, according to Feldman, Jarmond called Tracy Pierson’s report “clickbait.”
That certainly casts the BRO report in a negative light. As I wrote last night, things should be get interesting after today’s game.
Now, let’s move on to the interviews by taking a quick peek at what’s been getting said at this week’s UCLA football press conferences. I’m just going to share these here all in the same place to make it easy for our readers to watch them if you haven’t already. The videos in this article are courtesy of UCLA Athletics on YouTube unless noted otherwise.
As usual, we’ll start with Chip Kelly’s interview from Monday. He indicated that both Ethan Garbers and Dante Moore were available to practice that day. When asked about Caleb Williams, Kelly said he was “as good as I’ve seen in person.” Ben Bolch of the LA Times later asked Kelly, “Big picture-wise, how do you feel you've done at UCLA?” To which, he responded, “Again, I'm not a big picture man my focus is on USC so…I think I’ve done great.” So much for “You are what your record says you are” because Chip’s record at UCLA says he’s done a mediocre job.
On Wednesday, Kelly answered a few rivalry trivia questions to start things off, which he got right. Eventually, the subject turned again to Southern Cal’s offense. Kelly said:
[T]hey’ve got some dynamic kids that when they get the ball in their hands that can turn a six-yard catch into a big play. So, that's kind of been our focus all week long on defense is rallying to the ball tackling and getting as many guys as we can to the football.
On Monday, Kain Medrano, Kenny Churchwell, and Logan Loya met with the media. Each of them spoke about the importance of the crosstown rivalry. Medrano spoke about how good Caleb Williams is and how the defense “needs to be disciplined in everything we do.” Loya spoke about growing up with and against guys from both teams. “It doesn’t get much better than that,” he said.
On Tuesday, Carl Jones, Jr. spoke about the weather forecast, saying that playing in the mud “would make it funner.” He also spent a lot of time talking about what the rivalry means. So did Josiah Norwood. Norwood spoke some about Kyle Ford who transferred from Southern Cal and how he knows their defensive backs. Norwood put it simply: “We're looking try to get the Bell back this week.”
Well said, Josiah.
That wraps up this week’s media interviews. UCLA plays Arizona for the final time tonight in Tucson at 7:30 pm PT.
Go Bruins!!!
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Thank you Joe for compiling all these and the info on the Jarmond interview but I think the last paragraph shows the perils of cut-and-pasting from a template! LOL! We've all been there!