Re the "wife job." This cuts both ways. There are a lot of people out there who would love to live in LA. But there are also a lot of people who would rule out a job simply because it is in LA. There are cons to living in LA (traffic, hollywood, cost of living) that simply outweigh the weather for some people.
You are so right. Everyone is different. I’ve lived my whole life here. Hate the traffic, Hollywood, taxes, cost of living, etc. but I stay because of the weather. I hate humidity, bugs, snow, rain and ice. So I lean towards the weather as most important. Many would disagree.
In re your column, Dimitri, I lament that more here are not what we used to term on the old Bruins Nation site as codgers. (Anyone remember the Dump Dorrell site that was essentially the origin of Bruins Nation and then this spin off?)
Anyway, we codgers -- graduates in the 1960s -- have had an interesting perspective. The fifties saw UCLA's dominance (and only national championship in 1954) and Sanders' death from a heart attack in the arms of a prostitute (or so it was gossiped) to the miserable Barnes years, the brilliant Prothro era (cut short by him getting "homered" in the USC game by refs in yet another Figueroa fix), Pepper Rogers, and the interminable semi-decent Donahue decades, and the "Again? Why on earth did he get ever fired?" Toledo years. Those comprised an emotional, roller-coaster ride ending up in the weapons grade mediocrity to date. (I lay this all at the feet of that incredibly incompetent AD and former UCLA catcher we lifted from U. C. Irvine.)
I do believe that of the two PAC-12 escapees -- UCLA and USC -- the Bruins will fare better even while getting schlonged by the likes of Michigan, Ohio State, and others. Principally, this will be because of the relative difference between the ghetto that USC resides in and the relative ambiance of Westwood. I mean, why on earth leave the Midwest and live in an area fraught with crack houses, homeless, and unending campouts on the Harbor Freeway overpasses? You can always go to Detroitus for that!
It'll take a few years and I will probably be occupying a slot over in the Elysian fields adjacent to Veteran Avenue but those Big Ten bucks will have an effect -- ultimately!
So, every once in a while, stop by and drop a sports page near my headstone so I can catch up. ONLY DON'T MAKE IT THE L.A. TIMES! I CAN'T STAND THAT RAG!
(Forgive me! I forgot the two years of Dick Vermeil and that magnificent RB win over Ohio State! Like Larry Farmer as the BB coach, if only he coulda stuck around!)
"Principally, this will be because of the relative difference between the ghetto that USC resides in and the relative ambiance of Westwood." -- lol have you been to Westwood recently?
..have you been to downtown Los Angeles? Driven up the 110 Freeway to the Coliseum?
Relative ambiance. Though I take your point. Also, if Kelly can come up with 10 wins then good for him! I just look at the past years and shake my head.
I think 7-5 Kelly stays. Hopefully we can win 9 or 10, the schedule is certainly favorable with $C having a new coach and Stanford on the skids. Getting Utah at the Rose Bowl helps too. But to answer the main question, hell yeah. UCLA is a top ten job for any coach. But not Kiffin please.
Your well written article is full of hope and delusion!! :) The UCLA football job has never been a desirable job!! Look at who UCLA has hired historically? Has UCLA ever taken a hot coach from another school or from the NFL? UCLA got played by Chip Kelly's agent. No one else was seriously pursuing him. They put a lot of lipstick on that pig and UCLA bought into it! :) Look at what your coaches have accomplished before coming to UCLA, during and AFTER. After leaving UCLA, has any coach gone on to better things! I don't know your history very well but I doubt it. If you look at what UCLA has accomplished in football, your peers are really Colorado (national championship in1990 outright), Cal, ASU, and may be Utah (no one in their right mind would argue that those are top football schools). The last 20 plus years have not been kind to UCLA and that makes the job even less appealing. Being 100 million plus in debt doesn't help either. To recap, yes you have Westwood, academics, weather (do those things really matter?, where is the University of Alabama located again? Exactly!) etc but you lack the football pedigree and I doubt any coach would take UCLA seriously. May be with the new money in the Big10, things could potentially change but we'll first have to see UCLA performing better than it has the last 20 years, no easy task since you are going into an even more competitive environment.
Well, first of all, Florida was absolutely "seriously pursuing" Chip when UCLA "won" that coaching derby which has been widely reported and confirmed - obviously, that hasn't worked out the way we would have wanted it to but it's just incorrect to pretend that the Kelly hiring, at the time, was similar to the hiring of Mora or Alfor. I think I'd also point out that, after leaving UCLA, Dick Vermeil did pretty well for himself...
But, to the larger point, I won't recap the discussion we had in an earlier post about how successful UCLA football has been over the years (#18 in aggregate AP Poll history for one example) which is why so many of us are so unsatisfied with what we've been watching since 1999 - but let's look at the future.
It is very likely that, ca. 2025, there will be a "Power 2" in College Football - the SEC and the B1G. Everyone else will be relegated to the same rough status that the American or Mtn West has today. As of today, there are exactly 33 seats at that table: 14 schools in the SEC, 14 schools in the B1G, Oklahoma, Texas, UCLA, $outhern Cal, and Notre Dame. That's it. That's the list. Is it possible if not probable that somewhere between 5 and 7 more seats open up between now and then? Sure. But, right now, if you want to *know* you are "running with the football big dogs" - there are 33 jobs. That's it.
Of course, some of those jobs are more attractive than UCLA - but I'd argue a whole lot of them aren't - besides the 7 bluebloods (a State Univ in Ohio, Michigan, Notre Dame, Bama, Texas, Oklahoma, and, yes, $outhern Cal) and maybe 3-4 with a similar tradition and location near large amounts of local recruitable talent (UGa & metro Atlanta; LSU & East Texas/Louisiana; aTm & state of Texas; Florida & state of Florida) which have invested in football in a way that UCLA simply hasn't in the last 20 years - the combinations Dimitri lays out argue that, at the very least it's in the top 1/3rd of the 33 "Big Dog" jobs and, likely very soon, more than ANY job outside those 33. Given the new leadership that rejected the "we can't do better anyway" mentality of the AD who presided over it (and honestly, pursuing Kelly and taking out of Chianti Dan's direct control at the time was a start of that rejection) to move to the B1G in the first place - it is likely noticed in the coaching world just how attractive this job is and the potential that is here, just waiting to be tapped.
I'm not trying to put words in Dimitri's virtual pen, but it *should* be easier to win at UCLA than at, say, Iowa or Mississippi, let alone the other bottom half-ish or so of those 33 jobs (Indiana? Vandy?) - that it hasn't been in the last 20 years is a failure of leadership from the old AD (among others) and the "we can't do better" mentality he swore by and hired by that it is long since time for us as fans to reject - and our recent decisions make it more likely than not that coaches are recognizing that too.
And, by the way, even "bluebloods" and wildly successful programs don't last forever - just ask Nebraska, Florida State, and Miami fans or, if you've been around long enough, ask yourself if you could have imagined in the late 90's & early 2000's that Clemson would be what it is now and those three would be what they are these days...
Being in the Big 10 or the SEC DOESN'T automatically mean you are running with the big dogs. That means those big dogs are constantly running over you!! I mean UCLA gets run over constantly in the weaker Pac12 by Stanford, Washington, Oregon, and Utah. UCLA football is a third tier football destination because it is a third tier football program. In the last 20 years, and football has changed in the last 20 years, it's the big dogs and we don't have to name them and then you have second tier football programs like: Oregon, Stanford, Washington, Texas, Auburn etc etc and then you have the third tiers and I am being generous in including UCLA in that group! Academics, weather, access to Hollywood, Westwood mean NOTHING!! UCLA will be in a position to offer between 8 to 10 million a year in 2025 to a candidate. Doing that doesn't guarantee success (ask Texas AM) but at least you are giving yourself a fighting chance.
Exactly - and once we are willing to give ourselves that "fighting chance" - which we were not willing to do under the previous AD/regime and darn well better be willing to do going forward - the point is that there are very few, if any jobs in conferences that have Billion Dollar a Year TV contracts that have a greater untapped potential than UCLA. And whether its in considering investment opportunities, real estate opportunities, or coaching opportunities: untapped potential = attractive.
Could be worse… Nebraska became the first major-conference team in the AP Poll Era, which goes back to 1936, to lose seven straight games by single digits…
We can debate HC all we want... but right now we're stuck with Chip Kelly. And he has proven that he can't even garner interest (never mind close) for a top-tier DC candidate. By the way... is there any content planned for Bill McGovern on this site yet? He seems like another Chip Kelly buddy that never did much in the NFL. Coaching Luke Kuechly is fairly impressive though.
Season previews are scheduled for next week (literally, I wrote them already to post each day). There’s a bit on McGovern in the defense one, but honestly not a lot because we don’t have much to go off; no real history as a DC and practices are only open for a small amount of time. Maybe I’ll be able to write more about him after a few games (though again, I think ucla will be able to sit in a base D to win the first three, so who knows).
Re the "wife job." This cuts both ways. There are a lot of people out there who would love to live in LA. But there are also a lot of people who would rule out a job simply because it is in LA. There are cons to living in LA (traffic, hollywood, cost of living) that simply outweigh the weather for some people.
You are so right. Everyone is different. I’ve lived my whole life here. Hate the traffic, Hollywood, taxes, cost of living, etc. but I stay because of the weather. I hate humidity, bugs, snow, rain and ice. So I lean towards the weather as most important. Many would disagree.
10 W's minimum this year, or he'll be tarmacked.
..then it's "adios m.f.er" I guess. And no tears will be shed in this household.
10 wins actually pretty doable. There's really no excuse to not starting 5-0. finish 5-3 and he's got it.
That sure would make some of our losses this season palatable....
In re your column, Dimitri, I lament that more here are not what we used to term on the old Bruins Nation site as codgers. (Anyone remember the Dump Dorrell site that was essentially the origin of Bruins Nation and then this spin off?)
Anyway, we codgers -- graduates in the 1960s -- have had an interesting perspective. The fifties saw UCLA's dominance (and only national championship in 1954) and Sanders' death from a heart attack in the arms of a prostitute (or so it was gossiped) to the miserable Barnes years, the brilliant Prothro era (cut short by him getting "homered" in the USC game by refs in yet another Figueroa fix), Pepper Rogers, and the interminable semi-decent Donahue decades, and the "Again? Why on earth did he get ever fired?" Toledo years. Those comprised an emotional, roller-coaster ride ending up in the weapons grade mediocrity to date. (I lay this all at the feet of that incredibly incompetent AD and former UCLA catcher we lifted from U. C. Irvine.)
I do believe that of the two PAC-12 escapees -- UCLA and USC -- the Bruins will fare better even while getting schlonged by the likes of Michigan, Ohio State, and others. Principally, this will be because of the relative difference between the ghetto that USC resides in and the relative ambiance of Westwood. I mean, why on earth leave the Midwest and live in an area fraught with crack houses, homeless, and unending campouts on the Harbor Freeway overpasses? You can always go to Detroitus for that!
It'll take a few years and I will probably be occupying a slot over in the Elysian fields adjacent to Veteran Avenue but those Big Ten bucks will have an effect -- ultimately!
So, every once in a while, stop by and drop a sports page near my headstone so I can catch up. ONLY DON'T MAKE IT THE L.A. TIMES! I CAN'T STAND THAT RAG!
(Forgive me! I forgot the two years of Dick Vermeil and that magnificent RB win over Ohio State! Like Larry Farmer as the BB coach, if only he coulda stuck around!)
"Principally, this will be because of the relative difference between the ghetto that USC resides in and the relative ambiance of Westwood." -- lol have you been to Westwood recently?
..have you been to downtown Los Angeles? Driven up the 110 Freeway to the Coliseum?
Relative ambiance. Though I take your point. Also, if Kelly can come up with 10 wins then good for him! I just look at the past years and shake my head.
Tbn?
I think 7-5 Kelly stays. Hopefully we can win 9 or 10, the schedule is certainly favorable with $C having a new coach and Stanford on the skids. Getting Utah at the Rose Bowl helps too. But to answer the main question, hell yeah. UCLA is a top ten job for any coach. But not Kiffin please.
Your well written article is full of hope and delusion!! :) The UCLA football job has never been a desirable job!! Look at who UCLA has hired historically? Has UCLA ever taken a hot coach from another school or from the NFL? UCLA got played by Chip Kelly's agent. No one else was seriously pursuing him. They put a lot of lipstick on that pig and UCLA bought into it! :) Look at what your coaches have accomplished before coming to UCLA, during and AFTER. After leaving UCLA, has any coach gone on to better things! I don't know your history very well but I doubt it. If you look at what UCLA has accomplished in football, your peers are really Colorado (national championship in1990 outright), Cal, ASU, and may be Utah (no one in their right mind would argue that those are top football schools). The last 20 plus years have not been kind to UCLA and that makes the job even less appealing. Being 100 million plus in debt doesn't help either. To recap, yes you have Westwood, academics, weather (do those things really matter?, where is the University of Alabama located again? Exactly!) etc but you lack the football pedigree and I doubt any coach would take UCLA seriously. May be with the new money in the Big10, things could potentially change but we'll first have to see UCLA performing better than it has the last 20 years, no easy task since you are going into an even more competitive environment.
Well, first of all, Florida was absolutely "seriously pursuing" Chip when UCLA "won" that coaching derby which has been widely reported and confirmed - obviously, that hasn't worked out the way we would have wanted it to but it's just incorrect to pretend that the Kelly hiring, at the time, was similar to the hiring of Mora or Alfor. I think I'd also point out that, after leaving UCLA, Dick Vermeil did pretty well for himself...
But, to the larger point, I won't recap the discussion we had in an earlier post about how successful UCLA football has been over the years (#18 in aggregate AP Poll history for one example) which is why so many of us are so unsatisfied with what we've been watching since 1999 - but let's look at the future.
It is very likely that, ca. 2025, there will be a "Power 2" in College Football - the SEC and the B1G. Everyone else will be relegated to the same rough status that the American or Mtn West has today. As of today, there are exactly 33 seats at that table: 14 schools in the SEC, 14 schools in the B1G, Oklahoma, Texas, UCLA, $outhern Cal, and Notre Dame. That's it. That's the list. Is it possible if not probable that somewhere between 5 and 7 more seats open up between now and then? Sure. But, right now, if you want to *know* you are "running with the football big dogs" - there are 33 jobs. That's it.
Of course, some of those jobs are more attractive than UCLA - but I'd argue a whole lot of them aren't - besides the 7 bluebloods (a State Univ in Ohio, Michigan, Notre Dame, Bama, Texas, Oklahoma, and, yes, $outhern Cal) and maybe 3-4 with a similar tradition and location near large amounts of local recruitable talent (UGa & metro Atlanta; LSU & East Texas/Louisiana; aTm & state of Texas; Florida & state of Florida) which have invested in football in a way that UCLA simply hasn't in the last 20 years - the combinations Dimitri lays out argue that, at the very least it's in the top 1/3rd of the 33 "Big Dog" jobs and, likely very soon, more than ANY job outside those 33. Given the new leadership that rejected the "we can't do better anyway" mentality of the AD who presided over it (and honestly, pursuing Kelly and taking out of Chianti Dan's direct control at the time was a start of that rejection) to move to the B1G in the first place - it is likely noticed in the coaching world just how attractive this job is and the potential that is here, just waiting to be tapped.
I'm not trying to put words in Dimitri's virtual pen, but it *should* be easier to win at UCLA than at, say, Iowa or Mississippi, let alone the other bottom half-ish or so of those 33 jobs (Indiana? Vandy?) - that it hasn't been in the last 20 years is a failure of leadership from the old AD (among others) and the "we can't do better" mentality he swore by and hired by that it is long since time for us as fans to reject - and our recent decisions make it more likely than not that coaches are recognizing that too.
And, by the way, even "bluebloods" and wildly successful programs don't last forever - just ask Nebraska, Florida State, and Miami fans or, if you've been around long enough, ask yourself if you could have imagined in the late 90's & early 2000's that Clemson would be what it is now and those three would be what they are these days...
Clemson caught lightning in a bottle. We won’t see them again in this lifetime. FSU and Miami are contenders but what have you done for me lately?
Being in the Big 10 or the SEC DOESN'T automatically mean you are running with the big dogs. That means those big dogs are constantly running over you!! I mean UCLA gets run over constantly in the weaker Pac12 by Stanford, Washington, Oregon, and Utah. UCLA football is a third tier football destination because it is a third tier football program. In the last 20 years, and football has changed in the last 20 years, it's the big dogs and we don't have to name them and then you have second tier football programs like: Oregon, Stanford, Washington, Texas, Auburn etc etc and then you have the third tiers and I am being generous in including UCLA in that group! Academics, weather, access to Hollywood, Westwood mean NOTHING!! UCLA will be in a position to offer between 8 to 10 million a year in 2025 to a candidate. Doing that doesn't guarantee success (ask Texas AM) but at least you are giving yourself a fighting chance.
Exactly - and once we are willing to give ourselves that "fighting chance" - which we were not willing to do under the previous AD/regime and darn well better be willing to do going forward - the point is that there are very few, if any jobs in conferences that have Billion Dollar a Year TV contracts that have a greater untapped potential than UCLA. And whether its in considering investment opportunities, real estate opportunities, or coaching opportunities: untapped potential = attractive.
And who could argue with that.
Could be worse… Nebraska became the first major-conference team in the AP Poll Era, which goes back to 1936, to lose seven straight games by single digits…
We can debate HC all we want... but right now we're stuck with Chip Kelly. And he has proven that he can't even garner interest (never mind close) for a top-tier DC candidate. By the way... is there any content planned for Bill McGovern on this site yet? He seems like another Chip Kelly buddy that never did much in the NFL. Coaching Luke Kuechly is fairly impressive though.
Season previews are scheduled for next week (literally, I wrote them already to post each day). There’s a bit on McGovern in the defense one, but honestly not a lot because we don’t have much to go off; no real history as a DC and practices are only open for a small amount of time. Maybe I’ll be able to write more about him after a few games (though again, I think ucla will be able to sit in a base D to win the first three, so who knows).
Thanks! Reading it now!