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Perspective on UCLA's "10 win" 2005 season

A friend of mine just sent me the following on last year's 10 win season and putting it in perspective. Interesting stuff.  Puts all the talk you hear about Dorrell won 10 games so he must be OMG the best coach ever in context:

There seems to be a common error regarding how many 10-win seasons UCLA has in its history. The correct answer is 7: 1946 (10-1), 1982 (10-1-1), 1987 (10-2), 1988 (10-2), 1997 (10-2), 1998 (10-2), and 2005 (10-2).

But even this is extremely misleading because UCLA played fewer than 10 games from 1919-1931, 1937, 1943, 1945, 1947, 1949-52, and 1954 (22 seasons) and only 10 games total in 1932, 1934-36, 1939-40, 1944, 1953, 1956-60, 1962-64, 1966-69, and 1971 (21 seasons). Thus, in 22 of UCLA's 87 seasons of college football, UCLA could not have won 10 games, and in 21 others, the only way UCLA could have won ten games was to go undefeated.

UCLA has only played 12 games in a season 22 times: 1938, 1975, 1976, 1978, 1981-88, 1991, 1993, 1995, 1997, 1998, and 2001-05. Seven of those (31.8%) have been 10-win seasons.

In addition, as many as nine other seasons quite likely would have been ten-win seasons if the team had played more regular-season games and/or there had been the number of bowl games there are today -- for example, 1935 (8-2, no bowl), 1952 (8-1, no bowl), 1953 (8-2), 1954 (9-0), 1955 (9-2), 1957 (8-2, no bowl), 1966 (9-1, no bowl), 1969 (8-1-1, no bowl), and 1973 (9-2, no bowl).

With today's 12 or 13 game schedules, 10-win seasons are pretty common, actually. In the Pac-10 alone, there have been 7 10-win seasons just during Dorrell's tenure (the last 3 seasons) alone. USC, UCLA, Cal, Oregon, and Washington State have all accomplished it. Just in this decade, 7 Pac-10 teams (add Washington and Oregon St.) have accomplished it. Indeed, four Pac-10 teams (Washington, Oregon St., Oregon, and USC) have had 11-win seasons since 2000.

I'm not denigrating last season's record. But it is clearly being exaggerated out of proportion when it is discussed in terms of being "one of only X times in school history" we have accomplished it, as if the number of regular-season games and bowl opportunities has been the same all that time.

This is a FanPost and does not necessarily reflect the views of BruinsNation's (BN) editors. It does reflect the views of this particular fan though, which is as important as the views of BN's editors.

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