Some Thoughts On The Search...

Bumped from the diaries. GO BRUINS. -N

I know that there have been some people who haven't cared what USC thinks about our coaching search or who we hire or whatever, but I wanted to share this.

One of my closest friends played football at USC from 2000 to 2004. He played for Hackett, and then for Carroll/Chow. You don't have to worry about this being "Trojan spin" because he and I have been friends for about 15 years and I trust his opinion.

On Chow...He said to me, and I quote, "You are SO LUCKY that you didn't hire Chow. I played for him, and know him personally, and he would have been a disaster as a head coach." He said that all the so-called personality issues are very real and would greatly impact his ability to be a successful head coach. And by the way, my friend loves Chow, but is 100% convinced that he would have been a disaster of a head coach. And that on the recruiting trail, Carroll would have eaten him alive.

So I asked him....which coach being hired at UCLA would scare you most? And while USC is as scared of UCLA football as we are of USC basketball (read: not at all), he said Neuheisel, hands down. He believes that RN would be able to go head-to-head with Carroll for every single recruit in Southern California. Right now, if all things are equal with a recruit, Carroll has the advantage, being a superior salesman. He believes that RN would eliminate that disparity, and that USC and UCLA would have to legitimately fight it out for all the top-notch recruits.

Take that for what it is worth, but it's coming from a guy who knows his football and knows the Pac-10 and SoCal recruiting landscape.

And now on to my thoughts on RN....I am disgusted by the amount of vitriol that has been spewed about RN on various message boards. RN has been discussed and treated like some sort of sub-human being, unworthy of breathing the same oxygen as the rest of us. The guy has made mistakes. He was a very young head coach, he cut corners, and got busted for it. While there certainly were a lot of violations, they were minor in nature. He wasn't exactly out there strangling hookers to protect his players. The way some people have spoken about him has truly made me sick.

I think RN is a very good coach. And while no coach is a guarantee for success, I think RN is a pretty safe bet. It's a myth that he "destroyed" programs. At CU, they had disciplinary problems before him, and after him. Maybe there's just something in the Boulder water supply. At UW, everyone knows he got a raw deal, as he was so vindicated in court.

RN has won a Rose Bowl, both as a player and as a coach. He can coach, he can recruit and he wants the job badly. He's not the perfect candidate, but who is? What I can't stand is this holier-than-thou attitude of some UCLA fans, who sit atop their ivory tower and look down on RN as the scum of the earth. That's unfair, and undeserved. It's not a morality contest. We're hiring a football coach.

There has been much said about us being the laughing stock of college football with the "search" we are conducting. I disagree. UCLA football is so irrelevant that we cannot possibly be the laughing stock of college football because the college football world doesn't give a shit about UCLA football. And to be honest....that's a far sadder position to be in than to actually be the laughing stock.

I feel like I have rambled long enough, and I don't know if any of this will come out coherently. If we're not going to hire RN, then I say we just triple Ben Howland's salary, and let him coach football and basketball. Who is with me?

Go Bruins.