Run along now SMQ.

There’s a “we never landed on the moon” convention you are missing.

BN being ridiculed as a “single issue blog” by another blog named, Everyday Should Be Saturday with a single minded focus on one college sports.

As for SMQ the guy tries to give the impression of putting together a well “researched” post on UCLA’s expectations completely sidestepping citations to all the facts presented by Nestor and Achilles after the original post.

Great job eviscerating this guy Menelaus.

This is like the 66-3 beatdown Cade and his boys laid on those Longhorns.

I did not receive this week’s official fraudulent and politically calculated guidelines for how to think and post.

This will make the 80th straight week in Bruin Nation that I have not received official guidelines.

Please respond with these guidelines promptly so I can “remain staunchly on-message”. I would hate to have to think for myself…again.

which shouldn’t surprise us, as SMQ seems like trigger happy mudslingers. Here’s the point: last year we started the season with 20 returning starters, and 17 of them seniors. We had experience, upperclassmen, and an easy schedule. Why shouldn’t expectations for a “stars have aligned” type of year not been high? And why shouldn’t expectations for the next year, a rebuilding year with a difficult schedule, not be significantly lower? And shouldn’t a new coach with an entirely new system take some time for the players to learn?

SMQ says they didn’t go into “the returning roster in extreme detail”, which IMO is just an excuse for not even bothering to take the time to see the view from 10,000 feet, either.

SMQ just missed the boat on what the point of the original “predictions/expectations” were. Obviously, there are many reasons to temper expectations a bit for this year’s Bruins squad. No one should be expecting 10 wins. But you can’t go back and compare years like that as SMQ did – that’s faulty logic. (Though his other point – that BN’s “expectations” for KD’s final year were a bit high – is probably right. I can’t address whether there were ulterior motives there or not on the part of BN.)

Nestor’s original post – though correct in tempering expectations – was faulty in its own right, however. You can’t say the TN and BYU games will be “close” and then mark them down as definite losses, then go on to say AZ and Fresno are “toss ups” then not give a prediction either way. Any game that is going to be close in college football is a toss up. In other words, if AZ and Fresno are toss-up games, then so are TN and BYU.

Nester did include some good arguments and analysis for individual games. But even following that analysis, the best you can predict is WSU and Stanford should be wins, while Oregon, Cal, and ASU will be losses. (I think putting USC down as a win and UW as a loss – based solely on the fans and administration’s hope for vengence (aren’t the guys on the field the ones who will decide the outcome?) – are a bit of a stretch.

So, following Nestor’s analysis (without his prediction), we should chalk them up for 2 “expected” wins and 3 “expected” losses. The remaining 7 games (not counting a possible bowl game) are toss ups. To “expect” or “predict” one win out of those remaining 7 games, after lauding this new coaching staff, is ridiculous.

I think it’s more realistic to expect them to split those 7 games. So, somewhere between 5-7 and 7-5, maybe 8-4 if everything breaks right, is much more consistent with the individual game analyses. But, as others have mentioned, W-L records don’t really mean as much this year. I’ll be happy if they’re playing more consistent, better-coached ball, and I have every expectation that they will.

All great points-the best being that a First year coach should have different expectations than a 4th year coach who picks up a demoralized program (though wi will say that a lot of KD’s expectations were also driven by UCLA’s inherent advantages, location, good history, etc.-which CRN also has).

Anyway, I think a pretty solid rebuke by BN all the way around.

I will say, however, that the “stay on message” critque has some truth to it in my opinion. As with most things, the real answer falls somewhere in the middle with that particular criticism. Editoral/Moderator privileges carry some power and are excercised here as they are everywhere.

(..here we go again.) What part of underachieving-lifeless-excuse-ridden-talent-wasteful-no-progress-made-in-five-years-for-a-major-college-football-program-coach does SMQ not get?

Any person who has not done the homework that most of the contributors here on BN have done vis-a-vis the firing of Dorrell has little room to come reconstruct the facts to suit their purpose.

I don’t give a flying crap if UCLA goes 0-11 (well, actually, I do); I just want them to make as much progress and show as much promise this Fall on the field as RN, NC, and DW have shown in the 8-month run-up to this season.

People tend to forget that our good friend and Crosstown Condomite Coach, Meaty Petey, took the pipe in his first season.

By the way, Nestor may be a “a pompous, conceited jerk” but he is our “pompous, conceited jerk” (said in extreme jest, of course) and he sure works his ass off to make this a great venue for Bruin fans everywhere.

Putting everything else aside, are you really using preseason rankings to prop up an argument? The only argument they support is that preseason rankings mean nothing.

1. This year’s expectations are too low.

Most of the post goes on and on about how we’re expecting regression. Interestingly enough, he isn’t willing to guarantee that UCLA will get 7 wins. He then moves on to…

2. Last year’s expectations were ridiculously high.

This point isn’t really supported, except for linking last year’s expectations. Compared to the results (6 wins), the expectations (11 wins) look ridiculous.

I think this is the stupidest part of his post. As linked by Menelaus, last year he predicted this for UCLA:

That’s a 7-2 conference record, one win off from BN’s expectations. A team of that caliber would also have beaten Utah, BYU, and Notre Dame, so assuming a 10-2 overall record would be reasonable. The only thing separating BN’s ridiculous, hyperbolic expectations from his own perfectly reasoned, fair, and honest expectations is the game against USC.

We were not the only people who held CTS to a high standard last year. IIRC, in the preseason some ranked us as a dark horse top 10 team. Why? Large number of returning players who had been in CTS’ “system” throughout their careers. And, a very favorable schedule. As much as most of us wanted a 10 win season, we didn’t agree with those prognosticators because we knew that CTS would lose a couple of games (as he did).

CTS gets fired.

BN did not crusade for the RN hire. We were split here. So, no one can say we got our clear first choice and are dumbing down our predictions to protect him.

What happened was that CRN came in here and won us over. He wasn’t my first choice, or my second, and probably not my third. I now realize that we could not have made a better choice. Months ago I quoted the Rolling Stones “You can’t always get what you want. But, if you try, sometimes, you get what you need.” I agree, we got what we needed.

So now we go into the preseason and we do the exact same analysis we did for CTS last year.

And, once more, the big time prognosticators agree with Nestor. No one is saying we are going to do well. Why? Tougher schedule. Few experienced players. Deep injuries, already. AND a brand new coaching staff with a brand new system.

SMQ is disingenuous in not recognizing that an inexperienced team with a new coach is not in the same position as a team full of seniors with a 5th year coach.

One other point: There was a poster who came here and was nasty—baited BN to throw him off and got thrown off. He went on the SMQ site and tried to stir things up by taking some portions of BN posts out of context and claiming that he had been censored and bounced. He got a lot of sympathy, there. he was ripped apart on the lack of substance in his posts here.

I wonder if SMQ ever came over and read the thread.

M, great job of pulling things together.

It’s posts and threads like this that stand for what we are and how we do things. They show the criticism to be false and foolish.

sjh

PS. All of us who have posted a lot know there is no party line. All have been criticized and have criticized back. This is far from a “mind control” site. But, it is a site where you have to use your mind.