As far as alumni participation goes, when i graduated in the 1960’s, i joined the alumni association upon graduation. I never heard from them and when I moved, I had to make sure they knew where I had gone. For a long time, it was a lost cause. I still have my card identifying me as a lifetime member of the UCLA Alumni Association.

These days, it has gone the other way with so many phone solicitations that it drives me crazy….. I have given to the school many times, but it never seems like that is enough. It just accelerates the phone calls and mail.

We lived near Stanford for 5 years in the 70’s, and i joined a booster club to get better football season tickets. What an effective operation they ran and I wasn’t an alum. Personable, low key, but still wanting the same thing UCLA wants in the end. Stanford just made it an easier thing to do.
Bill

I don’t know how important it is to debate whether the LAT is biased toward UCLA or U$C. Assuming that these news outlets are still relevant, it is necessary to cross-check facts and make sure that the reporting is still accurate, but debating bias is somewhat arbitrary. Everyone I know who has graduated from U$C believes the LAT is pro-UCLA, despite any seemingly factual tales about the lack of Reggie Bush and OJ Mayo investigation (which are probably lacking for other reasons, like the LAT has nobody on staff). But like people have mentioned, selling papers or getting views is ultimately what is important.

It’s inaccurate to assess relevance based on attendance numbers (it’s a small part of the equation). There is no doubt U$C football is more relevant nationally (more people in Podunk, Iowa care about U$C than UCLA) and there is no doubt U$C football is more relevant in LA (to the general population). Come Monday at the office few people are talking about the UCLA game, everybody is asking about the U$C game.

As much as I hate it, right now U$C football is very important to the NCAA, Pac-10 and to UCLA because the U$C program generates money in all different forms outside of ticket sales. College football is not the ridiculous money maker that it is because of ticket sales.

UCLA football is also relevant but it’s not the same. That doesn’t mean lots of people in one of the largest cities in the US don’t attend UCLA football games 6 times a year. But the “buzz”, aka relevance, marketability, whatever you want to call it, has little to do with avg. annual attendance. Especially in college football and especially at UCLA because the season is limited to 6 games a year, UCLA is a large school with many alumni, there are lots of school sponsored and non-school sponsored alumni events each game, people want to watch football at the Rose Bowl, etc. If anything I think your attendance numbers prove the opposite of what you wanted, no matter how crappy the program, no matter the national ranking (BCS or otherwise), the attendance numbers are fairly steady over the last 3 years. People will go watch UCLA football games even if they don’t really care about reading about them.

For me there are pieces of these discussions that are very interesting like should newspapers “blog” (to steal from Mark Cuban), what should the role of local media be, when the cost of content goes to nothing how can MSM compete, why is UCLA’s alumni so weak compared to U$C (public v private is the main reason?), does UCLA need to be more marketable, etc?

Anyway, great posts and discussion topics.

I would add a few things. USC’s rise to becoming a dominant program was at a time when LA/Southern California was hungry for football. It filled a void when it should have been UCLA if not for Bob’s ambivalence towards the end. Reality is, football (NFL) is still king, and the lack of a king in LA has allowed SC to take that spot with their football program. When it comes to UCLA basketball, it runs second fiddle to the Lakers. It just doesn’t get the play it should. Just look at KLAC 570 and their ineptitude of support they give to UCLA even though they are the flag ship station. We had our opportunity, but we dropped the ball. NEU and company have a major uphill battle.

i also find it interesting that SC is so popular amongst the inner city crowds. And yet we are talking about a private school. Aren’t private schools known to epitomize the wine and cheese crowds. Aren’t they the ones many of us will ridicule and deride for being spoiled and buying their way to a degree. What does that tell you? USC has diversified itself so well with their marketing schemes that the brand name is able to cross barriers. But not so with UCLA. I’m not sure why not? Again, is this the incompetency of the Morgan center or perhaps it’s a failure on their part to recognize the playing field?

just a couple of more thoughts to throw into the discussion.

It New York, it’s always the Yankees and the Knicks or the Mets and the Nets.

In Chicago, it’s the Cubs over the White Sox.

In Frisco, where I live, it’s the Giants and the 49ers over the A’s and the Raiders.

And in L.A. it’s the Dodgers, Lakers, and SC or the Angels, Clippers and our Bruins.

Part of it is geographical, in that the team that is in the center city gets more publicity over the the suburban teams. However, some of it is simply traditional. I think college football over the years was more “popular” than college basketball so SC trumped Coach Wooden’s teams. Remember, until recently, college basketball was barely even on the map – the games were shown on tape delay or not at all.

I also think that the Bruins are fighting the private school/public school phenomenon. SC has a better alumni network and it is deeply ingrained into the culture of the city. People who attend public universities as a whole have less of a “buy in” into the public school and the public school alumni associations do a terrible job of breeding in loyalty to the alumni.

So you put all this together and you find some of the reasons behind the bias. However, all one would need to do is count the column inches of coverage of SC to that of the Bruins and compare the page placement and you can see objectively the bias.

It’s very strange why newspapers act the way that they do. Without getting into politics, it was pretty easy to see that Obama got a pass and Hillary got slammed during the primary season. Now we see the long-term policy of giving McCain a pass while the slamming of Obama finally kicks into gear. I don’t know why this happens. I know that Bush got a pass because it was said he used to hang out with the reporters and gave them all nicknames and asked about their kids, while Kerry acted imperious and did not glad-hand them. It’s natural to bend over backwards to give someone who’s “nice” to you good coverage. But it certainly isn’t professional.

The mainstream media has itself to blame for the loss of readership. Certainly the internet plays into it, but I started reading BN simply because the Times had an obvious SC bias, and the information they provided was non-comprehensive and lacking in insight. The fact that a USC alumnus blogs for the Bruins at the Times proves the point. There is no question that you would never see a Bruin alumnus blog for SC. It just would never happen. Bias will always exist. When there was more than one paper per town you could find the paper that served your bias. However, we’re stuck with one-newspaper towns, so in L.A. we’re stuck with a paper that has a SC, Dodger, and Laker bias. Not a problem for me with the Lakers since I’m a fan of theirs, but as an Angels and Bruins fan, I pretty much find it unreadable.

These are a few of my random thoughts. Naturally everybody is free to agree or disagree because I doubt they share all my biases except for my Bruin bias.

Go Bruins. Keep up the great work, Nestor, et al. Just because I’m not posting doesn’t mean I’m not reading everyday.

they are in the middle of it themselves…plus another reason is that i really think that Nike (their sponsor) does a much better job of marketing their college teams to youth than does Adidas. I would be willing to bet that there isnt one Nike store that doesnt have any of their college team apparel? Especially in the So. Cal region, all they gotta do is put their $5 USC T-Shirts out and ppl will buy them. (Obviously helps to have your program realize some success to help with the marketing as other posters have alluded to). I feel like when i walk into an Adidas store, for the most part, they only seem to be marketing their NBA players, and the same emphasison the college teams just isn’t there.

which makes college football much bigger in LA. That coupled with 5 years of success and 5 years of failure at UCLA make the spotlight shine brigher on SUC.

UCLA basketball always has to compete during the season with the Lakers and even though we have been outstanding the last three years, public attention still gravitates toward the Lakers during hoop season.

It’s not a matter of “I think,” USC defintely benefits because there is no NFL team. SC is the peudo-pro team for Los Angeles. The Chargers tried, but could not fill the void of the LA market. Let’s face it, as of now, football is KING. It provides the hitting and hype at a much more frantic level than any of the other sports. I would even say that the rise of MMA could be linked to the NFL’s growing popularity.

BUT if an NFL team comes to LA, and that team happens to be the Jaguars…I would venture to say that UCLA potentially could take over the landscape. If the Jags come, I could see Drew and Lewis becoming fixtures in the community, receiving a lot of love by the massess. Combine that with the program getting back on its feet through NEU, I think UCLA will become very popular with the general public. But not just popular, I could see us becoming popular at the expense of SC. SC will no longer have the monopoly it enjoys right now. As much as I want NEU to thrive, I would also love to see an NFL team return to LA. I think that as much as us becoming good again will help lessen the coverage of SC.