UPDATED (N): The points re. Mr. Theriot are now moot given his public statement that those comments were not from him and that his facebook accounts were hacked into by someone else. The question now becomes why did Adam Maya repost those comments without verifying they were actually coming from Mr. Theriot himself.

So Adam Maya, the UCLA beat writer for the OC Register who happens to be a Trojan alum (and frequently laces his UCLA reports with nothing but contempt for Neuheisel) breathlessly posted a frustrated facebook rant from the parent of UCLA football player.  Apparently Brian Theriot, a Bruin alum who is he father of reserve fullback Trevor Theriot ranted on facebook this weekend about Rick Neuheisel, Wayne Moseley and the program:

"UCLA under Coach Rick (Neuheisel)….is horrible. Wayne Moses the running back coach is horrible. The sets are Pop Warner in movement, motion, and slots. I mean a Pop Warner type offense that Tim Tebow would laugh at. UCLA is playing with great athletes but giving great athletes boys and girls club sets. Norm Chow and Wayne Moses are old school and gone.

"I have decided to just show up and Coach at UCLA Spaulding Field today. I am going to just step out of the ‘parents’ section of the stands and coach the backfield. I am going to pick (Kevin) Prince as my starter and I am going with (Johnathan) Franklin/(Derrick) Coleman tail(back) and Theriot at fullback."

Uhh. Okay. There are no practice on Mondays. 

Theriot's facebook comments were posted on the "UCLA Blog" for the OC Register and I am not going to give it any kind link because that will only justify their efforts to rack up hits. It's pretty funny. UCLA has a huge game coming up with some interesting story lines. Yet here is Adam Maya apparently trolling through facebooks and twitter accounts of UCLA players' parents to find another storyline to attack Neuheisel's program. Pretty telling.

Anyway, Rick Neuheisel responded to Theriot's Dad's facebook rant with class:

"Everybody’s entitled to their opinion," Neuheisel said. "That’s just a part of the deal. It’s not uncommon for people to be frustrated when their loved ones aren’t getting the kind of playing time that they’d hope for, especially when things aren’t going well because its easy to say, How could we do any worse?

"All we do is play the guys who are deserving of playing time based on what we see on the practice field. There’s absolutely zero favoritism. Our coaches have too much at stake to be playing favorites. That’s not how we do it."

Again that was posted on the OC Register's "UCLA Blog" which will not get any kind of traffic from our community here on BN.

I have my questions and concerns about some of the personnel decisions we have seen our coaching staff made. However, none of that of course merit the narrative about Neuheisel being under some kind of siege which the Southern California traditional media writers are working over time to weave through their increasingly irrelevant outlets. Thank fully do have a coach who strikes the right notes when dealing with the TMZ.com wannabes covering the UCLA beat.

Mr. Thereiot sounds like a classic message board poster who lets his emotion cloud the surrounding facts. He is of course is not basing his comments on reality when concocting up the imaginary story line about UCLA being a team filled with "great athletes." There are reasonable questions to raise about the coaches' decisions at various points this season. However, here Brian Theriot unfortunately comes across as the classic "Bill & Ted" poster sometimes we see around youtube/message board comment threads whining about his sports team without considering the totality of the circumstances.  

I can only imagine how embarrassed his son is today and it would be good for him if he issued an apology to Neuheisel and rest of the UCLA community that follows our program.

Back to where our focus should be this week ... on our huge game at the Rose Bowl on Sunday.

GO BRUINS.