The Rick Neuheisel Paradox

I agree with every word. Every year, with every HC, we hear, "young team, injuries, learning curve, new OL, new system to learn, etc, etc. Why? Then I start to see more basketball posts. Other teams don’t have the same issues to deal with? Please. To look like we do on the field tells us that something is really wrong inside this thing. I don’t know what that X factor is, but it all starts with the consciousness of the HC. The team is HIS. He picks the assistants, the players, and the makes the game plan. RN has the best OC out there, and we see receivers dropping balls and running poor routes with predictable high school play calls. Not throwing to one on one when they load the box. We give the fodder to the LA Times hacks. With more TX like wins, they would shut up.

Now, we have to ask the Q, what do we do? Send emails to people in authority? Pressure the staff? I don’t know. I do know that I see the same KD pattern emerging. Am I the only one? 5 years of the same lame excuses and then termination. I had so many expectations for RN. We all did. Not panning out. Not getting better. Lucky now to go 6 and 6. Again.

I pray that this season doesn’t end with a home debacle vs U$C. A blowout by them at home would severely hurt recruiting since many come to that game to make a choice between them and us. I have to be honest. Right now, I don’t have a good gut about it.

In all seriousness, how much more time do you give CRN?Hypothetically, if he wins 3 of his last 5, it is a no brainer(gets 2 years). However, if he loses all 5 and gets blown out by SUC, what say ye?

I know the hoops are upon us. Good. It is just coincidental that I, myself, begin to fall back to our BB history when FB is not going well.

I think our running backs seem to have improved.

After the last Gary Beban season, we had a losing season. The next year Tommy Prothro went out and got Dennis Dummit from a JC. 1st game we beat OR St 32-0. We went on to a (I think) 9 and 1 season, losing to $$c. Played 10 games then. No other bowls allowed for the PAC 8 then, so we stayed home. Today we would have been in a major bowl with that team. Dummit was a great QB.

At least the “less-talented upperclassmen” may have more game experience that the “less-talented younger guys.”

I am a high school teacher and work my students hard. They come back and tell me that in college (not just UCLA but others) that they have to get into study groups to learn. Some can’t understand their professors due to very heavy accents. They don’t use the whiteboards, they just lecture. I went to a workshop presented by a prof. from $c and he said that he taught only 6 hours of classes a week and was earning over $160,00 a year plus he had time to do workshops during the week because he had the time and we all paid over $150 for the workshop and there were well over 400 people in the room. Teaching is an art and athletes need good teaching to get better, just like in the classroom. We need to go over things – over and over so that in games, it is second nature what you do because you have practiced it so well over and over in practice.

The guy had us competitive against $UC every year I was there (’89-93), even when we had a dearth of talent (John Barnes?) He took us to bowl games and our teams won them, and our players went on to good NFL careers.

Unfortunately, college football has changed a LOT since those days, and CRN hasn’t appeared to figure that out.

By this point (year 3), I would have expected us to be at least somewhat competitive in the Pac-10. Each week, our team comes out looking vanilla, lost, and fearful of the beatdown they are going to receive from the opponent.

I’m with ATV: at some point, you can’t keep pointing to the “young team” excuse.

Anyone hoping for a dramatic turnaround this season (“miraculous” home wins over UA and OSU, followed by a road split with UW and ASU and then a revenge beating of SUC) is delusional. Maybe it would be possible with our best QB, the guy who has the ability to beat Houston and Texas when healthy, but it’s not gonna happen with an untested and unready rookie QB playing in a system that isn’t right for his specific abilities. Add in the fact that our defense would have to improve substantially for us to even have a prayer against UA and USC (at the very least), and I think the dramatic turnaround possibility is…an IMpossibility. At this point, I think 5-7 is probably the best we can legitimately hope for. And no, that is not acceptable.

So what does this mean for Rick’s future? I hate that I even have to think this, but it must be said: I think that 2011 will have to be Rick’s “Show Me” season. Yes. Just like the old days: http://www.bruinsnation.com/story/2007/5/12/173728/991

We’re too young, you say? Rick needs more time, you say? Shut the hell up, I say. We’ve had three long years of crappiness/mediocrity to deal with. We’ve been promised a more aggressive style of football. We’ve been promised a new mindset of relentless optimism. We’ve been promised (although not as directly as that fake, overblown, not-CRN-endorsed advertisement would suggest, but still) that we would be able to compete with/overcome SUC for the title of best Southern California Football Program. And halfway through Year 3, we’re caught in a rut of Dorrellian game management and pessimistic “just trying to stay in the game” strategy, and we’re still miles behind SUC in terms of on-field talent (having been blown away by them the last two years and likely to be blown away by them again this year). THIS IS NOT ACCEPTABLE.

So in my mind, having already conceded this year as lost (5-7 or worse), I believe Rick will have one more chance next year to right the ship. And by “right the ship” I don’t mean “win 6-7 games and go to the freaking Pontiac Dodge Ford Hyundai Poinsettia Eaglebank Bowl vs. the #11 team in the MAC.” I mean, “stay near the top of the Pac-10 standings all year, beat SUC, and go to a major bowl game.” What kills me is that a lot of people will read those expectations and think that I’m setting the bar way too high, when in reality THAT’S WHERE WE SHOULD BE ALREADY, BASED ON WHAT CRN PROMISED US. If we can’t even do that next year, I will officially begin to be critical of CRN. I’m giving him one more year to fulfill his promises, and that’s it. Rick, consider yourself on thin ice.

I’m not sure if this is a great theory or not, but both RN and NC are offensive coaches. In the past, NC would work for defensive minded coaches, and in a way I think they’re kind of canceling each other out. Maybe one person says one thing and the other something else, or they’re afraid of steeping on each other’s shoes, so they chose to not say anything at all. Maybe that’s why we haven’t shown much growth.

I think what they really need is a very good defensive coach in the staff. Someone able to balance these two offensive minded coaches. What I’ve seen this year is the deployment of the revolver. We’ve hear about the revolver over and over through out the season, and we’ve also seen a fairly horrible defense this season. Yeah, the defense was good for Houston, and Texas, but other than those two games, we got blown out three times, and almost lost to Washington State because we allowed them to score too often.

Additionally, what I’ve seen this season, and it’s clearly becoming a trend in the RN era is the level of injury. I don’t know how his kids are being conditioned or trained, but they’ve been seriously injury prone since day one. Not just that but it seems like they’re less agile and are growing slower. All of these make them more pron to injury. It frankly doesn’t matter if he recruits the top class in the nation of they can’t play because they got injured. Maybe it’s them competing with each other, and channeling their energy wrongly, or maybe the level of practice is not appropriate to their physical level, but losing two QB on day one, to replace them with a 3rd string QB, and then having the 1st string QB injured most of his first season, and now affecting his second season. It’s just not good, and hopefully the trend won’t continue, but if RB gets injured, the program should seriously reassess how they’re training these kids.

It seems like the only guys that play well for us are the guys that are studs from day one. Examples of this in recent memory, and I’m going to use guys on D because our offense has been god awful lately, Rahim, ATV, Brian Price, etc.. These guys stepped onto campus as great players and seemed to be able to stave off our coaches efforts to tone down their skills. Maybe the staff is just hitting and missing a lot with these “top” recruits that we’ve landed in recent classes or we’re just doing a terrible job at coaching these kids. Whatever it is, our mediocrity on the football field isn’t going to change until the problem is fixed.

Somehow, and this is pure speculation, I perceive friction between NC and RN. And I also see that RN is deferring to CN on offensive decisions. Doing this has rendered both men less than stellar in play calling, strategy, and results. Both are compromising their best efforts in an effort to “get along”. I believe that both are competent, but together, they do not mix.

Unlike Homer Smith of long ago, who complimented Terry Donahue’s lack of offensive insights, with NC and RN, it is perhaps, too much of the same thing. NC has been helpful and active in recruiting and this has been good for UCLA. However, there appears to be something in the wind that is not right. To believe otherwise, it seems RN is acting like a long term university employee who is going through the motions, and waiting for his next payday, and that is not his nature.
Bill

I’m more depressed now than I was Thursday night. I do hope the bst for KP, of course, but I just don’t know any more about CRN and his decisions

I was around during the Terry Donahue era. (Indeed, my Dad, a UCLA alum, took me to the Coliseum to see Red Sanders beat U$C in 1954, 34-0.) And while Donahue was too conservative, at least we were competitive then. We don’t seem to be competitive any more. It’s no longer fun.

Did anyone else see Neuheisel talking into his headset in the 4th quarter of the Oregon game? He was angry and yelling the f word to someone. Anyone know who he was directing that to?

Not making any excuses (or maybe I am?) for CRN, I agree he has not “shown” us, yet, in any area other than recruiting. But I do believe it’s too early to start predicting the how or when of his dismissal – that sort of talk blows my mind. The facts are that he inherited a dispirited program, a team of underachieving recruits, and a staff of resentful, in some cases underpaid, assistants. He’s had a key recruit or two bail unexpectedly. And he had the “you better be squeaky clean or we’re coming after you” press negatively reporting on his efforts from the beginning. None of these things on their own is an excuse for the team’s underperformance, but I offer them to put the journey and the discussion about “what next” in context. Since he arrived he’s hired better assistants – Palcic is doing a great job, and ALL of us considered Chow a great hire until the last several games. Bullogh is a negative, but still… CRN significantly improved recruiting, as we’ve all pointed out. And here’s the main point, for me anyway – if KP were healthy, and had been through camp, it’s my belief we’d be looking at an additional win at this point in the season. CRN and Chow clearly thought Prince and the O-Line were suited to the pistol, and built their season on that belief. I believe they were right, and got hammered by the one injury they weren’t prepared to deal with. A UCLA squad with a consistent presence at QB might’ve beaten either KState or Cal, two beatable teams. The pistol has been a major lift to our depleted O-Line. Prince has shown, when moderately healthy, that he knows how to run it. Not saying he’s a world beater, I’m saying he’s the right QB for this system. It’s my opinion that a healthy Prince with a full training camp might’ve taken that offense to a different level than we’re seeing right now. Again, just my opinion, if that had happened, we’d probably have won an additional game, and certainly not been blown out as badly in those we lost (excepting Oregon they would’ve blown us out anyway). A UCLA team that stood at 4-3 right now, that stayed competitive in its losses, would be a UCLA team to have hope in. I know, I know, ifs and buts aren’t suppposed to count in sports – scoreboard, baby – but before people start getting too crazy about what to do next, it’s worth looking closely at the circumstances and considering things like context. In this case, one injured QB has had, again and finally in my opinion, a devastating impact on the season. Things would not have been perfect by any means had Prince been healthy throughout – but they’d be very different. I too have doubted the conservative playcalling, and the questionable rotation of players at times – but I believe these are the actions of a coach on his heels more than he thought he’d be who is falling back on his CTD learned defenses. And despite those negatives, I believe he still has the moxie to turn this program around in the next two years – so i’m still on the Neuheisel bus. GO BRUINS

Year Team Overall Conference Standing Bowl Coaches# AP°

1982 UCLA 10–1–1 5–1–1 1st W Rose 5 5
1983 UCLA 7–4–1 6–1–1 1st W Rose 17 13
1984 UCLA 9–3 5–2 T–3rd W Fiesta 9 10
1985 UCLA 9–2–1 6–2 1st W Rose 7 6
1986 UCLA 8–3–1 5–2–1 T–2nd W Freedom 14 14
1987 UCLA 10–2 7–1 T–1st W Aloha 9 11
1988 UCLA 10–2 6–2 2nd W Cotton 6 6

Homer Smith helped him a lot. But, those were good years. GO BRUINS!