The Morning After, Part 6: Washington State

However, with bye week upon us, I believe it’s time for the Hundley Era to begin with his first start in two weeks. Why? 1) He was specifically recruited to run our offense now; 2) He’s 100% healthy; 3) Better to learn the ropes with the balance of this year as opposed to waiting until September to figure out if he, in fact, has “got it” or not; 4) We need a capable back-up always on deck (Prince at this point), 5) We still have a shot at the Pac-12 South Division title (Rick’s goal), 6) It’s not like Hundley plans to be with us for 4 years, 7) If he sucks – so what. We suck. We’ll know. Rick will certainly be gone. And Spring ball will be a super hot QB competiton to be the first starter of the Mike Leech Quarterback Mecca Era. Get Hundley ready for the zero-conference-win-Wildcats.

We won the last quarter in comeback fashion. We won the second half. We won the game. We’re 1-0 in our last 1 game.

For the season, we’re 3-3.

More numbers. For the defense – Total D 95 (out of 120 in the country), Scoring 96, Tackles for loss 112, Pass Efficiency Defense (not sure what this is) 95, Sacks 112, 3rd Down coversion rate 118, 1st downs 111, Red Zone 110.

For the Special Teams – Punt return yards 116, punt returns 109 (an average of 2.88 yards per return), KO Return yards 102, KO returns 100.

For the offense – Scoring 80, Total offense 62, turnovers lost 62, 3rd down conversions 62, red zone offense 77.

Those numbers aren’t too good in my opinion.

CTSS is now 18-25 for a .419 rate. That’s still the worst since 1919. He now only needs to go 17-2 to tie the coaching record of his predecessor. To me, that’s the sample size to use. All of these numbers demonstrate absolute mediocrity. We praise his recruiting, but he imports an offense that is ill-suited to the most important part of that offense, the QB. Our guys (maybe not Hundley, but at least guys we’ve seen) just aren’t fast enough. They’re a step slower than other running quarterbacks, so they’re teeing themselve up to take tremendous shots. Look at the QBs from Navy, Air Force, Georgia Tech. They run the ball over and over, and get hit on every play. But they’re not getting injured. Our guys are. I think it’s that one quicker step.

Every year, there’s a new coordinator, and every coordinator is a revelation, a jewel, a pearl of great price, the next great innovator and motivator, the guy who is going to take us to the next level (my least favorite phrase, even less of a favorite than “it is what it is.”). Each of these guys proves to be another Debra Norvill, or whatver the guy’s name was who CTS brought in.

Obviously CTS doesn’t get fired today. I will give him concede his continued employment if we win the rest of our games, but I think the likelihood of that is pretty remote.

This is a bunch of gifted athletes who have been blended together into a really bad team, who are lead by really bad coaches. I still say that based on a sample size called “the entire body of work,” CTSS should not lead the team any further.

In fact, now is the best time to replace him because of the bye week coming up.

I regret booing at all because it did sound as if it were meant for Prince. But I was booing CRN for not putting in B. Hundley. I mean yea, Prince is a warrior and has a lot of heart, but I thought he might still have the THREE picks in the back of his head and would not perform well. Anyway, just wanted to clarify that, I can’t speak for everybody else at the Rose Bowl but that was my view.

Wow. If that doesn’t tell the tale, I don’t know what does. Miss that? Fox 71 pointed out the wins/losses the current head coach of UCLA needs to match the record of the previous UCLA head coach. Spin that around your noggin a few times. I really hope this little saying, “I really wanted him to succeed” —I said it too—doesn’t show up here anymore. UCLA hired a guy they hoped would succeed. That wasn’t a very good strategy.

I’m happy with last nights win. As a fan of the UCLA Bruins, I’m irate that we’ve only won 7 of our last 18 games. Does that sum up the argument that’s going on here?

doesn’t mean that it wasn’t an ugly game against an equally ugly team. Hard to figure whether their lack of success in the red zone had more to do with their ugliness or the effectiveness of our D. Did our D step up, or was it just the (lack of) quality of the opponent? The D certainly sucked for most of the rest of the game.

I spent the morning looking at ESPN recruiting classes and AP final standings. There were 10 teams who had a top 25 recruiting class in 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011 but who did not end in the AP Top 25 ranking in 2009, 2010 or so far in 2011. Those teams are UCLA, of course, and Georgia, Notre Dame, Minnesota. Colorado, North Carolina, Tennessee, Rutgers USF, and Washington. There were 20 teams who finished in the Top 25 in those years who did not have a recruiting class in the top 25. Those teams are Boise State, TCU, Iowa, Cincinnati, BYU, Georgia Tech, Wisconsin. Utah, Texas Tech, Central Michigan, Nevada, Michigan State, Missouri, Central Florida, Tulsa, North Carolina State, Houston, Baylor, Kansas State and West Virginia,

There are probably many different conclusions to be drawn from those data, but one of them surely must be that great recruiting does not give you a winning season. Another is that Peterson and Patterson seem to be able to produce winning teams without getting a lot of five star recruits.

Or to put it another way, we have seen for CTSS’s entire time here that a bad coach cannot make a winning team even with great recruits.

What surprised me the most was that there were so many teams doing as poorly as we are with recruits. Georgia, for example, had four good recruiting years, with not much to prove .

Anyway, if you want my little chart, you’ll have to explain how to post it. As for me, I am more convinced than ever that if we had a coach, we could win consistently with the guys we get, or with the guys we don’t get, or with a bunch of guys we find at random walking down the street. It also demonstrates that recruiting class ranking (at least ESPN’s recruiting class ranking) is not a partcularly accurate predictor of success down the road.

is expectations. Over the last decade one does not know what they will get from the UCLA Bruins on the football field. That wasn’t the case in the past. Sure, there were disappointing losses. But you had the expectation that the Bruins always had a chance to win. Now, you just don’t know. The reason is coaching. We’ve seen numerous references to recruiting success that hasn’t translated to wins. It’s coaching and the Bruins have been deficient in that department for the better part of a decade. When Terry Donahue was hired to replace Dick Vermeil after the Bruins TREMENDOUS victory over #1 ranked Ohio State—honk if you remember how great John Sciarra was—everybody was thinking, “Huh?”. Terry who? Oh, he was an offensive lineman, what?, when they beat Michigan State! Blah blah blah. Shucks, go back further to when Vermeil was hired. For those of you old enough, what did anyone know about Vermeil? The point is, the fact that we’re on here with “Gosh, I really wanted him to succeed” means ONE THING. And that is this: IT WAS A TREMENDOUS MISTAKE TO HIRE RICK NEUHEISEL. If Dick Vermeil had not succeeded or Terry Donahue had not succeeded—-remember, expectations of WINNING—no one would have written, “Yeah, I really wanted him to succeed”. If they were 15 and 22 after three seasons they would have been GONE. I think the discussion has to go deeper to something like, what in the hell were we thinking? His two stints with the other programs are the statistical equivalent of a camel’s back. Start big then down slope. This time, however, no “big”, only down.

Whenever I do something wrong or stupid, I feel bad. It was wrong to hire Rick. It is stupid that he is still Head Coach of the UCLA Bruins, the only football team I care about. And I feel really bad about it.