It's been a fun couple of days here in Bruins Nation.  Football has officially returned, which despite the decade-long slump we've been mired in, has all of us excited that, finally, just maybe, this is the season that we finally turn it around.  Patroclus wrapped up our positional overviews with his discussion on the quarterbacks, running backs, and F-backs, one of our regulars chimed in with some updates on Albert Cid, Jaime Graham, and Derrick Bryant (HT muircoach), and Ryan gave us an analysis and round-up following the first day of fall practices.  Meanwhile, we discussed various "journalists" who are obviously oblivious when it comes to UCLA basketball, and took note of UCLA's place in the top five "athletic colleges" despite a decade of mediocre football.

With that, let's turn to the mid-week bits and pieces of news from around the UCLA-iverse:

• Let's get this started with football.  Fox Sports has a good profile of UCLA walk-on receiver Jerry Rice, Jr.  Now, if we can only find a way to get his dad out to practice to help coach up these current Bruin wide receivers: something tells me the guy might know what he's talking about.
• Speaking of wide receivers, the Press-Enterprise has a short profile with a few quotes from potential stand-out (if he can get the time on the field) Ricky Marvray, along with some comments from Rick Neuheisel on the quarterback situation.
  
• In other football news, former UCLA defensive back Matt Ware was re-signed by the Arizona Cardinals.
• On the season award front, defensive end Datone Jones was named one of the thirty-five candidates for the Hendricks Award for most outstanding college defensive end. I'm looking forward to seeing him wreck havoc on opposing offensive lines.
• In our ongoing QB saga, SBN's (and CGB's own) Avinash Kunnath reported that freshman quarterback Brett Hundley is expected to return to fall practice in one to two weeks.  It still remains to be seen if Hundley will be used in certain situational packages and formations, or if Neuheisel will decide to red-shirt him for this season.
• Switching over to campus news, the UCLA School of Law just received $10 million from Lowell Milken, J.D. 1973 for the development and funding of the Lowell Milken Institute for Business Law and Policy.  Very exciting news for the law school.
• Finally, Bruins continue to innovate: UCLA researchers, working in Arizona, have developed stretchable LEDs, in large part to put into various types of clothing, while on another part of campus, UCLA engineers have developed a new LCD that allows the device to recycle energy.

With that, those are your Bruin Bites for the middle of the work week.  Try not to work too hard and we'll see you all this weekend.  Fire away with your mid-week thoughts, nuggets of news, and opinions.

GO BRUINS