On Tuesday, Bleacher Report posted an article touting the accomplishments of Steve Alford at UCLA.
It was a typical puff piece that talked about how Alford has won over the players on the team by talking to Norman Powell. Conveniently, it didn't discuss why Zach Levine chose to leave the program after only one season.
The article also quotes Bruin great Tracy Murray who says:
"UCLA fans and alumni are really hard on their programs and coaches. (Alford) is always going to be compared to Coach Wooden, which is unfair. No coach is ever going to do that again."
With all due respect to Tracy, the dissatisfaction among many fans and alumni stem from the fact that he should not have been hired in the first place due to the character issues he exhibited when he was head coach at Iowa. And, on the issue of character, asking the question "What would Wooden do?" if, in a similar situation as Alford was at Iowa, isn't just fair but the answer is simple. Coach threatened to throw Bill Walton off the team for refusing to cut his hair. How do you think Coach would have acted if one of his players had been accused of sexual assault?
But, I digress really because the most interesting item in the article is buried two-thirds of the way into the article and it is a detail that even a diehard fan might miss.
Jason King, the article's author, writes:
Still, Alford is confident Pauley Pavilion will soon be full again (capacity is 12,829). He said plans are already underway to move the student section closer to the court, which will create a more raucous atmosphere.
What? I did a double-take when I read that. "Plans are already underway to move the student section closer to the court, which will create a more raucous atmosphere."
As my favorite sports philosopher Yogi Berra once said, "It's deja vu all over again."
There have been no details released about this before now, but this is bound to bring back the questions raised by the #SFatPauley campaign.
It is definitely something we need to keep an eye on because the administration tried once before to move the student section in an effort to "put the students all together" and we know how that turned out.
Stay tuned.
Go Bruins!