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Well this is our last weekend without UCLA football. The fun starts on Monday with UCLA football holding its media and then first practice begins at 3:30 pm which is open to public. We have posted UCLA's practice schedule here multiple times already this off-season. So not going to post it again. However, if you want to take a look you can find it over at the official site. I am sure many of you from here will be out there sometime this August. If you are once again I will make the ask for sharing what you are seeing via pictures/posts/fanshots with rest of us here on BN.

As for pre-season football related news we are still seeing various rankings and award watch list coming out. The USA TODAY Coaches' Top 25 college football coaches' poll was released late last week. Not a lot of surprises.  Florida is the number 1 with Longhorns and Sooners rounding up the top-3 spots. The Trojies who continue to skate free seemingly taunting an impotent NCAA and Pac-10 checks in at number 4. As for other Pac-10 teams in the top-25 Cal checks in at number 12 and Oregon at 14. Good for them. UCLA surprisingly checks in the "other receiving votes" category with 14 votes. That's more than enough respect for a team that went 4-8 and could have easily gone 2-10 with 2 wins coming against prolly two of the worst teams in the history of the conference. Just saying. I know if things went the other way we could have won 2 more games. Anyway, the full rankings are posted over at WWL.

One of the main reasons UCLA is getting a bit respect while flying under the radar is because of seniors like ATV. More after the jump.

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Let's start the week with some news from the diamond. Bruin phenom Gerrit Cole's dominating summer continued as the righthander tossed a two hit complete game shut out against Canada on late last week:

PRINCE GEORGE, British Columbia - UCLA right-hander Gerrit Cole recorded seven strikeouts and scattered just two hits in a complete game as the USA Baseball National Team (Collegiate) blanked Canada, 1-0, Friday evening at the 2009 Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline World Baseball Challenge at Prince George Citizen Field.

Cole (4-0) pitched all nine innings, surrendering two hits, and never allowed a baserunner to reach third. The rising sophomore from Santa Ana, Calif., earned his fourth victory of the summer pitching for the U.S. team. Cole registered three of his seven strikeouts in the ninth inning.

The U.S. team got on the board in the bottom of the second with one run, and Cole helped shut the door against Canada. Yasmani Grandal (Miami) hit a two-out single to left field in the second inning and Andy Wilkins (Arkansas) followed with an RBI-triple off the scoreboard in left-center field.

Too bad another US team playing a more high profile match yesterday experienced the opposite results. Watching that game brought back the feelings of 19-66. I will just leave it at that.

Moving on to football Lee "Hacksaw" Hamilton, who I believe used to be on XTRA back in the day (is he still on radio?) wrote up a preview of San Diego State firing up the Aztec faithful. He especially used the names of couple of key coordinators (brought in by new HC Brady Hoke), who are familiar names to all of us here on BN:

Prediction Aztecs fans: Things will be different this time around. Meet head coach Brady Hoke and his two coordinators, Rocky Long and Al Borges. [...]

The track record of these men speaks volumes — Hoke at Ball State, Borges at UCLA and Auburn; and Long at New Mexico, UCLA and Oregon State. This head coach, and those two coordinators will be the difference makers. They’ve rebuilt and won before and will do it here.

More from Hamilton:

The Aztecs welcome back quarterback Ryan Lindley, the bright light from a dim football season. State has 12 veterans who had lots of playing time on offense. Thirteen veterans, who started many games, return on defense.

The schedule is downgraded, with Idaho, New Mexico State and Southern Utah as non-conference foes, and features the enemies — BYU and TCU — both at the Q. That should help as the arrow points up. So will this trio of experienced coaches.

Hoke’s sales pitch is simple. "We will be physical, play fast, and be intense."
Borge’s ideals say it all. "We will not be passive on offense."
Long, ever offbeat, chimed in. "We will dictate our terms to the quarterback, and make him cope."

San Diego State fans may not know them very well now. They will be talking about them by the end of the season.

Aztecs football. Era of errors over. Hoke-Long-Borges will see to that.

Well, I think UCLA program and our fans would be well advised not to snicker at this kind of optimism from the San Diego State homers.  As mentioned above, we are all well aware of the track record Borges and Long compiled at UCLA. Those were some of the best years in our recent football history and Hoke himself built a good program at Ball State. So they are going to come out flying at the Rose Bowl. The key for us will be to get ready for them with the same level of focus and intensity we showed at our season opener last year at the Rose Bowl.

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Let's start with some more followups on the news of UCLA latest commitment from yesterday. I thought the lead paragraph of Dohn's story was telling (emphasis added):

July is traditionally a vacation month for college football coaches, but it is also turning into a big recruiting month for UCLA after coach Rick Neuheisel's program landed another prep player.

That should serve as another pointer on how hard Neuheisel is working to turn around UCLA. As far as Jefferson is concerned he sounds like a baller at least according to the scouts. From ESPN.com:

ESPN's Billy Tucker said of the news, "In a bit of a surprise, UCLA is getting one of the better in-state players in this 2010 class and overall athletes in the country. A guy who is very versatile with great skill-set on both sides of the ball, we feel Jefferson will likely head to Westwood as a strong safety and depending how his leaner, well-defined body continues to physically develop, grow into a disruptive outside linebacker."

"Jefferson is extremely explosive to the football and closes on ball carriers with striking burst and velocity. He simply swarms to the ball with great speed and intensity and what standout is the little wasted motion he shows on his pursuit. There is no doubt he is tough, explosiveness and physical enough at the point of attack to play linebacker at the next level but his range, breaking quickness and overall ball-hawking skills does make strong safety a position where we forecast a TON of production for the Bruins."

"UCLA beat out a lot of top national programs for Jefferson's services as Neuheisel continues to add some nice pieces in the Bruins' rebuilding process."

As a junior, the 6-foot-0 195-pound Jefferson registered 88 tackles and four sacks while also rushing for 1,328 yards and 28 touchdowns.

The Bruins now have four ESPNU 150 Watch List prospects among their seven pledges.

Thanks to muircoach for pointing us to that piece. More on Jefferson's athletic ability below.

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It looks like Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is trying hard to spin the bad night for Pete Carroll (and for him I guess) when they were booed at the Dodger stadium by telling his tweeter followers how great it was to show up with Petey at Chave Ravine. He linked to Petey's fanblog on his tweeter account:

villaraigosaNice post on last night's Dodger event with @ABetterLA's Coach Carroll: http://bit.ly/ScpMY

All of this nothing short of cute spin from Villargosa. As ydg2008 reports in the comment thread (emphasis added):

I was at the game, and when he was first shown on screen and presented with a check (which he will likely use to pay off one of his thugs, I mean athletes) there was a noticeable mix of boos and cheers. I was booing Cheaty Peety, and was mad at Villaretardo for not punching him in the gut. Anyhow, the second time he was shown on the big screen, he was the only one on screen and what happened next was simply delightful. The cheers came first, followed by a much louder wave of boos. These boos were loud enough to easily drown out the cheers from the bandwagon $c fanbase at the Ravine. It was something I truly didn’t see coming, but, it was great.

So don't let them spin out of this nonsense by retweeting directly to Mayor the real story.  Here is what you can do. If you are on tweeter,  please retweet this:

RT @BruinNation @villaraigosa uh nice try spinning Mayor but Pete Carroll was booed at the Chavez Ravine: http://bit.ly/sQHMG

Make sure to let him know that Petey, the Giant fan got what he deserved at the Chavez Ravine.

GO BRUINS.

More photos » by JOE RAYMOND - AP

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Let's start the week with one last shout to Troy Aikman was officially enshrinement at the College Football HOF in South Bend, Indiana this past weekend. That's a picture of Aikman hanging out on his float at the Enshrinement Parade. In case you missed it probably the biggest story from all the festivities (at least for our purposes here on BN) was Aikman's comments about standards for success for a UCLA quarterback (beat U$C & get into the Rose Bowl) in Westwood.

While Aikman's legacy at UCLA by his own account was "incomplete" he still achieved immortality at the next level and given the way he has been making an effort to stay in touch with his alma mater, that "incomplete" resume is not going to stay in the way of him being remembered as a football legend from UCLA.

Moving on to the present, kids like Reginald Stokes - another out of state Bruin football player like Aikman - are now working hard to reestablish UCLA football program in Westwood. Why I am talking about Stokes? Because he sat down for a pretty cool interview with the official site. Stokes who is a redshirt Junior from football player from Montgomery, AL, had somewhat of a breakout season in 2008, seeing action in 11 games and making five starts. He shined in his first career start against Oregon, when he was credited with five tackles and also blocked a field goal attempt. More on the interview after the jump.

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Let's start our walk this Thursday with a little note from ESPY awards. I never waste my time watching that show because it seems silly and to me it seems to pretty much symbolize what has gone wrong with WWL (which spends lot more time on showbiz aspect of sports than zeroing on pure athletics and pure competition ... perhaps a post for another day). Anyway, going back to the ESPY apparently Samuel L Jackson was hosting the show last night and had this to say Mark Sanchez:

"I admire you for leaving USC so early to go to the NFL. Most people wouldn’t want to take a pay cut like that."

Does someone have a youtube of that moment? Have been looking for it but haven't stumble into it. If you do please post in the fanshots. Not sure who was writing Jackson's lines last night. Obviously that one wasn't all that difficult given it's becoming somewhat of an open secret joke in all of college sports.

Staying with football as hicallliber fanshotted, incoming RB Dalton Hilliard will have knee surgery. From the OC Register:

Incoming freshman running back Dalton Hilliard will have right knee surgery Friday, a UCLA spokesman confirmed today.

Hilliard has a "loose body" floating around in his knee, which the Bruins’ medical staff believes is from a pre-existing condition, the spokesman said.

The 5-11, 195-pound Hilliard is one two running back signees for the Bruins, who saw two running backs transfer following spring ball.

Good luck to Hilliard. From what I have heard he might be ready for the start of the season. As always, we just want to make sure he doesn't rush back. RB position is going to be one of the most competitive sports this August, where we have decent depth. The most important thing for Hilliard will be to focus on rehab and get fully healthy because he has the potential of having a solid future at UCLA.

Speaking of bright future, DC is making hell of a first impression in the NBA summer leagues (emphasis added):

Darren Collison (NOH): The Hornets' first-round pick has brought the discipline and patience of his UCLA pedigree to the pro game. He matched George Hill mano-a-mano in his first game, then came back Tuesday night with 23 points. He's also a perfect 16-for-16 from the stripe in his two games. 

Somewhere Coach Howland is smiling. More Ben Ball news and other notes after the jump.

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Let's start our walk on a Humpday with some football news and notes. If you have not done yet make sure you are checking out "Upgrade or Downgrade?" segment (inspired by Jake over at Building the Dam), captainqtp have been putting up in the fanposts. So far captainqtp has gone over the postions of SS, CB and DT with more to come. If you have specific feedback in those threads, fire away now because it will be helpful to everyone in the community getting ready for the football season.

Speaking of feedback, I don't spend any time playing video games any more but I can totally appreciate the excitement/obsession around the release of EA Sports NCAA Football 2010. The folks at EA Sports take all of this pretty seriously as they had released their "first look" back in February. Here is the trailer if you haven't seen it:

NCAA Football 2010 [OFFICAL] Trailer (via JustWatch312)

More info over here which includes FAQs, "passing tops," "community playdate" and information on how to use the roster.

As I mentioned above, I have not spent a lot of time on video game in recent years but from what I have read, I have heard of negative feedback re. the UCLA roster as it shows Craft as the starter, includes players who have transferred out of the program (such as Dean, Carter and Johnson), doesn't include recruits such as Sua' Filo, and doesn't include Kevin Prince (again please let me know if my info. is wrong and post in the comments). If you guys have more thoughts of course this would be the place to share it. FWIW, the video still gets me fired up for the season. More notes after the jump

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Let's start our Monday walk checking in with Dan Guerrero. As silverlakebruin pointed out over the weekend under Dan Guerrero's leadership last week NCAA changed its summer rules so that college coaches could spend more time with the student athletes. It seems DG's influence in the NCAA is getting noticed as couple of days ago he was mentioned as one of "the nation's most poweful in college sports" by the Orlando Sentinel. From yet another summer "list":

12. Dan Guerrero, UCLA athletic director and incoming chair of the NCAA Men's Tournament selection committee.

As David Wharton from the LAT notes:

By the Orlando Sentinel's reckoning, Guerrero places at No. 12, just below the likes of network television executives, conference commissioners and NCAA President Myles Brand. He is the only athletic director to make the top 20.

Now in his eighth season in Westwood, Guerrero is the incoming chair of the NCAA men's basketball committee.

Only two coaches made the list -- Florida football Coach Urban Meyer at No. 13 and Kentucky men's basketball Coach John Calipari at No. 14.

While DG deserves a lot of kudos, we need to note that being mentioned one of the most powerful officials in the NCAA (albeit the article mentions "college sports") might not be seen as all that significant given how erratic, incompetent and impotent NCAA has appeared in last few years in enforcing its own rules. Plus, while lot of us are happy as of right now with the state of UCLA athletics, we are keeping a close eye on how he execute the renovation of Pauley Pavillion among a number of important projects, which also includes building solid foundations for both our football and baseball programs. So we will see how it all works out in the coming years since DG's record is not yet complete at UCLA. To continue with our walk come with me after the jump.

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