We are sure many here were holding their breath to read the latest "blog" from Dan - "what's wrong with Spaulding" - Guerrero. The staff at UCLA athletics continues to pump out the lame newsletters on a weekly basis, which only keeps adding the embarrassment that has become Chianti Dan. Take the latest "word from Westwood" example in which Dan "blogs" about Ben Howland's dumpster fire program:

With just six regular season games remaining on the schedule and tight Pac-12 standings at this point, the men's basketball game against USC tomorrow night at the LA Sports Arena will mean much more than just a battle for city supremacy. Our Bruins are jostling for the best-possible seed in the Pac-12 Tournament and need much of the same boisterous support you have shown them in recent weeks as they look to defend their home court, especially in such close proximity to our rival's territory. I look forward to seeing you at the Sports Arena with your blue and gold on tomorrow night.

Then, the very next morning, Ben Howland and his charges will head to New York for their matchup against St. John's on Saturday. A cross-country trip followed by an early tipoff (10 am PT on CBS) will be a challenge, but playing in as iconic a venue as Madison Square Garden presents a unique opportunity for our Bruins to shine on the national stage.

You feel the excitement everyone?! Guerrero is fired up for the Bruins to position themselves to finish in fourth place in arguably the worst Pac-10 conference in last 30+ years.

I have no idea what he means by "Ben Howland and his charges": [Screenshotted here in addition to being excerpted above]:

What does he mean by charges? People Howland is in "charge" of? Did he mean to write about Howland and his minions? More on Dan's "blogging" after the jump.

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Attention, Dan Guerrero: this is how a real Athletic Director does it.

An article on the ESPN Chicago website discussed Illinois AD Mike Thomas and his refusal this week to publicly give a vote of confidence to his men's basketball coach, Bruce Weber. You know what that likely means for Weber. It means Thomas has high standards for the University of Illinois, things aren't good enough with the basketball program, and the AD is not going to stand for it.

We know this because he not only said it publicly, he said it directly to an Illinois fan. Almost as impressive as AD Thomas having high standards, and making these comments is that he made them in direct conversation with the Illinois fan base.

Thomas took about an hour of phone calls Saturday morning from a mostly disgruntled Illinois basketball fanbase on WDWS-1400 AM in Champaign, Ill.

"I need to look at the total body of work and all of the things that come into play as far as making those decisions. Because those are important decisions and they affect a lot of people. I'll tell you this: No one wants to win more than I do. I'm here to win championships."

"You certainly look at the competitive piece," Thomas said. "You look at your recruiting. You look at trends, the trajectory. Are they on an upward trajectory? You look at other things. You look at other things that might be off the floor as they relate to compliance and academics."

Here is an AD who gets it. If only our own AD had similar standards.

At a quick glance, Illinois basketball is having a decent year right now. The Illini are 16-8 in a very competitive B1G Ten that features 5 teams that are ranked in the AP Top 25 (#3 Ohio State, #11 Michigan State, #21 Wisconsin, #22 Michigan, #23 Indiana. Those teams account for half of the Illini's losses, with nationally ranked UNLV and Missouri accounting for 2 others. Illinois is certainly in play for a tournament berth. Contrast that to our Bruins at 14-11 and 7th place in a conference that has no teams receiving votes, and with 9 of our losses coming against unranked teams. By any comparison, Illinois has got it all over us right now.

But that's not good enough for the Illinois AD.

"Is it realistic that we in any sport are going to win the Big Ten championship every year?" Thomas said. "It's probably not likely. But even in those situations, you want to be part of the discussion. You want to feel that energy and excitement is there when you get towards the end of the season.

"And then when you're looking into the NCAA postseason play, it's not a question of whether you're in the tournament, now you're sitting there saying, 'Where are we going to be seeded?' "

Nor has recent history been that bad for Illinois. In 8 years under Weber, the Illini are 83-53 (61%), reached the NCAA Tournament in 6 of those years and made it to the Championship game in his second year (they lost to UNC), and have just one sub .500 season. Not too bad, right? Lots of schools would be happy to have that sort of success over nearly a decade.

But that's not good enough for the Illinois AD.

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Bru-108!

With the Winter Quarter underway in Westood and the NCAA's Spring sports getting ready to start up, this seems like a good time to take a little look back at the Bruins that competed in the various early-year sports. The big news out of the Fall was of course the Women's Volleyball team bringing home championship #108, but there were plenty of student-athletes wearing the blue and gold over the course of last Fall. Here's a little look at how their teams ended up.

Men's Soccer. Coming into the fall 2011 season, there were some questions surrounding the soccer program and head coach Jorge Salcedo, due in part to the team's seeming underachievment in recent seasons, particularly in tournament play. An 0-2-1 start to the year, including a loss at UC Davis did little to inspire confidence. The Bruins came back to Westwood after Labor Day and win a pair of 2-1 matches, and kept on winning - losing only 2 more matches in the regular season and going undefeated in conference play. UCLA entered the NCAA Tournament ranked #13, hosting its first 2 games, victories over Delaware and Rutgers before traveling to Louisville for the semifinal, where the Bruins won in double-OT to advance to the College Cup. While the Bruins fell to North Carolina on penalty kicks in the national semifinal, the squad featured 3 All-Americans: Chandler Hoffman, Kelyn Rowe and Brian Rowe. Kelyn was also named Pac-12 Player of the Year, while Hoffman and Brian Rowe were also named first team All Pac-12.

A number of Bruins from this squad are now headed to the MLS, with Kelyn Rowe and Chandler Hoffman capping off their outstanding personal seasons having been selected by the MLS's Generation Adiddas program and an early exit from Westwood to begin their pro careers. They were both taken with 1st round selections in the MLS Superdraft - Rowe going at #3 to New England as UCLA's highest MLS draft pick since 2008 and Hoffman going to Philadelphia with the #13 selection. Andy Rose, Shawn Singh, Eder Arreola and Brian Rowe later joined Hoffman and the other Rowe as MLS draft selections. In addition, Kelyn was called up to the U-23 (US - under age 23) National Team just before the draft. The U-23's will make up nearly all of this summer's US Olympic Soccer team, so keep an eye out.

Women's Soccer. It looked so good for the squad heading into the postseason, until it all ended with just a couple of penalty kicks... The regular season was kind to the Bruins, losing just one match (at Stanford) and drawing three other away matches. After a decisive 5-2 thrashing of Southern Cal, UCLA entered the NCAA tournament with the #2 overall seed, and the advantage of hosting its matches in the first 3 rounds of the Tournament. Sadly, the team did not even get to fully redeem that gift, as after pulling out a 1-0 win over New Mexico (while playing a number of freshmen) the team fell to San Diego on penalty kicks. As Bellerophon noted after the match, the Bruins controlled possession and massively outshot USD, but could not find the back of the net. In the true spirit of Chianti Dan's leadership of Morgan Center, the official site treats the result as a tie that does not threaten the program's home unbeaten streak.

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Well as has been extensively blogged by Bellerophon and others, uniforms have been a recurring theme here at BN, ever since Adidas decided to roll out the TechFit uniforms, which we derided as cheap-looking, child-sized knock-off looking uniforms that were lame on multiple levels, most noticeably with the shortening of our iconic UCLA shoulder stripes to mere dashes on the shoulders.

However, we eventually found out that Adidas wasn't the problem. We found out that they were more than capable of making sleek, cool-looking alternate uniforms that people would love, doing so for Michigan and Notre Dame. In case you missed it, recently there was a report in the Oregonian that Adidas has in fact hooked up UCLA with the richest deal in the conference:

Oregon is rising. Washington is a big dog. But when it comes to multi-sport athletic outfitting and endorsement deals, UCLA is tops in the Pacific-10 Conference.

Adidas gives the Bruins $4.6 million annually in cash, uniforms and other perks, well ahead of Nike's $3.4 million annual gifts to Washington. The Ducks rank third, at $2.8 million annually, despite Nike co-founder and UO alumnus Phil Knight being a fixture at football games.

And things in Westwood are about to get better: UCLA has agreed to a seven-year extension with Adidas that will approach Michigan's unparalleled deal, worth $7.5 million annually, Bruins athletic director Dan Guerrero said.

This is not really a surprise to us. We knew when UCLA resigned its contract with Adidas, the school was going to get paid a decent chunk of change. The question we have is how do we end up with the dismal state of marketing around the UCLA brand despite this kind of contractual deal which reportedly is richest in the conference?

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As tasser mentioned few days ago we don't really like doing this kind of posts. We rather focus on our programs and our players. However, the incompetence of Dan Guerrero's athletic department is so surreal that it is near impossible to stay quiet while we keep seeing one embarrassing example after another marking the total cluelessness in Westwood.

So picking up on tasser10's thoughts on UCLA's total disinterest in developing meaningful relationship with the alumni community, we couldn't help but chuckle at the following spread from the Wooden Athletic Fund:


That was from page 52 of the latest "UCLA" magazine.

I wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry to see WAF using the picture of Joshua Smith in making their care for "investing in tomorrow's champions." One has to wonder if people who work in this department actually watch our games or are fans of our programs.

Seriously. Do the people who "brainstormed" to come up with this one page and and then "executed" running this ad in the "UCLA" magazine sent to Bruin alums all over the country didn't see the disconnect between marketing the ideal student athlete and what the same alums have been watching when they tune in to check out our hoops team this team this year? Do they get how absurd it appears when they ask for money so that we could pay for "strength, conditioning and nutrition" of Joshua Smith? WT_?

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I hope you are all enjoying the holiday season.

Given the various discussions that people have had, and particularly in light of tazmiami's post regarding his conversation with the Vice Chancellor, I thought it would be a good time to share some general thoughts about UCLA and its alumni.

I think each one of us has a personal story about how the bond was created with UCLA. It is not necessarily a single moment in time, though that has happened as well. For me it was a culmination of many things, from my first UCLA football game, victories against Southern Cal, the 95 championship, making lifelong friends, and representing UCLA in athletics (even if my team was dropped from varsity!). Another kind of pride grew from having made it to UCLA, and the general respect that people have for the school and the education it provides.

I am trying to understand better, now, what my connection to UCLA is. Again, this is likely to be different for each of us. But it leads me to another question that I believe is very important: what is UCLA's connection to us, the alumni?

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This is what a Stadium the size of Stanford or UNC Stadiums would look like at Drake Stadium.

In Part 1 of this series, we argued that a program of UCLA's historical stature deserves first-class facilities, especially for the football team, given the primacy of football for an athletic department's bottom line. In Part 2, we demonstrated that investing money in the football program generally can improve the bottom line for the athletic department and even the university as a whole.  We also demonstrated that schools can win by putting money into the program and failing to invest in the program pretty much guarantees a lack of success. In Part 3, we looked at some of the premier facilities around the country. In Part 4, we showed how UCLA has fallen behind much of the Pac-12 in terms of athletic and football facilities.  In this post, we will propose some solutions.  As always, this community encourages all members to propose their own ideas as well.

Once again, this topic is timely as we will soon be looking for a new football coach and hopefully a new athletic director.  UCLA needs an elite coach and a top-notch AD, both of whom will rightfully insist on facilities upgrades.  Dan Guerrero is the Tom Hansen of Pac-12 ADs, presiding over an athletic department infected with resiliant and institutional rot, a diseased culture of mediocrity and an ivory tower mentality. Bruins fans are sick and tired of Dan Guerrero and the Morgan's Center's insular culture and stuck-in-the-past mindset: it's time for wholesale regime change in Westwood.

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While a school from Middle of Tennessee was mutilating Coach John Wooden's basketball program at a garbage dump in downtown Los Angeles, Dan Guerrero's staff emailed out yet another LOLz "blog" post to the Bruin online community.

I was actually looking forward to reading Dan's "blog" this week because I was anxious to find out what kind of "product" would come out from the collective brainstorming at Morgan Center after what has been some of the ugliest few days in the history of recent UCLA athletics. To date everyone of these "blogs" have been total fail and have a made mockery out of the concept of digital outreach. You can read them. You can revisit the previous three "blogs" here, here and here.

I didn't think the communication effort could not have gotten any worse after what we have read in last three weeks. Well I guess I keep misunderestimating the prowess of UCLA athletics officials.

So let's get to this "blog." What did Guerrero have to say about the historical debacle against LMU? His "writers" (using the term charitably here) thought they could hide it in a general section labeled "follow the bouncing ball" and bury it under the report of UCLA women's basketball. Dan then sheepishly mentions this:

The men's team struggled out of the gate, but Coach Howland and his coaching staff will use this loss to stress the importance of being ready to play against any opponent on our schedule this year. As in past years, the Bruins should be prepared to get every team's best effort.

LOL. Remember most UCLA alums were reading those words while watching MTSU wiping the garbage arena's floor with Ben Ball Poodles. Here is a hint Dan. If you want to market yourself as an honest, forth right and no-nonsense leader of UCLA athletics program, you'd be better served if you are actually honest about how you feel about UCLA hoops. If you're feeling about UCLA basketball is this vanilla and milquetoast, you shouldn't be leading our program. On other hand, if you actually are as upset as we all are and are just serving up bureaucratic press release drivel, you shouldn't be sending out this kind of ridiculous missive.

Oh, I am just getting started here. I haven't gotten to football and Pauley renovation yet. Come on the other side of the flip.

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