Number 2 Coaching Hire In the Nation

by Nestor on Jan 28, 2008 7:06 PM PST in Football Comment 13 comments

2. Rick Neuheisel, UCLA: UCLA AD Dan Guerrero finally realized the risk was worth the reward. It had been almost five years since Neuheisel got involved in the NCAA Tournament neighborhood betting pool. It had been three years since he settled with Washington and the NCAA over his wrongful termination suit.

Since then, Slick Rick humbly went back to high school (as a volunteer coach) and worked his way up to becoming the Baltimore Ravens offensive coordinator before going back "home." Bottom line, the guy can win, he works hard, he's an alum and he knows the landscape.

With Norm Chow in tow, UCLA is ready to go head-to-head with USC. There, I said it. The Battle of Los Angeles is on.

Here is the entire list. If you are wondering Rodriguez is number 1 in that list. June Jones, Paul Johnson, and Bo Pellini round out the top-5.

Guess Dodd is digging the overflowing passion bucket at UCLA.

GO BRUINS.

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Right about the overflowing passion bucket...

Seems like UCLA is a national threat over night, USC is in denial with realizing we are finally a threat to their throne... especailly with comments such as, we have the talent for the next 3-4 years to win out with pac-10 titles, ucla needs to get their own brain and stop using our prior coaches, ect. I'm sick of all the cocky arrogant people across town running their mouth about this stuff. USC is in denial and they can't hide it...

Bruins all the way baby! Skrew SC!

by Bleedin Blue and Gold on Jan 28, 2008 7:34 PM PST reply actions 0 recs

RN and NC

My big time SC honk friend told me that as long as RN allows NC the freedom to run the offense NC's way, UCLA will be fine and NC will make a huge impact (after last year there is only one direction). Again, my friend is very short on UCLA kudos but the NC hire put a worry look on his face(I loved it).
Bill

BillSouthBay

by Mensgym on Jan 28, 2008 7:52 PM PST reply actions 0 recs

The view from the catbird seat..

..through rose-colored binoculars shows a lonely man, fly-casting in an Idaho trout stream bathed in the headlights of his pick-up truck, dreamily thinking of what mighta been, knowing that he is doomed to this existence for the next decade at least (if he wishes to stay in the ranks of collegiate head coaching). He knows the roads to Los Angeles and Eugene, been snowed over since late December, will probably not thaw out any time soon, and can only console himself with the thought that he's stuck in THIS PLACE with only that damned blue carpet to array his teams on..

..anguished over his diminished job opportunities and the dwindling recruiting prospects now pledging to remain closer to home -- like his meagre trout catch -- in this cold, barren environ, he lets out a plaintive wail, "Ste-l-l-l-l-l-l-a!"

(No, wait, that's from the wrong movie, isn't it? In any event, ya gotta wonder how former wunderkind, Chris Petersen is faring up North.)

by whp68 on Jan 29, 2008 6:38 AM PST reply actions 0 recs

LOL and ALS

This merits both a LOL and an Appreciating the Literary Stylings. Funny stuff, whp.

by Bruinut on Jan 29, 2008 8:44 AM PST up reply actions 0 recs

Ditto

For some reason, I feel the need to check into the Bulwer-Lytton contest results. (If you haven't ever done so, just go check. I think it's somehow affiliated with SDSU.)

by Fox 71 on Jan 29, 2008 10:49 AM PST up reply actions 0 recs

Ah yes!

Thank you for the (re)commendation! It seems that my entry above could have wrung out some meager recognition from those judges. Truth be told, my efforts tend towards the ponderous. Alas, what can you expect from a software developer who, when read one of the Bulwer-Lytton submissions, thought it to be near-flawless prose!

This one's my personal favorite:

LaVerne was undeniably underdressed for this frigid weather; her black, rain-soaked tank top offered no protection and seemed to cling to her torso out of sheer rage, while her tie-dyed boa scarf hung lifeless around her neck like a giant, exhausted, pipe cleaner recently discarded after near-criminal overuse by an obviously sadistic (and rather flamboyant) plumber.

Andrew Cavallari
Northfield, IL

Sigh! God knows I try..

by whp68 on Jan 29, 2008 12:04 PM PST up reply actions 0 recs

Now that I know

yours was a BLFC entry, I like it even more. Well done. Should have won in the Sports category.

by Bruinut on Jan 29, 2008 7:22 PM PST up reply actions 0 recs

Love the BLFC

A have a friend who is a Cal Tech alum. A friend of his won the contest in 2004 with this gem:

"She resolved to end the love affair with Ramon tonight . . . . summarily, like Martha Stewart ripping the sand vein out of a shrimp's tail . . . . though the term `love affair' now struck her as a ridiculous euphemism . . . . not unlike `sand vein,' which is after all an intestine, not a vein . . . . and that tarry substance inside certainly isn't sand. . . . and that brought her back to Ramon."

He wrote a very funny essay on the experience: How I Became the Worst Writer in the World

Regarding writing ponderously, whp, here's an excerpt from the essay:

Those five stretches of ellipses in my winning sentence are part of the original entry; no text has been left out. The reason they're there is that I was finally responding to a suggestion made more than two decades ago by my Caltech history professor, Peter Ward Fay.

From day one of my freshman year, Fay had recognized in my rampant prose and unbridled punctuation the muddy footprints of a truly heavy-handed metaphor mixer. At the bottom of my very first humanities quiz, he had gently reproved, "I think you over-comma a bit." Later, he filled the last page of one of my term papers with a long and thoughtful commentary that acknowledged up front that "a person's style is his own" before making a recommendation that plunged directly to the core of my affliction. The essence of his advice: "Write more simply."

... Granted, it took nearly a quarter-century for the lesson to sink in. Still, there I sat last April, wrestling with one truly abominable sentence that was a jumble of licentiousness and sand veins and commas and vowing to rip out everything but the sand veins. But what to insert in place of all those commas? Ellipses won the coin toss.

I could be wrong, Fox, but my recollection is that the creator of BLFC is a San José prof. p.s. Here's a link to the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest.

by Bruinut on Jan 29, 2008 7:09 PM PST up reply actions 0 recs

You're right

As I sit here, with blood-stained fingers straining to type while my mind wanders between the Scylla of forgetfulness and the Charybdis of melancholy, and all the while my desk chair slips toward the Gorgonesque (albeit only three-headed monster) shore of temptation, the boulders of insomnia and the other really hard thing of something else, I find that I cannot help wondering why I confused San Jose State, a nice enough place, I suppose, with the Students for a Democratic Society, so I gave up and had some cookies.

by Fox 71 on Jan 29, 2008 8:32 PM PST up reply actions 0 recs

I'll be looking

for your Bulwer-Lytton-worthy posts, such as this one, from now on. Boulders of insomnia; scylla of forgetfullness; Gorgonesque shores of temptation. It was a dark and stormy night.

by Bruinut on Jan 30, 2008 8:22 AM PST up reply actions 0 recs

Short sentences are good

I re-read my post and found some errors. I did one post with only one-syllable words for someone who was feigning a misunderstanding of one thing or another. If you think it's easy writing a post with only one syllable words, try it sometime.

And writing B-L stuff is just as hard. I find a really difficult thing is remembering how I started or where I was going, which I guess is how B-L stuff got written in the first place.

In my semi-retired state, I write for a living. I have already been told I cannot use my favorite phrase, "Faustian fooferaw of philosophical fantasy," and I cannot use another word I made up, "blowhardity," and I cannot use "plaintiff didn't know how injured he was until he consulted his lawyer." I do get to use "The Court need not assume the world is flat simply because Mr. X says it is." But most important, I cannot use anything that would remotely qualify for Bulwer-Litton.

The existence of the Bulwer-Lytton contest (and to a large extent, the existence of this blog) is excellent evidence of the fact that too many people have a lot of excess time on their hands. But we love both.

by Fox 71 on Jan 30, 2008 2:08 PM PST up reply actions 0 recs

I, too, find it quite hard to write in words

of just one sound. That it is hard, is not so hard to grasp, though. I just wish there could be MORE ways to do this, to write with just one voice. That must be why they give us the big bucks, huh?

To write B - L stuff, on its own, is hard, too. But, to write B - L stuff AND to write with but one sound is yet more hard still. You might say it is hard TWICE. Don't you think?

* Phew! Too bad about your ban. I vote for "blowhardity." Short and kind of cute. Put it with a nice image, and...

BTW, I'm an SRW (semi-retired writer), too. Nice, ain't it? *

by Bruinut on Jan 30, 2008 5:54 PM PST up reply actions 0 recs

A truly glorious accomplishment..

..that! Thou art a master wordsmith.

(Did I write that? I can see my skin crawling.)

Apropos of nothing, it reminds me of the first Texan admitted to M.I.T. He was so proud of his accomplishment that he arrived early a week for his freshman term and toured the campus. When he spied a bookish type, he asked the student, "'Scuse me, but can you tell me where the library is at?"

The guy haughtily replied, "Here at the Institute we do not end our sentences with prepositions."

To which the Texan responded, "Oh, sorry. Well, can you tell me where the library is at, asshole?"

by whp68 on Jan 31, 2008 5:33 PM PST up reply actions 0 recs