So here we are all excited about Karl Dorrell's "10 win" season. Surely UCLA football must be on its way back! Surely UCLA will be somewhere in the top-25 going into the next season. After all we just had a "10 win" season. Well not a chance. According to CFN's pre-season poll Bruins are not even in the top-30. Yes because of the great job Karl Dorrell is doing rebuilding Bruin football, Bruins check in at no. 43!:
Why to get excited: There are replacements for the departed superstars. Big Ben Olson is a mega-talent who might even eventually turn out to be an upgrade over the ultra-efficient Drew Olson. Chris Markey and Kahlil Bell should fill in nicely for RB Maurice Drew. Forgetting for a moment that the Bruins were whacked by Arizona last year, the schedule couldn't be too much nicer to open the Pac 10 season playing at Washington, Stanford and Arizona after starting out the year with home games against Utah and Rice. But ...
Why to be grouchy: ... the rest of the slate is B-R-U-T-A-L. If this isn't America's worst second half schedule, it's in the team photo. At Oregon, at Notre Dame, Washington State, at Cal, Oregon State, at Arizona State, USC. The run defense was one of the nation's worst last year, and now it has to replace linebackers Spencer Havner and Justin London, the few defenders who could actually play.
Not only CFN - Dorrell's UCLA football program is also missing from ESPN's top-25 compiled by Pat Forde. Yeah ... so much for that 10-2 season. And meanwhile in hoops assuming everyone comes back Bruin hoops will surely be a consensus top-10 if not a top-5 team going into the 2006 regular season. Now that's we called methodical and deliberate rebuilding, not the mediocre smoke and mirror job being done by the average head coach over at Spalding field. Anyways ... thank God for Ben Howland. GO BRUINS.
Why to be grouchy: ... the rest of the slate is B-R-U-T-A-L. If this isn't America's worst second half schedule, it's in the team photo. At Oregon, at Notre Dame, Washington State, at Cal, Oregon State, at Arizona State, USC. The run defense was one of the nation's worst last year, and now it has to replace linebackers Spencer Havner and Justin London, the few defenders who could actually play.