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A Sleeping Giant

By Nestor

Who are the "Sleeping Giants" of college football? From CFN:

Teams based in fertile recruiting grounds in good locations that put together some good seasons, but could really be dominant if the chips came together
And guess which team is mentioned as one of those "sleeping giants":
As defined/set up by the specific criteria of a "sleeping giant," two examples would have to come from the Pac-10: Arizona State and UCLA. ASU has the facilities, UCLA the pedigree. Both schools certainly exist in or near fertile recruiting grounds and have put together good but not dominant seasons. Yet, with attitudinal adjustments (and better defense), these teams could become destination spots for top talent.

Florida and Texas proved they were sleeping giants when the two respective programs were awakened by Steve Spurrier and Mack Brown. Ditto for LSU under Nick Saban. So while the sleeping giants of the Big 12 and SEC have been revived, it's the Pac-10 where giants have yet to open their eyes and burst forth.
Well we are not going to wake up under Karl Dorrell, considering he doesn't have the upside of Spurrier (I will have a post on the ole bawl coach next week hopefully), Mack Brown or Nick Saban when they took over their respective programs. Shoot Spurrier and Brown made no name football programs such as Duke and North Carolina relevant before they moved on to big time programs of Florida and Texas. Saban was a proven winner from Michigan State. Dorrell had nothing close to those kind of track records on his shaky resume which included some non-remarkable coordinator stints with scandal prone Rick Neuheisel, and having not so crucial role in Denver Broncos coaching staff (again KD was a ?receivers coach? in a coaching staff that was led by Mike Shanahan and Gary Kubiak).

So going back to the main point ? knowledgeable folks in the world of college football know UCLA sits on a gold mine. We can have a powerhouse football program. We can have an elite program which can finish in the top 10-15 year in and year out, make legit runs to BCS titles once every three or four years, and beat SC 6 out of 10 times. It can be done if we have the right coach.

It?s just that KD HAS SHOWN US NOTHING to justify that he is the right guy to fulfill that untapped potential and make UCLA a powerful program again.

The fact of the matter is right now we have seen no tangible evidence (except for a fluke 10 win season) that Dorrell is the answer at UCLA. Dorrell has a miserable record when it comes to w-l records against winning teams. He is no where closing to beating SC on the field and he hasn't done much to close the talent gap and make a huge dent in the recruiting wars against USC off the field.  He hasn't gotten it done.

Now if you have a proven coach (i.e. a Ben Howland of college football) take over in Westwood - someone like a Spurrier or a Butch Davis the sleep giant will wake up almost over night. Actually even a good, young, hungry coach (with proven track record unlike Dorrell's when he was hired into Westwood) will have a great chance to turn UCLA into a college football powerhouse and restore the tradition of a proven program which has lost so much of its luster (due to incompetent coaching) during last seven years.

There is a lot of potential in the UCLA football program. It doesn't seem like we have the right guy to take full advantage of it. Perhaps we will be proven wrong this year if he wins 9 games and beat SC. But I am not holding out much hope.

GO BRUINS.

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