CFN has another one of those off-season list things and this time it is about a listing of most over-rated football programs in the history of college football. UCLA of course makes the list. We check in at no. 10 tied with Texas
10. UCLA - Save for Washington and Washington State, which didn't qualify, the Pac-10 doesn't fare particularly well in this discussion. Witness UCLA, one of the most difficult programs to size up each year. When you think up they're up, they're down. And when you think they're down, they wind up winning 10 games, such as last year. The Bruins have historically done an awful job of living up to their talent, failing to maintain preseason rankings 75% of the time and dropping completely out of the polls nearly once every two years. From 1989 to 1995, UCLA received preseason love from the voters five times, yet ended just one of those seasons in the Top 25.
ND of course made the list as they always get gimme rankings before the season simply because of their stature as the darlings of the Eastern based media establishment. The one team which is missing for now is Virginia. It seems like they are a program that always gets serious preseason love from ESPN and the other eastern based media establishment since the days of Welsh and now Groh. They always start out with a lot of hype only to flop with 6 win seasons. Perhaps I have that impression because I live in a media market dominated by UVa, MD, and ACC football. VA always gets a lot of love even though they keep bombing year after year.Back to UCLA. Not sure if I can disagree too much with the assessment on our program considering how badly we underachieved with shitload of talents under Donahue, Toledo, and Dorrell. So yes can't really argue with the assertion that we have been underachieving since Vermeil left Westwood.
Of course Dorrell has taken the program down to such a low level that our campus news paper is doing jumping jacks over moral victory against USC. 10 win seasons built upon easiest schedule in three decades is hailed as some kind of great season. I guess Dorrell and his crew are taking care of this reputation of being "over-rated' by devolving the program into such a level we don't even sniff top-25 in the preseason polls. That way if we win 7 regular season games and then win the 8th game in some shitty bowl in Las Vegas we can finish perhaps 25th in the end of season polls and call it a successful, overachieving, gratifying season. Brilliant.
GO BRUINS.