UPDATE:The Pac-10 Media Day is going on right now. If any of you want to watch KD's comments LIVE go here. He is suppose to appear around 2:30 pm EST.
I don't usually bother with boilerplate previews in various college football preview magazines any more. Pretty much all of them have the standard previews with conventional predictions backed up by heavy stats. However there is one magazine I make an effort to order every year both for football and basketball. It's the Blue Ribbon Yearbook. And they were pretty money on their prognostication on both football and basketball last season. Well they have the football preview out and I recommend getting it.
Chris Dortch who is the editor for Blue Ribbon was kind enough to share the UCLA preview with me. And there were couple of quotes from KD that stuck out. First even though editors from BlueRibbon are not picking UCLA to finish as high as last season they did provide this interesting comment on KD re. the expectations for upcoming season:
"We have better depth and talent overall, and maybe we're not sure what to expect early on, with some young guys coming in," Dorrell said. "But our offense has the potential to be as productive as last year, even with the three new skill position starters. I think it's possible to match last year's success at 10-2, but only this team can determine that.
Well considering the opponents we have in our first 5 games (a cupcake in Rice, a MWC team, and three bottom dweller from the Pac-10) the young players should have time to polish up with some room of margin and get to a 5-0 record. Since KD confirms the depth and talent we have in this team, he should be more than all right with our reasonable expectations of
winning 9 games and beating SC. Also from the same preview KD also apparently said this:
"We've set the bar where this program needs to be, that was our goal last season and this year, the goal is winning the Pac-10 title. The goal moving forward is contending for that championship every season."
That's nice. But notice what's missing from that goal? Well lets revisit KD's comments from the press conference in which UCLA's announced his hiring
three years ago:
''My expectation for next year is to win the Pac-10 championship,'' Dorrell said. ''Winning the Pac-10 and beating our cross-town rival are the biggest things on my mind."
So I guess beating our cross-town rivals is no longer the biggest thing on KD's mind? Talk about conveniently moving the goal posts. While Howland is out there talking about embracing high expectations, contending for national championships Dorrell is conveniently forgetting to mention how important it is for a UCLA football coach to beat SC. Also speaking of national championships, note there is no mention from Dorrell about striving to compete for a national title. He is going back to that age old Donahue standard when UCLA was happy just to contend for a Pac-10 title and beat SC. Toledo turned out to be a mediocre coach. But at least he did recognize and embraced the expectations of winning and contending for national championship, and he came tantalizingly close before everything crashed and burned on December 5, 1998. And, now it looks like Dorrell is not only shying away from expectations of contending for NCs, he is also conveniently forgetting to mention the expectations of beating USC something he himself boldly embraced just thee years ago.
Anyways there is more good stuff from that Blue Ribbon Yearbook preview. I'd recommend
ordering a copy today. It will get ready for upcoming season with scouting reports on all of our opponents. And speaking of scouting reports, as
noted in the diaries UCLA's
2006 football media guide is out.
Take a look. Lot of good stuff to go over as we starting wading into the depth chart before our season opener against the Utes.
GO BRUINS.
