Ahhh. Here is a thought to start off our day. Hopefully this will be the last Friday before Gameday with Karl Dorrell as our head football coach. Let's get to our football roundup.
Dorrell has named a starter at QB. And he is going with the kid who injured hamstring, then badly sprained his knee, and then suffered a collapsed lung few weeks later. Dorrell's reason? Well here is his favorite beat writer (we assume) Brian Dohn:
Though it wasn't a news flash since Cowan took reps with the first team all week, Bruins coach Karl Dorrell made Cowan's start official Thursday. Ben Olson will be the backup.
Cowan won the weekly quarterback competition for a simple reason.
"Mobility," Dorrell said. "Ben, I think has progressed this week, but he 's still not 100 percent."
Olson, who had been out since Oct. 6 with a knee injury, returned to the field and started the second half against last weekend Oregon after Osaar Rasshan struggled. Olson was 4 of 10 for 64yards with a interception, but helped UCLA to a 16-0 victory.
Cowan has missed the past two games after suffering a concussion and collapsed lung against Arizona on Nov. 3. Cowan has missed seven games due to injuries this season.
Asked if he expected Cowan to start and finish the game or if Olson would be involved in the gameplan, Dorrell said: "We'll see how the game unfolds. We' ll see. I'm not going to rule that that's not a factor. It could happen that way. We'll see how the game unfolds."
And how does Ben Olson's status figure into CTS's latest decision? From Chris Foster in the LAT:
Cowan won the weekly quarterback competition for a simple reason.
"Mobility," Dorrell said. "Ben, I think has progressed this week, but he 's still not 100 percent."
Olson, who had been out since Oct. 6 with a knee injury, returned to the field and started the second half against last weekend Oregon after Osaar Rasshan struggled. Olson was 4 of 10 for 64yards with a interception, but helped UCLA to a 16-0 victory.
Cowan has missed the past two games after suffering a concussion and collapsed lung against Arizona on Nov. 3. Cowan has missed seven games due to injuries this season.
Asked if he expected Cowan to start and finish the game or if Olson would be involved in the gameplan, Dorrell said: "We'll see how the game unfolds. We' ll see. I'm not going to rule that that's not a factor. It could happen that way. We'll see how the game unfolds."
"Ben I think is going to be up and ready to play," Dorrell said. "He's not 100%, but he is much further along than last week. We'll see how the game unfolds."
Olson, who had sat out four games because of a knee injury, played the second half against Oregon last Saturday. Olson said after the Oregon game that he expected to start against USC, but that "the decision is not mine to make."
Given what we have seen in last few years, it is not going to matter who starts at QB for UCLA. It will still look Dorrellian. And again they way this head coach have been rushing in his players from injuries, compared to the head coach in charge of our major revenue program has been nothing short of stunning.Olson, who had sat out four games because of a knee injury, played the second half against Oregon last Saturday. Olson said after the Oregon game that he expected to start against USC, but that "the decision is not mine to make."
Anyway, the signs keep coming from all directions that tomorrow could be the end. Mike Waldner from the Daily Breeze joins the party and he has written a good one. Waldner channels BN and all other sane members of the UCLA community and lays out the reason why tomorrow should be the last day as the UCLA football coach for Karl Dorrell:
Dorrell's run is coming to an end for a number of reasons.
His body of work is below standards set by Guerrero when he was hired.
His teams are consistently inconsistent. In a season made extremely difficult by injuries, it is not possible to ignore losses to weak Utah and Notre Dame teams.
His recruiting, generally ranked good, has produced 13 wins against 11 losses over the past two seasons.
His constant harping on the time needed for players to understand his complex offense indicates lack of understanding how to tailor his playbook to his players.
His trail of fired coordinators is a matter of concern.
Waldner didn't stop there. He goes out to lay out his argument why UCLA should fire Dorrell even if he beats Southern Cal:
His body of work is below standards set by Guerrero when he was hired.
His teams are consistently inconsistent. In a season made extremely difficult by injuries, it is not possible to ignore losses to weak Utah and Notre Dame teams.
His recruiting, generally ranked good, has produced 13 wins against 11 losses over the past two seasons.
His constant harping on the time needed for players to understand his complex offense indicates lack of understanding how to tailor his playbook to his players.
His trail of fired coordinators is a matter of concern.
Start with his firing is inevitable. So it might as well be now.
The more time you have to watch Dorrell, the more he looks like Bill Barnes, a nice guy who did not get it done for UCLA.
Barnes was interested in hiring Jim Powers, the creative Santa Monica College coach, to run his offense. What Barnes was not interested in was turning Powers loose. Powers shrugged and remained at SMC.
Dorrell, forced because of injuries to Ben Olson and Pat Cowan to go with Osaar Rasshan at quarterback, did not tweak the offense to take advantage of Rasshan's athletic ability. Inflexible should be his middle name.
He worries about little things, such as which days which players should talk to reporters, and misses the big picture.
Like Pete Carroll, the USC coach who was fired in New York and New England in the NFL, he needs to move on to get another chance to get it right.
Granted, this has been a haunted college football season around the country. But if Guerrero is as tough as J.D. Morgan, the legendary UCLA athletic director when Guerrero was an undergraduate, he'll turn Dorrell into a Bruins ghost.
Well that is our hope of course. Yet Dohn is still chipping away making excuses for the worst coach in college football. His latest effort, an article laying out the academic excuse. The article is yet another pro-Dorrell hit job which doesn't include any comments from Dan Guerrero. It does include comments from Karl Dorrell himself and `several former assistant coaches at Pac-10 schools,' in the former of D. J. McCarthy (former KD scapegoat) and `UCLA insider who requested anonymity.' In other words this whole BS piece about UCLA has a hard time on the recruiting field based on quotes and arguments laid out by Dorrell himself or his supporters.The more time you have to watch Dorrell, the more he looks like Bill Barnes, a nice guy who did not get it done for UCLA.
Barnes was interested in hiring Jim Powers, the creative Santa Monica College coach, to run his offense. What Barnes was not interested in was turning Powers loose. Powers shrugged and remained at SMC.
Dorrell, forced because of injuries to Ben Olson and Pat Cowan to go with Osaar Rasshan at quarterback, did not tweak the offense to take advantage of Rasshan's athletic ability. Inflexible should be his middle name.
He worries about little things, such as which days which players should talk to reporters, and misses the big picture.
Like Pete Carroll, the USC coach who was fired in New York and New England in the NFL, he needs to move on to get another chance to get it right.
Granted, this has been a haunted college football season around the country. But if Guerrero is as tough as J.D. Morgan, the legendary UCLA athletic director when Guerrero was an undergraduate, he'll turn Dorrell into a Bruins ghost.
It doesn't list the fact that how notwithstanding these so called academic difficulties even with a loser like Dorrell, UCLA managed to compiled one of the three most talented squads in the Pac-10 last 4 years, and that is not taking into account the top-5 recruiting class for this year, which had been assembled prior to implosion of this season.
Moreover, the article once again fails to explain or provided answers on how despite all these alleged academic excuses how another UC employee Tedford has had an easier road to building a credible program than Dorrell? And of course the article conveniently leaves out the name of Coach Howland or Coach Savage, who also have to deal with the same academic standards as Dorrell deals with in football. These are questions we have raised before still not getting any credible answers. So yeah that article has as much credibility as any crap coming out of `Fair & Balanced'.
Then again there is nothing credible about Dorrell's pathetic program or the desperate shills/apologists who are still out there supporting him, making excuses based on warped, one sided arguments devoid of balanced facts.
Let's hope as Waldner said above no matter what happens tomorrow, DG will make the right decision, turning all these pathetic characters supporting a loser coach into ghost figures. Let's hope this is the last Friday of past miserable five years.
GO BRUINS.