Let's get back to our off season mixed bag roundup and notes. Let's start with football. I think it has already been mentioned in the comment thread that Dorrell picked up two more commitments: OL Jeff Baca and running back Derrick Coleman (Troy High of Fullerton). Both are the classic Dorrellian diamond in the rough one star recruits. You can read their profiles on Bruin Roar by going here and here. Welcome to both of them. We hope they find their UCLA experience rewarding, getting a great educations, while hopefully getting to play in a program that wins and competes for Pac-10 championships year after year.
Sticking with football Dohn published answers to more reader questions. He has high expectations from the offense and Ben Olson this coming season:
I expect a big season out of the offense, which means Olson needs to play well. There is too much experienced talent for them not to put up a lot of points. And this offense, is working, can be unstoppable. As for Price and Carter, I think they will play the most of any of the freshmen, and I think both will be solid backups. Sloan and Ayers could crack the two-deep late in the season, but I think the more likely role for them is on special teams.
Well if he expects so much from our offense and while at the same maintain such high opinion of our defensive coordinator, I don't see why it is unreasonable to conclude anything less than a Pac-10 championship should be considered as a failure in Dorrell's fifth season in Westwood.Also, Dohn doesn't think much of online chatter "on message boards":
I don’t really care what is said online on message boards, and I rarely read it. My job is to cover UCLA, and I do it to the best of my ability. All the periphery stuff is just distraction, not to mention a lot of misinformation and lack of understanding of what is really taking place.
Hmmm. I am not a huge a fan of constant chatter on the message boards either. Lot of the info., speculation generating in those boards are worthless. However, I do think it is important to note that there is a lot of good info. that often generates from those message boards. And any good beat writer in this era of "the internets" should keep an eye on those boards to track what kind of information, stories, or themes are coming out from those boards. Especially these days reporters from the big papers are keep a close eye on various online communities covering subject matters ranging from politics, sports, music, movies etc. just so they can keep tab on what is going in their respective world they are supposed to be covering. And in many instances they recognize the value of parts of information coming from ground up. So IMHO its a bit shortsighted to be so dismissive of the online communities that follow the subject matter he is supposed to be covering - our Bruins - in such a dismissive manner.Now lets get back to some fun stuff. Stumbled on to a pretty funny site entitled Jersey Chaser, which has posted bunch of youtube interviews of Michael Roll, Lorenzo Mata, and Russell Westbrook:
Note that the dude who is doing the interviews is a former walkon Quinn Hawking (the kind of player I guess Lavo would start over his blue chip athletes because he was a "lucky charm"). His site is still in beta version. So it will be worth keeping an eye on it to see what else is posted on it in the coming days.
Lastly, the Daily Bruin ran some cool end of the year stories, which includes some memorable quotes involving UCLA athletics. I liked this one:
"I think when you have a press conference, it should be run to where there’s respect toward the players, number one, up here, so that we can all hear, and respect to you so you’re able to get exactly what they’re saying, not have people talking over in the background. ... I don’t know if you can tell this, but I’m a detail-oriented guy."
That was Coach Howland telling bunch of idiot reporters to knock it off while some of his players were talking. Those blowhards whined about Howland being a control freak, but to us he once again came across as our basketball coach in total command. We can only hope some day we will have that kind of presence along the UCLA sidelines at the Rose Bowl.GO BRUINS.