If I hadn't seen it unfold before my eyes I would have been hard pressed to believe it. No, I'm not talking about the final result, as anyone who has seen the truth about KD's coaching "prowess" can attest, ANYTHING is possible. I'm talking about the insane decision to send starters into the game in what was essentially garbage time. In a game where we were underprepared, outworked, outcoached, and outclassed, there was simply no reason to risk injuries and possibly end the college careers of some of our finest young men.
I don't know if this is some sort of devious ploy to set up the injury excuse or not, but this gross level of incompetence is simply unacceptable. There will be plenty of time over the next 6 days to break down what went wrong football-wise today. Right now is not that time.
This is a new low for the KD era, a tenure already defined by disappointment and failure. UCLA deserves better than this. Hell, the fans and the boosters deserve better. The students deserve better. But most of all, the players deserve better. I can't help but feel that the student-athletes that have signed on to be Bruins, to be champions, that bought into the Karl Dorrell philosophy (Kool-Aid?) and believed that he would take them there, are the ones who have been cheated the most. They are the victims.
My fifth and final year has not even started yet, and yet here I am, feeling the all too familiar sting of Dorrellian football. And while I may curse myself and ask why the five short years I get to spend as a Bruin are also the five years of the KD era, I can only imagine how much worse it is to be on the team as a redshirt senior. Were they deceived? Tricked? One can only assume that KD's pitch in the homes of these young men did not include embarrassing losses and .500 seasons.
I can't imagine how it must feel to walk on campus, and be marked as a football player, whom the entire student body notices then converses in hushed whispers about 19-66, and blown leads in South Bend, and bowl game flops, and now blowout losses to a MWC team. I can't imagine how it must be to see the basketball players wearing the same backpacks, but receiving praise and adulation instead for a successful season.
What justification is there for ruining the football and college experience of so many? If the anger and frustration is boiling over here on the internet from hundreds of miles away, how much worse must it be to be a guy like Brandon Breazell, who had a huge game and gave it his all in an ultimately futile effort?
How often over the past 5 years have we been witness to similar futile efforts? How hard is it to see that the man who has been in charge over those 5 years is THE problem? How many more recruits and players will have to go through our system, set up to fail from the word go, all because we insisted on prolonging this insane failed coaching experiment? They're Bruins, and they deserve better than KD. Please Mr. Guerrero, get rid of KD now. It's the only humane thing to do.