We usually don't pay a lot of attention Dr. Saturday or whatever day he is called these days. For you reference previously he used to blog as Sunday Morning QB on SBN. Menelaus back in the day exposed him as a tin foil hat wearing, Rick Neuheisel hater when it comes to writing about UCLA football.
Well apparently he just wrote a post on "expectations" around UCLA football and he makes Mark May sound really smart. Let me start with this (emphasis added throughout):
Entering his third year, though, Neuheisel is clearly past the point of no return where eighth-place finishes and lackluster bowl bids against MAC also-rans are concerned. He has a hugely respected offensive coordinator, Norm Chow, overseeing a second-year starter at quarterback behind a suddenly seasoned offensive line, and a defense that led the Pac-10 by far in both tackles for loss and interceptions behind two of the brightest up-and-coming defenders in the league, linebacker Akeem Ayers and safety Rahim Moore.
You read that right. In a post time stamped on August 21st he wrote about a UCLA football team having a "seasoned offensive line," even though by then we had lost XSF to a mission, Nik Abele to medical retirement due to two bulging discs in his neck (I am sure this was CRN's fault), Stan Hasiak and Jeff Baca to academic issues, and Mike Harris due to one game suspension. Also, the very same day Kai Maiava went down with an injury, but Dr. Saturday couldn't be bothered to "update" his post with that fact because perhaps it would be a little inconvenient for the narrative he was determined to set in that post.
Anyway Dr. Saturday's OMGZ "now or never" post gets even more absurd:
At this point, though, the first conclusion to draw from that success is that the Bruins have no more excuses for feeling satisfied with 6-6 seasons that end in a narrow escape against Temple in the EagleBank Bowl. Athletically, with a trio of solid, more or less Rose Bowl-worthy classes under its belt and a third-year quarterback who's (quite literally) taken his licks over the course of an entire season, UCLA should have no reason to set its sights short of nine or even 10 wins.
Well never mind how reasonable observers have set the expectations for this football program somewhere around 6-8 wins given the strength of our schedule and inexperience of our team. Never mind now the added challenges this program is dealing with given the ridiculous injury/attrition issues we have had at OL. What makes Dr. Saturday's paragraph so disingenuous and insincere is that he himself wrote this about UCLA football just three months ago on the same " blog":
Rather than the record, which probably isn't going to be very good, the season may better be judged by just how competitive the Bruins are en route to, say, 5-7 - last year, four of their six conference losses were by double digits, and Stanford and Oregon State both held double-digit fourth-quarter leads before allowing minor runs that brought the finals within apparent striking distance. L.A. should not be expected to exceed 6-6, but all things considered, if it can get there again while lamenting the ones that narrowly got away, that will be a (very) small step forward.
Well as we pointed out back in May even that analysis was problematic (despite "Dr. Saturday" throwing a bone to keep the expectations "reasonable" for CRN). What is hilarious here is that just three months ago this guy was writing how 6-6 would be a "small step forward" and now he is coming out writing how we should be winning 9 or 10 games even though we are dealing with attrition issues at OL beyond anyone's control?
We are not done yet. We got more tomfoolery punditry to dissect after the jump.
Oh this is not the first time the dude has misfired so badly. He recycled the same paragraph he posted on August 21 back in February 4 with a glaring booboo:
With a trio of solid, more or less Rose Bowl-worthy classes under its belt and a third-year quarterback who's taken his licks (quite literally) over the course of an entire season, UCLA has no reason to set its sights short of nine or even 10 wins next fall. At this pace, that should be the standard soon for every season; if it's not, Neuheisel will be feeling some heat for failing to make good on the quality at his disposal. This year, his fourth, is the year the Bruins have to begin to make that move.
In other words sometimes this guy doesn't bother to do basic research before churning out posts on teams he never cared about following in his quest to drive certain narratives in the media.
At this point whatever comes out of Matt Hinton's blog about UCLA should be taken with a grain of salt. We haven't really bothered flagging his UCLA related stuff in a stand alone post in recent years because, the hackery stands out on its own. But his latest one was so full of garbage that we had to take note. Oh we will leave with one more doozy in his latest post:
For a program some people imagine to be on the verge of dominating the next decade, that's not a very encouraging trajectory - especially compared to the more immediately gratifying turnarounds engineered over the last two years by the conference's other charismatic young head coaches, Jim Harbaugh and Steve Sarkisian, at Stanford and Washington.
Again for some reason Hinton failed to mention that Harbaugg just like CRN went 4-8 in his first season (without losing his first or second string QB). Guess what Harbaugh's "gratifying turnaround" record was in his second year at Stanford? That would be a record of 5-7, much different than CRN's 7-6 at UCLA. Harbaugh's much heralded third season was an 8-5 season and it is about where many of us are hoping where UCLA end up this year (although that was before the rash for injuries).
As for Sarkasian, his "gratifying turnaround" performance was a 5-7 record with a QB projected to be a top-10 NFL draft pick. Sarkasian's brilliant performance included losing 4 out of his last 6 games, including a loss against our Bruins, who were playing with the backup Kevin Craft.
Anyway, I am sure this is not the last time we are going to see this kind of "punditry" from the media. However, this was a special case. I guess Dr. Saturday SMQ might be still bitter about existence of this blog more than three years beyond Karl Dorrell. Yes, this is the same "pundit" who once dismissed BN as a "single" issue blog contemplating this back in 2007:
I'm a little worried about Nestor and his boys at BN, though, who have poured so much time, energy and bandwidth into getting Dorrell fired that, with the moment of blissful truth finally upon them, they find the future without their nemesis empty and devoid of meaning.
Few thousands frontpage posts, fanposts and fanshots later, guess it's obvious which blogger is soldiering on with empty, baseless posts devoid of relevant facts. Perhaps time to start another blog somewhere (may be on tWWL) titled "Bad Case of Mondays" or something.
GO BRUINS.