UCLA Football Suffers Another Failure Under Dan Guerrero

UCLA prides itself on its academics, and rightly so.  This usually extends to our student-athletes, who by all accounts are held to higher standards than all other teams in the conference except Stanford.

Well, we were just given the football graduation rates for the 2004 classes in the Pac-12.  As the post explains, the rates measure graduation over six years from initial college enrollment.

And what is the result?

Another MASSIVE FAILURE for Dan Guerrero.

UCLA came in 9th in the conference, tied with Colorado with a 59% graduation rate.  Tops in the league were Stanford and Washington (who were the only ones above the national average), while California and Arizona bring up the rear. 

So there goes one of the last bastions of pride for UCLA Athletics.  Granted this is limited to football only, there is no need to go into the various excuses and hypotheses to explain this pathetic result.  Even transfers are accounted for.

Given this latest data point, does it really make sense to maintain the harsh academic criteria that hold back recruiting for football?  It seems that excuse has just flown out the window.  If you are going to be this bad, then what is the point?  Even U$C is ahead of us, goodness gracious sakes alive!  We can't beat them on the field, and now we can't even mock and humiliate them for this, or for Kiffin's latest gem.

And don't think for one second that they are not aware of this.  Their hilarious Mr. Magoo response to this is to brush over it in their blog by giving the average graduation rate (yes, it is impressive) and the fantastic efforts of the men's tennis and women's volleyball teams.  Football is, yet again, an afterthought

Guerrero's achievements continue to pile up, yet he continues to be allowed to make decisions that affect the reputation of a whole university.  It gets to a point where you wonder whether he is apathetitc, clueless or simply unqualified.

Given his coaching hires (and failure to retain), the Pauley fiasco and his "blogging" efforts, I believe we have ourselves a triple whammy.

Sign the petition, people.