Bruin Football Bites: Vote For Mora for Coach of the Year, Ogden in Hall of Fame & Fun with the Coaching Carousel

Let's start this Thursday with some football related news and notes. First thing first. Coach Jim Mora has chance to win the award of the National Coach of the Year. Now, I know we want him to finish strong in what we consider a must win game against Baylor in the Holiday Bowl. I know many of us may have not gotten over the heart-breaking loss against Stanford in the conference championship game.

That said Coach Mora met all (reasonable) expectations of this community in his first year at UCLA. I think it will be fun to see him to win this award and certainly would be a great thing for our program. So if you haven't done it yet go here and sign in with your Twitter account to vote for Mora as college football's national coach of the year. More details available on the official site.

Some other football notes including news on college football coaching search tidbits that may be of interest to folks here:

• Bruin legend and one of the greatest OL ever to play this game - Jonathan Ogden - officially entered the college football Hall of Fame this week. The official site has the details. It's been a while we have had great Bruin OL entering the NFL. Perhaps in couple of years XSF will be the first one to restart a new pipe line, with guys like Simon Goines, Torian White, Jacob Brendel and other players developing under Adrian Klemm's coaching, waiting in the wings.
• Speaking of OL, Eric Bunte - OL from Santa Margarita, who had committed to the Bruins earlier this year decommitted yesterday. The news wasn't much of a surprise to junkies who follow recruiting. We wish Bunte luck in wherever he lands, but right now Bruins already have a number of OLs on the committed list and Mora/Klemm are looking to reel in few more. Stay tuned for more thoughts on recruiting from AHMB in the coming days.
• On the college coaching carousel front reports indicate that UC Berkeley is going to hire Sonny Dykes, head coach of Louisiana Tech as their new head coach to replace Jeff Tedford. Dykes is known to be a prolific offensive mind, who was previously an assistant for Mike Leach. He could make Cal an interesting team to watch, even though the Bears are losing Keenan Allen to the NFL draft. Should be interesting to find out, who Dykes brings in as his DC. Former Bruin DC Dewayne Walker's name has been thrown around in the internets in connection with that job at Cal.
• Staying with the college coaching carousel - rumors/reports have been circling about Butch Jones taking the job at Colorado. Our friends at Ralphie Report are following the story as the plot seems to go through new twist and turn every hour. If Jones end up in Boulder it could turn out to be a terrific move for the Buffs given the kind of mess their program has been last few years.
• And one more note on the coaching carousel - the Tennessee Volunteers struck out in their pursuit of Charlie Strong (after getting rebuffed by Mike Gundy). Tough times for our friends at Rock Top Talk, who are feeling the anxiety as other SEC teams have their new coaches in place (Auburn getting Gus Malzahn and Arkansas pulling off a blockbuster hire of Bret Bielema).
• Is Pac-12 the second best conference in the country? Well that's where our conference belongs according to tWWL. I did't look closely into how the stats were calculated. So not sure whether it took into consideration the joke OOC schedule SEC teams line up (with few exceptions here and there) year in and year out.

So those are some quick football notes for this Thursday. Don't forget, if you are planning to head out to San Diego for the Holiday Bowl, you can get ticket information here, make party organizing plans here, and check out information on bars and restaurants here.

If you have other football and coaching carousel related news to share, gossip, chat away in the comment threads.

GO BRUINS.