Bruin Bites: Spaulding's New Turf, Note on Snoop Bruin, CRN's New Gig, and Nuts!

It's Monday morning, so it's time to head back to the office and put in the work to make that cold, hard cash money. Unless you're on reality TV, in which case, you need to roll out of the pool of your own vomit, wander around shirtless, and generally continue to act like a talentless douche. So, for those of us who have to work for a living, let's get this work week started with the round-up of the various bits and pieces of news from around the UCLA-iverse:

• Starting with football, the Bruins returned to their new and improved practice facilities at Spaulding this weekend. The hacks at the Los Angeles Times could only serve up an empty shell of a story, with players like Brandon Willis giving the new artificial turf their seal of approval. However, despite UCLA shelling out $800,000 for this new turf field, Spaulding remains a laughable 80 yards, instead of a full-length practice field. While Foster couldn't connect the dots, he does give us an interesting nugget: one of the biggest points of approval for the players and coaches was that it's an "even surface." So, let me get this straight: under Chianti Dan's watch, our football players were playing on an uneven, beat-up practice field? When did UCLA become a poor, underfunded middle school? Shouldn't an "even surface" be something one would assume a Division I, BCS conference football program would have?! But, why am I not surprised that our guys were practicing on a field not worthy of high school programs under Chianti Dan's reign of error. What a joke.
• Likewise, Peter Yoon at WWL couldn't quite make the connection either: after profiling the Bruins' newest OL addition, JC OL Jacob Seydel from Riverside College, Yoon had a pretty empty few lines on the Spaulding improvements. $800,000 to bring UCLA up to a standard that most public high schools in California have no problem maintaining: an even playing surface that is 100 yards. What ever happened to real journalism?!
  

• Sticking with new additions to the Bruin football squad, the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin ran a profile of Diamond Bar wide receiver Cordell Broadus, who recently received a scholarship offer from Jim Mora. Broadus, the son of rapper Snoop Dogg, is looking to use his next three seasons in high school to showcase his talent, now that he had confirmation that he has a legitimate shot at playing Division I football.
• On the opposite end is former UCLA head coach, Rick Neuheisel, who is getting acclimated to his new gig, not on the sidelines, but in the booth, as part of the Pac-12 Network's broadcast team. The Daily News has a good piece on the former Bruin Rose Bowl winning QB, which he calls it as he sees it, telling folks that the conference network will do a lot to improve the conference's national visibility, citing ESPN's comfy relationship with the SEC as the real reason they get hyped up as a "monster" conference.
• Finally, according to a new study, funded by the California Walnut Commission, UCLA researchers have determined that men who eat 75 grams (1/2 cup) of walnuts per day for a 12 week period will improve the quality of their sperm. Sometimes UCLA is home to groundbreaking, life-saving research. Sometimes, you get just nuts.

Alright folks, those are your Bruin Bites to start the work week with. Fire away with your thoughts, takes, and additions in the comments thread.

GO BRUINS