Bruin Bites & BN College Football Open Thread

It's bye week, Bruins. That means we can kick back and relax and have an easy stress-free Saturday.

First let's open up the modern version of the morning newspaper, aka the Internet, and take a couple looks around the UCLA-iverse...

Women's Volleyball is off to a good start with a pair of victories at the Hawaiian Airlines Invitational in Honolulu. The #10 Bruins improved their season record to 5-0 with victories over Santa Clara (25-21, 25-12, 21-25, 27-25) and a sweep of New Mexico State (25-15, 25-22, 25-12). The Bruins will meet the host Wahines tonight in the final game of the invitational. Video should be available here beginning at 10:30 pm Pacific Time.

After the U.C.L.A. Men's soccer team suffered a disappointing home loss, the Women's team put up a much more valiant effort before surrendering a goal in the 79th minute and losing 1-0 to the top ranked UNC Tar Heels in the Duke Nike Classic. The #2 Bruins are now 4-1-0 on the season and will play Duke on Sunday before coming back home.

Another Bruin great will soon be joining the collegiate coaching ranks in her sport. Women's Water Polo star Natalie Benson will launch her college coaching career with her new position as the head coach of women's water polo at Marist College. With Benson's pedigree which includes 3 NCAA titles and a Most Outstanding Player Award (2005) with the Bruins, 2 World Championship Gold Medals, and 2 Olympic Medals, Marist is getting a fantastic winner, and one who learned from the great Adam Krikorian while at U.C.L.A. Good luck to Natalie.

And finally, in some non sports-related news, a nanotechnology lab at U.C.L.A. was awarded a second $24 million grant to continue studying means of testing environmental impacts of engineered nanomaterials (bold text below is mine)

The September edition of the journal ACS Nano features an article that could lay the groundwork for the integration of alternative testing strategies as part of a new approach to effectively and efficiently assessing the safety of engineered nanomaterials (ENMs), as well as traditional chemicals.

The article grew out of a recent workshop hosted by the University of California's Center for Environmental Implications of Nanotechnology (UC CEIN), housed at UCLA's California NanoSystems Institute. The event brought together international leaders in nanotechnology from government, industry and higher education to explore the societal challenges posed by the new wave of ENMs and to discuss opportunities for developing a new predictive paradigm for toxicity testing.

Interesting stuff. This sounds like the kind of thing you would expect to hear from one of the top research Universities in the world. It is also notable that we were still able to bring together all these important world experts without having a obtrusive and unneeded hotel right in the middle of campus. smh.

Now, on to football...

Here are some of the high profile national games as well as all of our Pac-12 games. All times are Pacific. The full slate of games can be seen here

Florida (12) at Miami - 9am ESPN Believe it or not, these teams have only met once in the last 12 years. That's far too long to let this much hate be bottled up. Point the cork away.

Weber State v Utah - 11am Pac-12 The Weber State Wildcats, members of the Big Sky Conference, are from Ogden, UT about 30 miles from the Utes' campus in Salt Lake City. Now you know.

Oregon at Virginia - 12:30 pm ABC All the West Coast will see this game except for the peeps around San Diego (SDSU plays Ohio State on the other ABC game) who will find it on ESPN2. The Ducks showed no signs of slowing down under their new coach last week, but this week they have the double challenge of traveling to the east coast and playing a team that is actually in the same bowl division as themselves.

USC (6) at Georgia (11) - 1:30 pm ESPN Georgia has it's back against the National Title wall after its first week loss to Clemson. Being an SEC team, they get a free loss. But the Ol' Ball Coach has the real USC looking for its own national title shot and all-world DE Jadaveon Clowney will be looking to make up for a mortal start last week.

Portland State at Cal - 2pm Pac-12 Network Portland State? Aaaahahahahaha. Don't strain yourselves, Bears.

Notre Dame (14) at Michigan (17) - 5 pm ESPN This is the prime time matchup of the weekend with bitterman Brian Kelly taking his Golden Domers north to the Big House for a final time, as brave Notre Dame is ending the traditional rivalry. Here's to Big Blue giving them one last ass kicking as the flee out the door.

Central Arkansas at Colorado - 5pm Pac-12 Mountain If the Buffaloes win a game near the woods, but very few outside of the Mountain time zone, and no one with Direct TV, is able to see it, will they really still be 2-0 and leading the Pac-12 South? Yes. Yes they will.

Hawaii at Oregon State - 5pm Pac-12 Hawaii let a poor Southern Cal offense score 30 points against them in their own home. Now they travel to face a much more prolific Oregon State offense. Remember when we were worried about losing Norm Chow to *$c? Heh heh, we were so young and naive back then.

Wash St at Southern Cal (25) - 7:30m Fox Sports 1 Mike Leach is right on track. The WSU defense looked porous while his offense looked potent and actually had two chances to at least tie the game late in their tough opening week loss at Auburn. At least the WSU fans salvaged some pride and won the beer drinking battle. At that place across town, we still aren't sure who will be taking snaps or carrying the ball for Southern Cal, but we're certain that Lane Kiffin knows what he is doing. The dude is a genius.

Arizona at UNLV - 7:30 CBSSN If ever there were reason for a college football road trip...Tucson? Vegas? Tucson? Vegas? Hmmm. Even Arizona students can answer that one.

San Jose St at Stanford (5) 8pm Pac-12 Despite not having played a game yet, Stanford actually moved up in some rankings last week, so it seems poor strategy to actually get on the field tonight. If your mere existence sways voters, why risk it by appearing in the flesh? Well, it could be because Stanford opened its last 2 season with wins over San Jose State, so the risk to the Trees seems low.

Well, that should get us started for today. Look for another open thread going up this afternoon. Until then, let us know what you are watching and share any updates and your thoughts here.

GO BRUINS!!