FanPulse: Few Bruin Fans Confident in Direction of UCLA Football

After the conclusion of Monday night’s game between Notre Dame and Louisville, SB Nation sent out the Week 1 FanPulse poll. In the first part of the poll, fans were asked to rank college football teams after the first week of the season. In the second part of the poll, members from each different SB Nation school site were given a question specific to their team.

Here at Bruins Nation, that question was: “Are you confident in the direction of the UCLA program?” with available responses of “Yes” and “No” available.

Well, the results are in.

I’ll get to the rankings in a moment, but let’s look at the question which was asked of Bruins Nation FanPulse members.

Only 27.5% of Bruins Nation FanPulse members are confident that the UCLA Bruins football program is headed in the right direction. That’s the third worst confidence level in the Pac-12. Only Southern Cal at 22% and Arizona fans at 7.7% have less confidence in the direction of their program.

Southern Cal really isn’t a surprise. After all, Clay Helton is routinely listed as one of the coaches with the hottest seat in college football. But, the single-digit response from Arizona fans is pretty surprising.

As far as UCLA’s number, I’m kind of surprised it was that high, frankly, after last week’s loss to Cincinnati on the road.

Of course, the flipside of this is the almost three-quarters of UCLA fans believe the program is headed in the wrong direction under second year head coach Chip Kelly.

Wow. I guess the honeymoon is over and, perhaps, it’s time for Kelly’s seat to start getting hot even though Kelly still hasn’t been in Westwood for very long.

The Bruins Nation FanPulse is a survey of more than 100 Bruins Nation readers who have agreed to take a weekly survey on college football. I want to encourage our readers to have their voice heard on a weekly basis by signing up to be a part of the FanPulse.

Of course, the question about the direction of the program is just one part of this week’s FanPulse. The other part is the Top 25 where fans are asked to rank the top 25 college football teams.

With more than 100 members signed up, we now have our very own—and very first—BruinsNation Top 25 poll! In addition to that, SB Nation has surveyed more than 6,000 fans nationwide and compiled the results nationally as well.

Here’s this week’s BruinsNation and SB Nation Top 25 polls:

For the most part, the two polls are pretty similar. Bruin fans have ranked Oklahoma a little higher than Georgia, but that makes sense considering the Sooners play UCLA next week. There does seem to be a bit of a West Coast bias in the BN Top 25 as almost all Pac-12 teams are ranked a spot higher by BruinsNation FanPulse members than they are nationally.

The biggest difference is the Bruin fans don’t seem to respect Auburn, who beat Oregon in overtime during Week 1. The Tigers are ranked 11th in the BN Top 25 while they are 8th nationally.

Next week’s poll will go out sooner due to the fact that there are no Sunday or Monday college football games as the NFL opens this weekend.

Don’t forget! You can still sign up to participate in the SB Nation/Bruins Nation Fan Pulse before this week’s poll goes out after the conclusion of Week 2’s college football games on Saturday.


Go Bruins!