Bruin Bites: More Bruin Watch Lists, and the NCAA Stands Before Congress

The Bruins are now just 3 1/2 weeks away from gathering together again for the start of Fall Camp. Today, The opening continues in Oregon where some of our future Bruins are competing with their peers from across the nation. One new recruit has already committed to UCLA during the event - let's hope for maybe another one, before waiting to see what decisions the remaining kids make leading up to next winter's signing day.

The latest wave of preseason watch lists for the major postseason college football awards hit this morning. Eric Kendricks and Myles Jack were included on the Nagurski list - the award given out by the Football Writers Association of America to the best defensive player in the nation - and Jake Brendel made the same organization's watchlist for the Outland Trophy, awarded at the end of the season to the nation's best offensive or defensive lineman.

Bleacher Report has a piece up acknowledging the strengthening of the Bruin secondary over the past couple of seasons, focusing on the development of the wealth of talent that debuted last fall along with young returnees who had to step up.

Because our members of Congress simply have too much time on their hands these days, the Senate's Commerce Committee called NCAA President Mark Emmert to testify as part of a hearing claiming to examine college student-athlete academics, but might have just been an excuse to get leaders of the two least popular institutions in America in one room. Some of the questions and other notes from that hearing were published by CBS Sports' Jon Solomon, including a revelation that approximately 20% of major public universities (and 15% of private uni's) delegate the investigation of sexual assault allegations to involving student-athletes to their athletic department. Well, I suppose that wouldn't be much of a revelation for anyone at Iowa or who has been following along our Alford coverage.

SI's coverage of the hearing mentioned how Emmert is attempting to cast himself as a person who now supports a wide range of initiatives supporting student-athletes but really does not have the power to do anything, which even a US Senator could not let pass without calling BS.

NCAA President Mark Emmert told a Senate committee Wednesday he supports ''scholarships for life'' and other reforms in how athletes are treated, then did such a good job of casting himself as a powerless figurehead that one senator told him: ''I can't tell whether you're in charge or whether you're a minion.''

There seems to be a new member of the Bruin Athletic staff. Per that always reliable source, Twitter, Trent Freay has joined the program as a graduate student assistant under Sal Alosi in the S&C program.

Honored & excited to have just accepted the position as a Strength and Conditioning Graduate Assistant for the UCLA Bruins football team!

— Trent Frey (@tfrey11) July 9, 2014

Trent was most recently an intern in the U.of Iowa football team's strength program and also interned at UCLA last summer after graduating from and playing Hockey at Merceyhurst University in Pennsylvania. Alosi has massively turned around the UCLA S&C program since coming in under Coach Mora; let's hope that Trent is one of his pieces in building up a foundation for the long haul in Westwood, and welcome back to Westwood.