2017 UCLA Football Spring Practice Opens This Morning

Good morning, Bruin football fans! Are you ready for some Spring Football?

Over the weekend, while I was watching some Opening Day baseball, I thought about the phrase that baseball fans use this time of year: “Hope springs eternal.”

It’s meant to show the optimism that baseball fans of even the worst team have this time of year. Every team has a clean slate. Every team is 0-0. Every team has a chance to make this “their year”, even the teams that have been the most pathetic historically.

This morning, the UCLA Football team opens 2017 Spring Practice at 7am on the Intramural Field.

As Spring Practice opens today, Bruin fans have a tendency to feel the same way. This could finally be “our year”.

But, every year, it seems we eventually find out, like the fans of the Cubs and the Red Sox did for so long, that the hope of Spring turns into the disappointment of the Fall. It happens so often that many of us have become very cynical and, as a result, we’ve adopted a different mantra that’s more apt to the situation at hand: “Hope is not a strategy.”

To be sure, it isn’t.

And hoping the Bruin football team will be better this Fall certainly isn’t a strategy.

But, Spring Practice is all about strategy. It’s where teams can start practicing with new coaches. Last year’s seniors have moved on and early enrollees will practice with the team.

What will this year’s team accomplish? No one knows right now.

But today is where it begins with the start of Spring Practice.

Hope springs eternal.

If you’re out at Spaulding, you can comment on practice or share pictures. If you’re not, feel free to share what you think the off-season changes will mean for Bruin football.

This is your Spring Practice #1 open thread.


Go Bruins!