Beat Southern Cal: Message to Coach Jim Mora, UCLA Football Players & Athletic Department: #DefendOurLogo

Two years ago this post from JoeBruin15 blew up on BruinsNation as he urged UCLA players, and coaches to #DefendOurLogo. We are going to blockquote it here in almost its entirety:

This coming Saturday, you will face one of the tougher tests of the season as you play the U$C Trojans. Rest assured, that every member of Bruins Nation will be cheering you on to victory. We don't need to tell you that a lot of Bruin fans will only look at the results of the game against the Trojans as the only one that matters (at least until next week). Others like to say that we could be 1-11, but, if that one win comes against the Trojans, it is a good season.

We know that you guys understand that winning next Saturday is a matter of Bruin Pride.

Next Saturday, the Trojans will come from across town trying to beat us on our field. They had the audacity to list the game against us on the schedule as a home game.

No one should EVER come to our field...our home stadium...the world-famous Rose Bowl and defeat our football team....ESPECIALLY the Trojans.

As much as Bruin fans would prefer to keep every Trojan at home besides their football team, realistically there will be lots of Trojan fans at the game too.

In the past at the Rose Bowl and at other games, the drum major of the U$C "Spirit of Troy" Marching Band (Ugh...I hate even writing those words.) has practiced a tradition of taking his sword a thrusting it into the turf at midfield.

As true Bruin fans, we find this action to be particularly disrespectful to our beloved University -- UCLA -- so much so that Athletic Director Dan Guerrero asked the Pac-12 conference to remove a clip of their drum major performing this action at the Rose Bowl. Thankfully, the Conference complied.

Last week, many Bruin fans contacted the Athletic Department to ask Mr. Guerrero to work with Mr. Haden at U$C to prevent this from happening next Saturday. As of the date of this writing, the best response any alum or fan has received from our Athletic Department has been that "we will not be able to respond to your questions."

We find this response to be unacceptable and regret that we must find another way to keep the Trojans from insulting every member of the greater Bruin family.

For the last week, we have pondered potential responses to the Trojans' disrespect here.

We would prefer to not have to ask our football team to defend our logo. We would prefer to have our Spirit Squad and the UCLA Band do it. We would even welcoming allowing Den members special field access for pre-game ceremonies for the specific purpose of defending our logo.

We would even be willing to do it ourselves if the consequences would not include being arrested and removed from the game for entering the field of play.

So, we are turning to the guys who make up the bulk of individuals who have field access to ask you to find a group of 5 to 10 guys to defend our logo. They can be guys who are redshirting or not playing due to injury. They could even be reserves who will not see any game action. While it doesn't really matter who it is, we would prefer it interfere with pre-game preparation as little as possible. We do not want it to be a distraction.

But, we want our Bruin Pride defended. We want the Trojans to understand that it is not OK to come into OUR HOUSE and treat it with disrespect and without class.

We will understand if this simply isn't possible due to the need to focus on the game because the game is ultimately the most important thing. After all, a victory on Saturday will earn you our second consecutive Pac-12 South championship. After the season you have put together, you guys have earned that opportunity and need to beat the Trojans to seal the deal.

We wanted to share our thoughts and feelings about the Trojans and their shenanigans with the hope that, since you guys may be on the field when they do it, you may be able to stop it the way that George Teague stopped Terrell Owens when he celebrated on the Cowboys logo on September 24, 2000 (go to the 0:58 mark).

Best of luck with the rest of the season. We look forward to watching you guys next week and in the years to come.

And, of course, BEAT '$C!

Dan Guerrero's crew at Morgan Center didn't want to do anything to stop that dumb a$$ Trogan mascot from stabbing our logo. But it was the passion and pressure from this community that moved them to take action. That post from Joe was shared over 1,000 times on Facebook alone.  Finally, the UCLA athletics officials let the Trojans know that there wasn't going to be any stabbing of the UCLA logo at the Rose Bowl.

What followed? A lot of comical whining from the Trogans, a clear mental edge for the entire UCLA fanbase, and the eventual destruction of Barkley and Kiffin at the Rose Bowl.

As of this today we have not seen any indication from the UCLA athletic department whether they are taking any steps to make sure there will not be any stabbing of our logo this Saturday at the Rose Bowl.

So once again we are making our plea to coaches and players to make sure they #DefendourLogo.

If you want to do your part:

• Tweet at @UCLAAthletics and our coaches and players (a decent list here) to #DefendourLogo
• You can RETWEET THIS:

#BeatSC Message to @uclacoachmora @bretthundley17 @EKLA6 @uclafootball @uclaathletics: #DefendOurLogo http://t.co/uI8DxfiPA0 #gobruins

— Bruins Nation (@BruinNation) November 18, 2014

• SHARE the post on Facebook.
• Call the Athletics Department at 310-825-8699 to #DefendourLogo
• Email the Athletics Department at ad@athletics.ucla.edu to #DefendourLogo

We shouldn't have to do all of this. But our AD's track record speaks for itself.

Let's get this done. Let's let our coaches, players and the administration they must make sure to #DefendourLogo while beating the crap out of Clown College this Saturday.

Beat$C

Go Bruins!!!