About a month ago I put up a fan post pointing out an interesting read about ucla in the OCR by Marcia Smith.

This almost comedic...

From the OCR:

At first blush, the UCLA football team looks like a movie without a leading man.

There’s no big-time, nationally renowned star player, just star coaches in Rick Neuheisel and Norm Chow. A handful of players have made the preseason watch lists for national honors, but none is considered a front runner for the award or an established marquee attraction in this showbiz town.

Fall camp opened Tuesday, and this might have been the highpoint of a still undefeated 2008 season.

The starting quarterback is injury prone and one torn hangnail away from the sideline. The starting tailback is coming off rehab. When asked to assess the talent level of his team, one Bruin coach asked, “Is that (tape recorder) on?”

Ouch!!

Man that's gotta hurt....

Of course Marcia was skewered by the crazies at BN but to me it was really neither here or there. I thought it was funny and moved on.

Well it seems that Marcia has had a change of heart...

It’s time to crumple up all the negativity written about UCLA football and start to fill up our passion buckets.

Granted the Bruins and new coach Rick Neuheisel have won only one game and suddenly rocket blasted from being an afterthought to No. 23 in this week’s Associated Press poll.

But what the Bruins have done with Monday’s 27-24 upset of then-No. 18 Tennessee is more than shun predictations and exceed expectations.

But has she really?

Her closing line might be a bit telling.

Until they play again.

Marcia Marcia Marcia...you have to make up your mind!

Regardless It's waaaaaay to early to be anointing ucla as some kind of savior.

Kind of like the so-called Messiah running for the presidency. Come to think of it that makes a lot of sense...

You can probably file this under "old news" but one of the things that has separated SC from other programs is its willingness to use freshman in prominent rolls during the season. Pete Carroll's philosophy of competing for a starting job has brought many talented incoming freshman into this program.

It's a delicate balance as some like to keep the freshmen in reserve and not blow their redshirts but by throwing these kids in there it gives them valuable playing time and experience. That experience serves a purpose. SC's intense practice regimen probably increases our share of non-game injuries so getting those freshman comfortable with their specific roles, particularly on the lines, is critical to keep this team hitting on all cylinders.

Pete Carroll likes to use the Bye week to throw those kids right into the mix.

The focus, as per Pete Carroll's bye-week formula, will be on freshmen.

Offensive linemen Tyron Smith, Khaled Holmes and Matt Kalil are expected to get extensive work with the first-team offense when the Trojans return to practice today.

"We'll see how far they can take it," Carroll said. "I don't have any goal in mind."

For all of the talk about competition and positions being up for grabs on a daily basis at USC, only one offensive lineman has gone from reserve to starter status based on merit during a bye week after an opener.

In 2002, Winston Justice did not play in the opener against Auburn. But he started at right tackle two weeks later at Colorado and remained there the rest of his career.

I would agree that the whole competiton thing might be a bit overblown as it is difficult for a freshman to break into the starting line up but it does get the players to give it their all and you never know when they maybe called on to get into the game.

Carroll offers some specific thoughts on it here:

Unfortunately SC had a bit of setback with Matt Kalil because of an injury.

Pete Carroll was not very happy when he had to note how freshman offensive tackle Matt Kalil had to leave the field Tuesday.

"He hyperextended his knee,'' Carroll said, clearly unhappy at how in this week when the young offensive linemen were going to get the first look in concentrated practice opportunities, Kalil would be set back.

It happens and there isn't much we can do.

But it is safe to say that more often than not SC's freshman get a lot playing time and experience and that always bodes well for the future.

As usual, Pete Carroll really couldn't care less...

Coach Pete Carroll said he addressed the No. 1 issue with his players before practice, telling them, "It doesn't mean anything until we do something, and it takes a long time to do something in college football."

Amen!

I love SC but one win does not a season make.

I have noted numerous times here on CC that pre-season and early season polls really don't carry a lot of weight with me. There are just too many questions that need to be answered. Most teams play an easy slate of opening games that usually guarantee some easy wins. I am not interested in getting into the conference wars, as I frankly couldn't care less how other teams schedule their games. Their reasoning is their problem, but if it leads to their team being left out of a major post season bowl game then they only have themselves to blame.

Continue reading this post »

Mel Kiper on Mark Sanchez...(and other musings)

It's early yet but everyone likes what they see so far.

Because of his spectacular performance on Saturday Mark Sanchez was named Pac-10 player of the week.

Sanchez, a junior from Mission Viejo, Calif., showed he is more than ready to take over the reins as USC starting quarterback in the Trojans' 52-7 win at Virginia. Sanchez completed 26 of 35 passes (.743) for a career-high 388 yards and three touchdowns covering 10, 20 and 49 yards. Included was a string of 12 straight completions at one point in the game. The Trojans posted 558 yards in total offense--218 rushing and 340 passing.

He also picked up two other awards, National Player of the week award from Rivals and O'Brien National Quarterback of the Week.

He has come a long way...

When Sanchez took the helm as USC’s starting QB last Saturday against UVA it was the culmination of a lot of waiting and of high expectations. Like his predecessors before him there were a ton of expectations being placed on his shoulders from the moment he arrived at SC. Both Matt Leinart and John David Booty faced the same level of scrutiny but neither had the benefit of starting any games prior to their official placement as the starting QB. Their only "experience" was in garbage time.

But Booty and Leinart had the benefit of a pretty experienced offensive line, something that it appeared that Sanchez didn’t have as the 2008 season got underway. Saturday we saw that the O line did pretty good job, albeit against a lesser opponent. The three games that Sanchez did start in place of the injured John David Booty in 2007 were invaluable as he led SC into another season with high expectations. With the great win against UVA he has firmly cemented his position as one of the leaders of this team.

Sanchez, a fourth-year junior, might be more seasoned than his predecessors were to take over as starter. And he is hoping that gives him a head start on furthering their legacy.

[...]Sanchez, 21, is a veteran by comparison. He started three midseason games in place of Booty last year, pulling out a victory over Arizona, picking apart Notre Dame and nearly engineering a comeback victory at Oregon.

The audition eliminates much of the uncertainty that accompanied the transitions from Palmer to Leinart and from Leinart to Booty.

We know he can lead and we know he can win. We also know that he can make mistakes like he did late in the game against Oregon last season. Missing 2 1/2 weeks due to a freak injury added to the level of concern of just how efficient the offense would be when they opened up the season against UVA.

But for Sanchez this journey started long before he arrived at SC.

Mark Sanchez couldn't have known then how much his father's teachings would help him now. Kids never know.

Think of Daniel Larusso and Mr. Miyagi in "The Karate Kid." Only after he had endured the trials of apprenticeship did Daniel realize that "wax on" and "wax off" weren't menial tasks, they were training maneuvers.

Every day before they left for school or he dropped them off somewhere, Nick Sanchez would tell his sons: "Be a leader today." And Saturday, the youngest son, Mark, is the starting quarterback for USC, about to guide the Trojans into their season opener at Virginia.

This is Sanchez's team. He now gets to put his stamp on where this team goes this season. His time is now and he needs to make the most of it and put all the doubts and questions to rest.

I remember when Mitch Mustain transferred from Arkansas. The questions were all about how Sanchez would do with the added pressure and how he would respond with a pretty experienced QB coming in to fight for the starting job. Those concerns and questions have now been answered and he has shown us exactly what he is made of without having to look over his shoulder.

There are no givens in life and Sanchez has had to deal with share of controversy but that is in the past. Sanchez can only worry about his side of the ball the defense has shown that it can take care of itself, an efficeint, solid win this past Saturday has gone a long way to further building his confidence and relax the nerves of the fans who saw a lot of questions heading into the season.

We all know the machine that is USC recruiting. Tonight the Crown Jewel of USC's 2009 class will be on the national stage.

The senior at Mater Dei High (Santa Ana, Calif.) is the No. 1 prep football player in the country according to every major recruiting service. Last season, he set an Orange County record with 3,576 passing yards, and he also threw 35 touchdown passes in Mater Dei's sophisticated spread-based offense, which requires the quarterback to read defensive coverages and make quick, sound judgments at the line of scrimmage.

Barkley, who became the first junior to win the Gatorade male high school athlete of the year award, begins his fourth season as the starter tonight when Mater Dei plays Carson (Calif.) Wednesday (ESPN2, 9 ET).

I find it simply incredible that SC continues to draw top talent that is willing to compete for the starting job. it will e fun to watch Barkley in action tonight.

The tough thing about the first week of the season is that we still don’t have a complete picture of just how good or bad some teams are. I am always reluctant to make any major changes. The only noticeable move I made within the top tier teams was moving USC and Oklahoma up one spot each while moving Ohio State down two spots. For some reason tOSU’s win over Youngstown State just didn’t feel like it was a "quality" win. I know, I know you could probably say the same thing about Georgia and Oklahoma. I mean almost everyone is playing a cupcake in their first game so what do we really see.

I am still not ready to anoint USC to the number one spot. That is probably more out of superstition than anything else. It is hard to argue against that this team could be very special if they continue play like they did on Saturday in Charrlottesville it was just that good.

Alabama makes big jump into the poll with a very convincing win against Clemson, to the point I dropped Clemson out the poll completely.

As for Tennessee, I have noted elsewhere that their game against ucla was not going to be slam dunk. Regardless, it was an ugly game. While I am not going to get into the "who's better the Pac-10 or the SEC" debate but I will say that it is very telling that the SEC has a very tough time winning on the road outside of the SEC. For their win ucla breaks into the poll...the question is how long they will be there?

Next week things will get a little more interesting and I will be a little more informative as to how my votes will go.

Rank	Team	Delta
1	Georgia	--
2	Oklahoma	1
3	Southern Cal	1
4	Ohio State	2
5	Florida	--
6	Missouri	--
7	Texas	1
8	Auburn	1
9	LSU	2
10	West Virginia	--
11	Oregon	2
12	Wisconsin	2
13	Texas Tech	2
14	Arizona State	2
15	Brigham Young	4
16	Alabama	10
17	South Florida	1
18	California	4
19	Kansas	1
20	Penn State	3
21	Fresno State	4
22	Wake Forest	2
23	South Carolina	3
24	Utah	2
25	UCLA	1

 

Dropped Out: Clemson (#7), Virginia Tech (#12), Tennessee (#17), Illinois (#21).

Here is the Animated Drive Chart for the USC/Virginia game. Courtesy of my friend Joel over at Rocky Top Talk.

Thanks Joel!

Many of the best Pac-10 blogs around the college football blogosphere are going to be getting together once a week to have a roundtable about what's going on around the conference.  For those of you familiar with the BlogPoll roundtable, it will work very similar. 

One blog will host each week, with the other blogs posting their response sometime thereafter.  ATQ has the honor of  hosting the first week. 

Due to the void of Stanford and Arizona blogs on the Internet, we have eight blogs representing different schools participating: Oregon State will be represented by Building the Dam.  The Washington schools chime in with The WSU Football Blog and our newest SBN blog, UW Dawg Pound.  California Golden Blogs checks in to represent the Bears, and Conquest Chronicles and What's Bruin, Dawg? corner the SoCal market.  Finally, Pitchfork Nation comes to us from the hot state of Arizona.

Major Hat tip to Dave over at ATQ for getting this going.

Here are this week's questions:

1. Not a lot of people predicted UCLA's upset of Tennessee.  UCLA was something terrible last year, and with major losses to graduation and a very unresolved quarterback situation, it wasn't unreasonable to expect them to hover in the bottom half of the conference.  While the offense had its problems (only 29 yards rushing and four picks), the defense was phenomenal, holding the Vols to a smidge over 300 yards, picking up two turnovers, and blocking a punt for a touchdown.  Is UCLA for real?  And can they be in the mix with ASU, USC, Oregon, and Cal for one of the top four spots in the conference?

Too early to tell…

Anyone who took the time to read up on the game you would have found that UT was going to have a very tough time winning this game comfortably, if at all. There were just too many little things adding up that made this a difficult game for UT.

- New offensive coordinator…bringing in a new system

- New QB…playing in a new system

- On the road…against very good defense, hyped up crowd, prodigal son returns etc. etc.

I have no idea why everyone thought this was going to be a UT blow out. The guys in Vegas set the line was at 7 and seeing that they kind of do this for a living they seem to get it right most of the time. All this talk about a double digit win was way over blown. I mean did ucla’s defense suddenly become impotent because they had to play a bunch of freshmen? We obviously know a little something about playing freshmen at SC so it really shouldn’t shock anyone that the ucla D was going to be well coached and did a pretty good job, though from what I read it looked like they wanted to give the game away.

UT picked off 4 passes, one a pick-6. That they came away empty handed from the majority of the turnovers shows me one of two things,

1) The ucla defense was stout or…

2) The UT offense still has some growing to do within the new system.

How they handle the other games in their non-conference schedule will answer that question better but not until then.

2.  Meanwhile, its same old same old for the Washington Huskies.  Washington was walloped by Oregon for the fifth year in a row and, with BYU and Oklahoma coming up for their next two games, it’s hard to see where a win will come any time soon.  I don't see any games on the schedule that they should win and, other than WSU and Notre Dame, there aren't a lot that I'm even convinced that they could win.  The defense is Swiss cheese, and, other than Jake Locker, there isn't even any real talent on the offensive side of the ball either.

Less than a decade ago, Washington was a prominent national contender.  Now, they may have less talent than any other team in the conference.  We're all aware of the rich tradition of Husky football, the question is how did things fall so far so fast, and how does UW get back to its customary winning ways?

I just don’t see Ty as being dynamic enough for these sorts of positions. I just don’t see the fire there. He did OK at Stanford and average at Notre Dame. Some years he recruits good other years he doesn’t. I really can’t put my finger on it. He had SC on the ropes last year, though nearly half their offense was actually because of USC penalties, but he couldn’t seal the deal.

As for talent, Ty flipped top USC recruit Chris Polk with the promise of a lot playing time instead of competing at USC. So he can get the talent the question is can he coach them up?

3.  The team that beat Washington, Oregon, looked amazingly good, especially on defense.  Moreover, after last year's implosion following the Dixon injury, it was a third string quarterback who did most of the damage offensively.  Oregon is talented and deep, but can finally live up to their promise and challenge USC for that conference title?

Depends on the defense. They have a great secondary so you are going to have to earn it up front. I picked UO as my sleeper this year. I think they will be better than most think. A lot of people thought it was all about Dixon last year. I think the teams drop off at the end was more about shell shock than anything else, as they lit the scoreboard up in their bowl game against a pretty good South Florida team for 50-plus points.

If the defense can get some take-a-ways and make it a short field on a consistent basis the Ducks have enough firepower to make a run and challenge USC but its going to be tough for that offense when they go up against the toughest defense in the conference and probably the country.

4.  California started off strong, exercising some of last year's demons with their 38-31 home win over Michigan State.  The quarterback controversy appears to be solved, as Kevin Riley clearly outplayed Nate Longshore.  However, 31 points is a lot to give up to a middle of the road Big Ten team, and other than Jahvid Best, there isn't a lot in the way of proven talent at the skill positions.  Many Pac-10 observers have Cal ranked in the top four of the conference.  Is that ranking justified given the collapse of last season and lack of returning starters offensively, or did Cal benefit from their reputation?

They deserve to be in the top 4 no question. They always seem to give up a lot of points but they always score a lot of point too. Once their receivers settle in, now that the QB situation is settled, it could make for interesting games against Oregon and USC. Best really is fun to watch and Riley provides a spark for that team, you could almost sense a sigh of relief when replaced Longshore.

5.  Oregon State has a perception problem.  Their long list of early season losses (Cincinnati, Louisville, LSU, Boise State, Fresno State, etc.) was followed up this year with an opening game loss at Stanford.  A road game at Penn State this weekend has many pundits predicting an 0-2 start for the Beavers.  However, in spite of their usually awful starts, the Beavers almost always turn their season around to finish in the upper echelon of the conference.

This causes a talk radio debate to rage in the state of Oregon.  The Oregon Ducks are seen nationally as the more relevant program, mainly due to their very high highs (a legitimate late season national title contender twice in this decade).  However, Beaver fans point out Oregon's semi-regular late season swoons, the fact that Oregon State tends to come back late in the season, and the fact that both teams have similar overall records over the last few seasons to make the point that Oregon State should be on equal footing with the Ducks, if not seen as the more dominant program based on two consecutive Civil War victories.  Who is the more relevant program nationally, and do Oregon State's bad starts contribute to your perceptions?

Short of conference titles or national championships relevancy will only come if you’re always in the national conversation. Anything can happen in a rivalry game, see 13-9, so while Oregon St. is dominant over Oregon for bragging rights that haven’t done much to change the perception of who they are nationally.

Oregon State's upset over USC 2 years ago got them a lot attention just like it did for ucla but other than that neither team got a sniff of positive recognition for the season as a whole. Oregon on the other hand, as was mentioned above, was in the BCS Title chase with QB who was almost sure to win the Heisman had he not gone down with an injury. An old salesman saying comes to mind…”if you can’t be #1 then position yourself to be #2 because sooner or later #1 loses its position when it makes a mistake”.