TwistNHook: Well, now I am certainly a bit more concerned about this game.  I mean I still feel as if Cal has a good chance at victory.  But anytime a team suffers a huge loss like last week, you always wonder if its the beginning of the end.

Then again, given how Tedford acted at the end of the game (rage!) and how Oregon reacted in the first game after their killer loss (to us), maybe we’ll lay the hammer down.  I would sure love it, because the last 2 games at the Rose Bowl have been brutal.  Especially 2005.  I want to murder Maurice Jones-Drew nee Drew in his sleep for that game.  For anybody who is ever shocked that MJD is doing so much better in the pros than Bush so far, just point them in the direction of that game.

Getting back to the 2007 Pac10 season, check out this pre-season link from BruinsNation:

http://www.bruinsnation.com/story/2007/5/12/173728/991

Enjoyable in hind-sight.  Hopefully, it’ll be MORE enjoyable in hind-sight starting this Sunday.

3 key paragraphs:

Notre Dame (w): If not for Dorrell’s worthless playing-not-to lose mentality (do you sense a theme here?) Bruins would have closed out a program making win last year in South Bend. This time there will be no Quinn to Shark connection. Sure there will probably be some 30,000 Irish fans at the Rose Bowl but we expect nothing less than a TOTAL DOMINATION by a UCLA football program, which again is heading into 2007 with 20 returning starters, experienced pair of QBs (who by this time should well versed in Dorrell’s playbook, whatever that is), and some 70,000 UCLA fans who will be charged up. This is a game Dorrell will have to win. If he doesn’t it could turn out to be one of the final death nails in his waiting coffin. Again we expect nothing short of a DOMINATING Bruin win running their record to 6-0.

Cal (w): Yes Tedford is a very good football coach who has put together a nice program up in Bay Area good enough to build a tradition around Holiday Bowl runs. But he has no business winning this game. He in fact has never won at the Rose Bowl (0-2 against a coach like Dorrell) and we expect that trend to continue without Marshawn Lynch. Of course this will be one of those “show me” games Walker in which he will have to prove he can scheme up defenses that can stop college teams not playing predictable pro-set offenses. We will expect the Bruins to run up their record to 7-0.

at Wazzu (l): Okay we are practical enough to know a Dorrell team is not capable of going undefeated. Surely it will have to choke somewhere as the pressure of going undefeated will catch up to them as their head coach will shrivel up start busting out his dynamic run, run, pass offense. This is the game which we expect Bruins will stumble … and stumble badly. Pullman has never been kind to Bruins. Last time they were up there they pulled out a miracle win on the backs of 2LIVEDrew. This time they are going to fall short dashing their hopes of BCS, falling to 7-1.

I’m not sure what is funnier there.  The paragraph on how UCLA will dominate ND?  The paragraph on how basically UCLA is too good for the Holiday Bowl and, I guess, would rather be smacked down in the Emerald Nut Bowl? Or the paragraph on how (and let’s be honest here), a Dorrell-led team is not capable of going undefeated.

We’ll at least we agree on something there.

YellowFever: I don’t see Dorrell surviving after this season.  I mean, there’s just no way, is there?  Barring an incredible turnaround which would include upsets of Oregon, Arizona State, USC, and our Bears, I don’t think it’s possible.  Losing to a positively putrid Notre Dame team really should have been the final straw, but who knows?  Maybe they just didn’t want to face the wrath of the BCA.

I do like that my assertion that having 20 returning starters doesn’t mean anything, though.  I mean, somehow, everyone seems to assume returning starters assures greatness.  Maybe people need to start recognizing that having a lot of returning starters only assures greatness if those returning starters are, you know.  Great.

HydroTech: Yeah, YellowFever, you were totally spot on about UCLA sucking big time despite 20 returning starters.  Although, now with all the injuries they’ve sustained thus far this year it’s like they only have 15 returning starters. 

How many more years does Dorrell have on his contract?  Weren’t all the UCLA fans cool with him after they upset USC last year?  Well, until they got spanked by Florida State.  But still, upsetting USC is worth something.  Dorrell is undefeated against Tedford in LA.  That’s worth something too.  Perhaps UCLA fans are just getting impatient and jealous because their cross town rival is having so much success.  If USC had been  horrible for the past 4 years, would UCLA fans still be calling for Dorrell’s head?  I think not.  They probably wouldn’t be happy with his performance, but wouldn’t be ready to stick a trident in somebody like Ken Crawford did. 

I sort of feel sorry for Dorrell.  He’s coaching for his alma mater because he loves them.  Yet they all pretty much hate him. 

Ragnarok: On one hand, I can’t see how UCLA could bring Dorrell back, but just imagine if UCLA somehow managed to run the table and win the Pac-10. Can you really fire a coach who just got you to the Rose Bowl?

Of course, there was the situation with Walt Harris at Pittsburgh a few years ago, where everyone pretty much agreed that he kinda sucked, and even though he took them to the Fiesta Bowl (by winning a *very* mediocre Big East with a 7-4 record), they had his bags all packed and ready to go when Stanford offered him a job.  We all know how well that worked out for the ‘Furd.

Anyway, this point is entirely academic because we all *know* that UCLA will face-plant and lose a couple more games down the stretch. Sure, they’ll ruin someone else’s season somewhere along the line (I hope to Tedford it’s not us!), but right now, this is looking like a fantastic Sun Bowl team.

I too feel somewhat sorry for Dorrell, because his quarterback choices right now are a redshirt freshman walk-on, a true freshman who is supposed to be redshirting, and a former QB-turned-wide receiver.  If he runs the Pac-10 table with one of those guys under center, UCLA should just hand him a 10-year contract at the end of the season.

HydroTech: I’m sure most UCLA fans would love to see Olson start, but he has a low 50.8% completion percentage this year.  Cowen has about a 56% completion percentage over one game.  Although I haven’t watched these guys play other than when they played us, it doesn’t look like things are clicking for them this year.

So word is that Cowen is starting, right?  The dude can kinda scramble so I think Gregory will do the same thing as he did against Oregon (and what he pretty much has been doing all this year): drop 7-8 into zones and have the DL contain.  And even if Cowen couldn’t scramble, his career completion percentage hasn’t been that great so I’d bet Gregory would do exactly what he did against OSU: drop 7-8 into zones, have the DL contain, and hope Cowen throws a pick. 

TwistNHook: I am SO nervous about the game this weekend.  I hate being a huge college football fan sometimes.  It is the WORST sport to do so.  In NFL, you are going to lose a few games a year.  In baseball, even the greatest teams ever lost like 40-50.  An empty season at the collegiate level can have 2 losses.  I’m sure USC fans felt very hollow after their 2-loss season last year.  Although I hope NEVER to have that amount of entitlement, I still am very nervous about UCLA.  One loss and it’s back to San Diego.

What’s so odd to me is how down on the program they all are.  When we did the radio program on Wedned, all the Bruin people chose Cal to win. One guy even had Cal winning like 47-17!  I went first in my prediction and didn’t want to be rude, so I had the score very close.  Erik had a close score, too.  The UCLA guys seemed stunned by this.  Maybe it is because we are so down after our loss to OSU, but I didn’t think that they’d all choose UCLA to lose.  They must REALLY hate Dorrell.

What I love about the way BruinsNation.com and all the other groups make it out, they make it seem like two warring factions.  The Dorrellistas and his Cult of Personality and just the regular people.  And these Dorrellistas roam the streets of LA in Taliban-esque SUVs with automatic weapons.  If they see a person saying an anti-Dorrell screed, they arrest him on the spot and throw him in jail.  And the regular people have to RISE up against the bourgeois Dorrellistas and take them down. They need to write like a Dorrellist Manifesto.

Fans of UCLA unite!  You have nothing to lose but your chains………..of disappointing seasons!

I seem to have gotten quite a bit of heat for my somewhat belated comments on last week’s game, and yeah, they were late, but that’s because I hadn’t said them to that point.  Trust me, I’m over it.  I’m looking forward to this week’s game, the past is the past, all of that.  Doesn’t change how I feel about it though.

• Todd McShay ranks THA1 as the fifth best junior prospect (between Boston College OT Ryan Clady and Ohio State ILB James "Little Animal" Laurinaitis) for next year’s NFL draft, and the 11th best draft-eligible prospect (between Kentucky QB Andre Woodson and Louisville QB Brian Brohm) overall.  Not to quibble with the guy who declared Marshawn to be overrated and a huge character risk, but I’m starting to wonder myself if he just isn’t tough enough to play through the injuries that every player gets.
• Arizona State’s Ryan Torian has a messed up big toe, and is out for the year.  Broken and/or dislocated?  That’s rough.  I wonder if that hurts any more or less than turf toe, though, because I seem to recall Deion Sanders once describing turf toe in this way: Imagine getting your big toe hit by a sledgehammer, and then having the person who hit you with that sledgehammer get into a 24 wheeler and then run over your toe.  Repeatedly.  Every time I think of that, I think I’d rather just have a broken toe.
• Some Stanford tight end is also out for the year.  I was going to make a joke about his nine catches for 116 yards and a touchdown on the season being low numbers for a guy who’s started every game, but then I looked up Craig Stevens’ numbers - seven catches, 79 yards, one touchdown.  Moving right along…
• JDBooty and Stafon Johnson expect to play this weekend against Notre Dame.  I’m going to have to argue with the first line of that article, though.  "Southern California appears to be getting healthy at the best possible time."  The best possible time?  The best possible time is right before a game against an awful 1-6 out of conference team?
• Tom Luginbill’s recruiting rankings are up, and he has USC #2, and UCLA just outside his top ten.  This comes with the standard caveat that these rankings are incredibly subjective (and often just plain wrong), and I generally don’t pay much attention to recruiting anyway.  What would make me feel better, though, is if our Bears could land at least one blue-chip wide receiver, what with half of the offense disappearing after this year.
• Following up on last week’s news of Stanford center Brook Lopez being ruled academically ineligible, well, now, he’s been suspended indefinitely for a violation of team rules.  It looks like he’s getting further and further away from being the Jason Collins to his brother’s Jarron.  Or the other way around.  Whatever.
• Injury news for this weekend from Ted Miller’s Pac-10 notebook!  Tom Schneider is out for the season, Rulon Davis isn’t playing, Kevin Riley may get another start, and Robert Jordan is questionable.  Schneider may also apply for a sixth year of eligibility, but with Kay kicking as well as he is, is there any point in coming back for a sixth year to be a backup college kicker?  Rhetorical question, but you can debate the answer.
• A note from our Hydrotech: "Just a little something that can probably be mentioned in the Friday roundup.. in the lastest SI magazine, there is an article on wide receiver recruit Marvin Jones, a current Cal commit.  It breaks down his official visit to Cal (during the Oregon State), giving a time table of what he did.  Pretty cool stuff.  Anyways, the most interesting part is that he was shown next year’s new jerseys and said it was "a mix of old school and new school." "
• And as always, get your picks in.