It doesn’t take me saying it for you to know that the biggest concern about Rick Neuheisel is his controversial past. He left Washington amidst an NCAA tournament pool issue, and his reign at UW was marred with trouble, as recently chronicled by the Seattle Times. That’s the big reason why he didn’t have any head coaching opportunities after getting booted from U-Dub in ‘03, and why UCLA seemed reluctant to hire him. Now contrast Neuheisel to the recently fired Karl Dorrell, who about the only positive compliment one could give about the program he ran was that it was clean. Now don’t get me wrong, I want a clean program. But I want the program to be clean, and successful at the same time. And luckily for Bruin fans, looks like the man formerly known as “Slick Rick” has learned his lesson and will be changing his ways. He reflected on his times at Washington:
“Out of all of this, that’s my biggest regret,” Neuheisel said. He gave a painful look. “I should have made that penalty stiffer. I had an opportunity to send a loud and clear message and neglected to do so. I should have been stronger.”
…“I didn’t give out huge penalties in the first place,” he said, leaning forward. But now, “I can see the value of stiff penalties in the future, when they are warranted.”
Those quotes are from an article by Kurt Streeter in the LA Times. Streeter closed by saying Bruins fans need to hold Neuheisel to those words, and I completely agree. As long as he’s learned a lesson or two, or three about enforcing harsher penalties and being stricter, I think we’re in business. Hopefully he appreciates this opportunity to the point where he won’t make those mistakes. Kelvin Sampson couldn’t keep his hand out of the cell phone jar. Hopefully Neuheisel doesn’t have Sampson’s disease.
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This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 20th, 2008 and is filed under College Football. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
But is he going to bring the boom tho?
Neuheisel is a bad dude. He should have done more to those kids, and now he’s acting all concerned.
Its a fact that Ricky cant win with his own players. He won at CU with Coack Mac’s players and he won in UW with Lambrights kids. Plus he doesnt know how to run a clean program. just wait for teh eventual firing and/or probation UCLA. You think the divide between USC and UCLA is big now? I cant stand this snak oil salesman. Too bad you UCLA people wanted to sell your soul for this clown over a good man in Dorrell.
All he’s gotta do is smile and shake hands. Chow and Walker will do the rest. The Bruins had a nice guy running the team for 5 years, how did that turn out? Maybe what they need is a “snake oil salesman”.