I wouldn’t exactly say this was the same thing as the Saints beating the Falcons in their Monday night opener after Katrina a few years ago, but the energy and thought of something “new” made the UCLA win over Tennessee pretty sweet Monday night. It was a new coaching regime, a big-time SEC team coming across the country, on Labor Day for a national audience in prime time, and UCLA had just declared that USC’s supremacy in the city was over. That’s a lot of hype, build up, pressure, and anticipation all built up into one game, and perhaps why UCLA had to win the opener.
Seeing three starters go down early and four interceptions by Kevin Craft in the first half was hideous. Tennessee didn’t capitalize on the mistakes and got burned in the second half. If there’s anything we learned from Monday’s game, it’s that:
- - Kevin Craft can nut up in the clutch
- Ryan Moya has some serious hands
- Norm Chow and DeWayne Walker are very good at what they do, particularly Walker
- This team still has several weaknesses
I still don’t see much more than 5 wins for this team, so like I said, they’re off to a fast start. Thing is, this win was everything Rick Neuheisel needed after hyping up the program. If they went out there and laid a stinker, they would have been labeled as pretenders (which they still are) and fans could have lost faith. I’m still not expecting much this year, and worse yet, impressive wins like this only mean DeWayne Walker will be gone sooner than later. The guy has put together game plans to slow down Notre Dame, USC, and Tennessee — someone’s going to make him a head coach next year. And this Rick Neuheisel guy? Every sign points to falling in love with him (see the picture above). I’m not. I see a disingenuous snake creating something too good to be true. I’m guessing the joy of this win won’t be felt in five years when the program’s on probation. (And am I the only one who’s creeped out by his Hitler-like address of the crowd after the game?)
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This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008 and is filed under College Football. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
I disagree with your perception of Rick Neuheisel. I think he is just what the UCLA program needed.
However, this is all a matter of opinion and therefore subjective and you may turn out to be right.
We shall see … we’ll find out who was right in about five years.