Answers, Part VIII

i see that the quarterback ucla has a commitment from for 2009 is rated as one of the top five in his class. i've always been skeptical of those recruiting rankings, do you put any stock into them or do you think they're just a bunch hooey put out by people who don't really know what they're talking about.
I, personally, do not believe in looking at the rankings of an individual player because one never knows how an individual player will develop. It's too subjective, there are too many variables that those ranking the players may not know about, and there are also geographic biases. However, over the course of my time covering UCLA, I've changed my belief that the overall recruiting rank of a class can be used as a compass to gauge a program's recruiting.

Is quarterback kevin newsome a possibility for UCLA? It says he has an offer from UCLA and hes interested?
I don't see it happening.

Is Howland a yeller in practice, like a Carlesimo or Majerus who is very hard on his players, swears a lot, etc?
Got me. Practices are closed, except for once a season when he opens them to the media and is on his best behavior.

Now that UCLA Basketball is in the Final Four on a regular basis and u$c football is in the BCS on a regular basis, do you sense that college sports are "back to normal" again? I get the sense that UCLA takes football a lot more seriously than u$c takes basketball (with the exception of the Galen Center). What is your opinion?
First, back to normal for UCLA, I thought, meant winning national championships. Second, I don't think UCLA's administration takes football all that seriously when compared to other Pac-10 schools, and when USC built the Galen Center and hired Tim Flody, that proved to be a bigger commitment than anything UCLA has done in football.

brian, I've noticed a HUGE amount of tix on sale on stubhub etc in Ucla sections for the tenn game....barf.
what % of the crowd for the game do u think will be Ucla fans? 50?
I think it will be 40 percent orange in the stands, and it won't be because hunting season is open.
what do u think it should be?
In fairness, I think Tennessee folks would want to come to Los Angeles whenever possible, and even if it were at soldout USC, it would probably by 30 percent orange.
how badly do u think the espn/abc crew will mock n ridicule Ucla when tenn is there in bigger #s?
Not sure, but you can bet plenty of references will be made to the number of people wearing orange.
and do u think the level of abuse will be warranted?
who knows.
what affect will the mocking n a likely loss do to Neu's recruiting 1st class?
None.
KD kad an ugly 1st season on o n his recruiting never caught fire....i guess recruits have memories of oliphaunts.
But if Dorrell would have recruited middle-earth better, he could have changed those memories and still been at UCLA.

I'd be curious to read your take on the quarterback situation. It seems to me that if Craft gets hurt, it could get very ugly. Do you think that it's possible teams like Tennessee will try to come after Craft, knowing the cupboard is kind of bare thereafter?
It doesn't matter who the starting quarterback is, the defense wants to rattle him and knock him out of the game so the backup plays. There's a reason the backup isn't starting, and that is because the backup (in most cases) isn't as good or as prepared to play as the starter. But I think it could be ugly offensively no matter who is under center.