A prelude
Just as a tasty morsel to what I wrote for Thursday's paper, UCLA coach Rick Neuheisel addressed his team's off-the-field approach after Wednesday's practice.
"I think everyone could work a little harder in preparing themselves,'' Neuheisel said. "I don't think the effort level is off. I think we're getting what we need to get out of guys, but I think we can prepare mentally more for practices, and consequently, have more to give on a game day, too.''
He said there was no problem with effort in practice or games.
You can only squeeze so much juice out of a used grapefruit. Squeeze and squeeze all you want, but you are not going to get much more. And coaches, especially football coaches, are fanatical about this.
It still amazes me that these athletes have anything left at the end of the day for their schoolwork. I mean, football has no future for over 90% of them, so they are at school to learn something.