Friday, October 17, 2008

Bruins: not feeling optimistic

Even though the Bruins clobbered Stanford 45-17 last year, I don't have an entirely good feeling about the game tomorrow. I think I mentioned after watching the game last year that Stanford was hitting hard and in some ways playing well (even though the game got away from them, as games sometimes do), and with more time under Jim Harbaugh it was likely to be a pretty good team. Based on the records so far, Stanford probably ought to be the favorite. Maybe the location in the Rose Bowl is the reason UCLA is favored by 2.

Even so, the game last week against Oregon was frustrating because with a few breaks (or a lot fewer dumb mistakes) it was quite winnable. The offense finally showed some life (though we still don't seem to have a running game). Perhaps this is the week they'll jell into a real team. I certainly hope so. We're going out to Jen's brother's house in Desert Hot Springs for his birthday, so I'll be watching it there. But don't expect a halftime report. Would love to deliver a triumphant whoop come Sunday.

When I played freshman football at UCLA (back when they had such a team and still played the single wing) our guards coach told us before the Stanford game that through our college careers we would come to hate Stanford, because those guys thought they were superior to everyone on the west coast and their shit didn't stink (we did beat them). I never quite bought into that hate the other school stuff, and over the years, after visiting the place quite a few times and spending a week as a media fellow at the Hoover Institution I became rather fond of Stanford, to the point of sometimes wondering if I shouldn't have tried harder for more scholarship money and gone there. Water under and all that. Still, I want to clobber them badly tomorrow.

No comments: