UCLA Football Over the Last Four Years (Part I)

UCLA's first bowl game win since the 2005 Sun Bowl marked the official end of the of its 2009 season. It also marked the end of UCLA football during my collegiate time. I have been fortunate to be at UCLA and been able to attend (for free, thank you marching band) games at the Rose Bowl for four years. However, UCLA football has not been so "Rosy" lately. Though there have been some ups, for each one of those, there seem to have been multiple downs. Since I am an engineer, I felt the need to quantify the football team's performance in some way, shape, or form.

The first part of the analysis will be looking at the Bruins record against each Pac-10 team, against which they have played two home and two away games. It will hopefully show where great opportunities were missed and perhaps where great results were seized. Below are the records against each conference opponent in alphabetical order in the following format: Team, Overall Record (Home, Away, Dorrell, Neuheisel).

Arizona 1-3 (1-1, 0-2, 1-1, 0-2)

ASU 2-2 (1-1, 1-1, 1-1, 1-1)

Cal 1-3 (1-1, 0-2, 1-1, 0-2)

Oregon 1-3 (1-1, 0-2, 1-1, 0-2)

OSU 2-2 (1-1, 1-1, 2-0, 0-2)

Stanford 3-1 (2-0, 1-1, 2-0, 1-1)

U$C 1-3 (1-1, 0-2, 1-1, 0-2)

UW 3-1 (2-0, 1-1, 1-1, 2-0)

WSU 2-2 (1-1, 1-1, 0-2, 2-0)

Overall: 16-20

Home: 11-7

Away: 5-13

Dorrell: 10-8

Neuheisel: 6-12

The easiest statistic to look at here is the away record. It's absolutely abysmal and should easily be much better. If we then look at the the differences in records between the two coaches, the casual observer would point out that Dorrell has a much better record. However, for anyone who has actually followed UCLA football, this should not be too surprising considering how little talent Neuheisel inherited last year. Furthermore, the Pac-10 this year was about as deep and competitive as it has ever been, and UCLA was still retooling so that definitely influenced the win and loss columns. Here are some key games against the Washington schools that I believe should have gone our way but we blew under the Dorrell regime:

• Both losses to WSU. I was there for the one in 2006 and it was terrible. I also remember watching the 2007 game, the Bell tears ACL game, that we basically gave to them.
• UW 2006. We had a 13-0 lead coming out of half-time and completely blew it. Sure, it was in Seattle, but we completely dominated the first 30 minutes before tanking it.

If you add those, that's two easy wins in 2006 (which would have given UCLA a 9-3 record), and one easy win in 2007 (putting UCLA at 7-5). Also, I think that we got really lucky in 2007 against Oregon because they were playing without Dennis Dixon, and thus had no offense. Sure, injuries did hamper some of those Dorrell teams, but they had solid talent (and in 2007 national hype), to a point that we needed to not tank easy games. Unfortunatly, the out-of-conference schedule and bowl games were another area where UCLA did not necessarily excel at during my tenure as a student. That part of the analysis will come tomorrow so stay tuned!