Curious to know how often Donahue’s teams at least danced around the national-title picture, I looked at week-by-week AP poll data for all 20 years of his coaching tenure. For purposes of this exercise, I decided a team qualified as a national-title contender whenever it appeared in the top seven of an AP poll published November or later. These cutoffs were meant to identify those teams that, as a given season proceeded from the homestretch to the finish line, had a reasonable shot at finishing atop the rankings and winning the whole magilla.
In all, my research covered 124 weeks of AP polls, and over that period Donahue’s Bruin teams made only 15 appearances in the top seven. That is to say, he fielded a national-championship contender only 12% of the time. And for this he gets canonized? It’s not an awful performance record or anything (at least not until you get to Donahue’s last seven years of coaching, when his teams went a cool oh-for-43 in my poll survey), but if these were your program’s halcyon days, you might fairly feel a bit unsatisfied.
The Future Will Be Better Tomorrow
Mediocrity clings to Bruin football like it’s a chewed-up piece of gum we stepped on decades ago and have been too lazy to scrape off. Is our ambulation about to become any less sticky in the near future? It looks like it might. The latest recruiting class was excellent, and for the first time in 10 years the coaching staff seems to know what it’s doing. Los Angeles will always churn out plenty of quick-twitchy athletes who will be delighted to attend UCLA if given a half-decent reason. It shouldn’t be that hard to get on, say, an Alamo Bowl trajectory in the next couple years.
For now, though, the official Bru Velvet prediction is for six wins. Or maybe seven. I don’t like being pinned down.
Article comments
1 - Matthew T. Sussman
My expectations of UCLA football was originally to look at the size of the UCLA jersey numbers and feel insecure about my own team's uniform.
2 - Dexter Fishmore
I'm pleased to confirm that the jersey numbers are a bit smaller than they used to be. I think someone in the program decided we were overcompensating.
3 - The Desert Rat
great article - loved the reference to Solich - one would think tho that as much as UCLA charges for tuition they could buy a better football team! Reference what OK is able to do with their oil revenues!!
4 - charlesleebrady
Six wins is veeeeeeeeeery optimistic. One more knee injury and they would be wise to have their next recruit be an orthopedic surgeon. RN and his staff are a HUGE upgrade but another 4-8 is, regretfully, highly probable. What happened to Morrel Pressely?? His name no longer is being mentioned. Betcha he is having trouble learning the play book.
5 - El Bicho
Forget the upcoming football season, how about a column about getting to the 2008 Final Four Championship Game?
As punishment, Rose and Calipari should have to clean up Wikipedia.
6 - Dexter Fishmore
@charlesleebrady - The only thing I've heard about Presley is that he's shifted to wide receiver from tight end. Neuheisel and Chow decided that he doesn't have the bulk to play the latter position.
You're certainly right that the line injuries seem to be piling up alarmingly.