I happened to be glancing at the Bruinzone message board this morning and I came across a couple of interesting threads.

On the football side of things, I poster named BruinADub did some nice work hunting down articles about some Bruins in the NFL, including Brandon Chillar, Spencer Havner, Ricky Manning, Justin Medlock, Matthew Slater and Ryan Boschetti.

Very quickly: Chillar and Havner are competing for the same spot in Green Bay, Medlock has NFL talent but might get cut, Slater is loved in Boston, Boschetti has a great attitude in Washington and Manning will likely be cut by the Bears.

Here is a link to the thread. You can check the links ADub has poster there (a few are older and you might have seen them).

In the hoops forum. a poster named B..B has created a list of the best UCLA basketball players from every state. In California, he broke it down by region. His post is here.

Here is a sample, his California rankings:

California
     Northern - Walt Torrence (Don Barksdale, George Stanich)
     Central - J.R. Henderson (Gerald Madkins, Rafer Johnson)
     Southern
         Westside - Sidney Wicks (Kiki Vandeweghe, Baron Davis) 
         South Bay - Keith Erickson (Dijon Thompson, Ralph Jackson)
         South Central - Marques Johnson (David Greenwood, Curtis Rowe)
         Northeast - Dick Linthicum (Don Johnson, Frank Lubin)
         San Fernando Valley - Gail Goodrich (Trevor Wilson, Jordan Farmar)
         Inland Empire - Reggie Miller (Darren Collison) 
         San Gabriel Valley - Tracy Murray (Brad Holland, Mike Lynn)
         South Coast - Ed O'Bannon (Willie Naulls, Jason Kapono)
         Orange County - Dave Meyers (John Vallely, Cedric Bozeman) 
         North Coast - Keith Wilkes (Don MacLean, Shon Tarver)
         San Diego - Bill Walton (Jelani McCoy, Ralph Drollinger)

Former UCLA football player Dylan Rush won't be wrestling for another school, rather he has signed a boxing contract and plans to go after a mixed martial arts career.

According to the Honolulu Advertiser (Rush's hometown paper)"

"I just stopped enjoying playing football and I didn't want to do it anymore," said Rush, who was competing at fullback after making the move from defensive end in the spring. "I was going to accept a wrestling scholarship to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, but then I got offered a contract to box."

Rush, who earned Advertiser All-State recognition as a junior and senior while playing for Konawaena, also captured three wrestling and two judo state titles in his prep career.

Rush hopes to parlay the boxing contract into a future career in mixed martial arts.

"The interest in MMA started really early on," said Rush, who is 6 feet 4 and 250 pounds. "It's always been something that really interested me and I've kind of always reveled in the single-combat sports."

This started out as a response in a fan post, but I wanted to build on that discussion with a front page blog post. There are some good comments there as well, so if you're interested in this topic, you might want to check that thread out, too. Here is what I wrote (with maybe a little editing and polishing):

I would think the last criteria a newspaper would have when assigning beats is what school the reporter attended. I promise you, if you looked at the New York Times, none of the reporters assigned to covering Manhattan or Fordham or St. John’s went to those schools. And, I think it is obvious that in some smaller, college-type towns, graduates of said college or university are going to work for the local paper. But Los Angeles is a big metropolitan with several newspapers and universities and so it's not going to be the case here.

Reporters are (theoretically) hired because they are strong reporters or strong writers, hopefully both. Editors don’t care where they went to school, as long as it was a good school. At most papers, reporters aren’t even necessarily experts in the sport they cover. They are experts at being reporters. That’s why writers are moved from beat to beat. Brian Dohn used to be the Lakers writer (or maybe it was the Dodgers) - point being, he is not some great expert in college football or even football. He’s (supposedly) an expert at reporting. Kurt Streeter of the LA Times didn’t even cover sports before he became a sports columnist - he was general assignment.

So, there is very little chance that a reporter necessarily comes from the school they cover.

Scott Wolf of the DN is an SC grad who covers SC. IMO, that’s a mistake on the DN’s part. But, SC has the biggest journalism school in LA, it’s gonna happen that some of their grads cover SC. I fairness to Wolf, it's not clear to me that he's necessarily favoring SC with his coverage -- if you look at some of the "wilder" message boards, Wolf is oft-criticized by Trojan fans.

For what it’s worth, Lonnie White played football at USC and he was one of the best UCLA beat writers I’ve read—knowledgeable in football and very fair.

On the other hand (and this is more important), newspapers are missing the point of blogs by asking their beat writers to write them. Because blog has a point of view and by asking your (supposedly) objective beat writer to write your blog, you’re really asking them to do a notes column online. Maybe a little of their perspective gets in, but mostly its notes and information without the opinions.

At the LA Times, their blog editor (Tony Pierce, who wrote “How to Blog” and whose blog (I think it is called BusBlog) is well done, hired Adam Rose to do the UCLA blog after Rich Perelman left. Rose went to SC, but I think he got the gig because he was blogging at LAist where Pierce was the editor. So, he got the job because he is a “blogger”—that is, he’s a skilled blogger, not necessarily a reporter or a UCLA fan.

I personally like what Rose does, though I don’t read it every day. For me, the downside of Rose is that because I’m a fan who really follows things closely, I think I know as much as he does, so there isn’t that much there for me. But if you didn’t read this site and some message boards, Adam probably has a lot of good, new information. I really don’t think Adam has done anything to suggest that because he went to SC, he is undermining UCLA in his blog.

Truth is, newspapers have not figured out what to do with blogs. Assigning their beat writers is probably not the way to go, but most aren’t going to hire a writer other than the beat writer to write a team blog. The Times is doing that, in fairness to them. But generally, newspaper blogs on sports teams don’t have a point of view, they try to be as objective as the reporting is, which isn’t always objective, but it tries to be.

If a paper’s coverage is more slanted to SC, I really believe that it is because they’ve decided that’s what sells papers, not because the editor or writer went to SC. Case in point, btw, is the way the LA Times covers the Dodgers and Angels. The Angels are a much better team with a way better record and way more exciting players, but the Times covers the Dodgers like they are the better team. That’s because the Dodgers are more popular and sell more papers.

The most important beats in LA are the Lakers and Trojan football. I’m positive of that. Coverage of those sports sells the most papers. So, they are going to get the coverage.UCLA basketball might arguably be as good as Trojan football, but college hoops does not sell papers the way football does.

The newspapers in this town are flawed. The Daily News and its sister papers are being dismantled by their owner and the Times is laying off and buying our reporters left and right. No one knows how to monetize the online situation and therefore they are struggling with what to do about blogs and other online content.

But I don't think their flaws are rooted in any bias nor do I think the education of the writers and editors are impacting content -- subjective or otherwise.

Bumped. GO BRUINS. -N

First of all, HT to "Puffdaddy" at Bruinzone for the story.

Puffdaddy came across an article from a Montgomery, Alabama newspaper. The article laments Auburn's schedule, taking them to task for playing Furman. "There are 50 different teams around the country whose name on the schedule would have garnered just as much respect as West Virginia's. And against more than half of them, AU would have walked in as the favorite. In some cases, it would've been a big favorite," Josh Moon wrote.

Then there was this:

But not against WVU. In all likelihood, the game will be a pick-em in the eyes of Vegas. But it certainly won't feel like one to the folks in Morgantown. After all, it will be the Big East against the big, bad SEC.

Why put your program in that sort of situation? It's no-win.

Why not play a has-been that still carries some name recognition, like Miami, Nebraska or UCLA? Or why not play a middle-of-the conference team, like Virginia, Colorado or Oregon State.

All of them mean as much on the schedule as West Virginia, and most of them won't be nearly as good.

For what it's worth, Puffdaddy's Bruinzone post was called "Karl Dorrell's Coaching Legacy."

Mark Saxon takes over today as the OC Register's UCLA beat writer and blogger.

He writes in his opening salvo:

After two seasons covering the happenings at USC, I’m moving west through the gridlock to cover the Bruins. I’ve done it before. Five years ago, I (below, right) switched from covering the Oakland A’s to covering the Angels when both teams fought for AL West supremacy and sometimes just fought. blog-photo-me.jpg

<snip>

Starting today, right here in this blog space, you can expect to find the latest news in UCLA sports along with some of the stranger developments that lap against the shores of Westwood. Once we’re up and running, it should be a one-stop, Middle Eastern bazaar where UCLA fans can load up on morsels of knowledge.

Some of the Register's columnists will also participate in the blog.

Here is the main link to the Register's UCLA blog.

It may seem like a small thing, but I find this story very encouraging.

According to this ESPN blog, UCLA strength and conditioning coach Mike Linn is utlizing the latest technology in his effort to get the team in better shape and prevent injury. Here are a couple of excerpts from the story:

"It's not just lifting as much weight as we can and running until we puke, though those are certainly parts of training athletes," he said.

That's why he was able to successfully pitch for a $100,000 grant toward restarting UCLA's dormant training table and purchasing two pieces of equipment: a Bod Pod and a metabolic cart.

Huh?

Well, the Bod Pod is device that accurately measures body composition -- read: lean muscle vs. fat. And the metabolic cart -- think athletes wearing gas-mask looking things while jogging on a treadmill in commercials -- measures an athlete's metabolic rate, both at rest and during exercise.

When Linn knows an athlete's accurate body fat percentage and how many calories he burns at rest and during exercise, he can then create specific training routines for that athlete.

"We needed a way to figure out exactly how many calories our athletes needed and where those calories should be coming from," he said.

Further, a customized menu at the training table is a critical element of that routine. It includes a color-coded card that tells the athlete what to eat and how much. Said Linn, "We really call it the last station of our training -- the performance nutrition station."

While injuries, a UCLA bugaboo for the past few seasons, are often unavoidable, the overwhelming consensus is well-trained, lean athletes are less prone to injuries than those who are not. An athlete who is sucking wind will get sloppy with his technique and that could lead to unfortunate twists, sprains and tears.

You can read the whole story here, but I'd like to make a point i addition to the micro idea that the team is getting in better shape.

On the meta level, it's great to see that the team is using the latest technology, because we always seem to be behind the times when it comes to things like this. We never seem to be on the cutting edge when it came to gear and equipment or even something simple like having the turf as Spaulding ready for practice. If this is a sign of the new times, it portends well for the future.

If I'm reading this press release correctly, Kevin Love is headed to Las Vegas to help the U.S. Men's Olympic basketball team train for the games in Beijing, China.

It seems to me it's both an honor for Love to be selected and a good chance for him to work on his game against some of the best players in the country.

Other Pac 10 players on the Select Team include Robin Lopez, O.J. Mayo and Andre Iguodala.