ucla Page 7 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
To Avoid Criticism, Shabazz Muhammad Must Collapse With Joy When His Team Wins
Shabazz Muhammad is proving a good canary in the coal mine for figuring out if we've dispensed with the superstar-athlete-doesn't-care-about-team-play concern trolling as we've grown more sophisticated about the complexity of the NCAA and the intellectual laziness of humping tired sports cliches. We...
The Most Recent Fainting Spell Over Shabazz Muhammad Distills NCAA Compliance To Its Idiotic Essence
Shabazz Muhammad spent the first three games of UCLA's season—and his college career—sitting on the bench while the NCAA deliberated on whether he'd committed a minor infraction that he'd specifically been advised not to worry about when he committed it. When he was finally reinstated, he got back ...
T.J. Simers Believes UCLA Threw The Stanford Game, And Hijacked Jim Mora Jr.'s Press Conference To Prove It
UCLA already has the Pac-12 South clinched. Their opponent in the championship game would be either Stanford or Oregon, depending on whether the Bruins won or lost against the Cardinal on Saturday. Well, UCLA lost, 35-17, and they'll have their rematch in just four days. Where the rest of us see o...
Why Does Everyone Care Which Exit Lane Kiffin Used When He Left The Visitor's Locker Room Last Night?
Yesterday afternoon's much-hyped grudge match between USC and UCLA went in the Bruins' favor immediately, and for good; the score was 24-0 midway through the second quarter, and, despite a spirited comeback to bring the Trojans within three, UCLA won by 10. The Bruins have the better record in the P...
Your College Football Open Thread, For Talking About Basically Anything But College Football
Is this the worst week of college football in the entire season? Emphatically yes, it is the worst. During football's penultimate week, many ranked teams are playing FCS opponents from around the neighborhood—South Carolina plays Wofford, Texas A&M plays Sam Houston State, Georgia won't even go beyo...
The NCAA Has Reinstated UCLA's Shabazz Muhammad
Just another day in the lovely, just world of college sports. UCLA's star freshman, Shabazz Muhammad, was declared ineligible before his first game last week. His crime? He took money from a family friend to fund unofficial recruiting visits to Duke and North Carolina. Both schools had told him he w...
The "Free Shabazz" Movement Is Underway At UCLA
Flea truly is our nation's greatest crusader for social justice. The Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist donned a homemade "Free Shabazz Muhammad" shirt while playing the national anthem Friday, and now it's a full-fledged movement. The other three members of UCLA's freshmen class wore their own "Free Sha...
UCLA's Joshua Smith Raises Bar On Trend Of Airballed Free Throws, Airballs a Crucial Layup
UCLA needed help in beating UC Irvine 80-79 last night at Pauley Pavilion. That help came first in the form of the Anteaters' Will Davis missing free throws at the end of regulation that would have locked up a UCI win, and then in the closing seconds of overtime as referees swallowed their whistle...
Youngest Gasol Brother Shows Up In A Reddit Thread About Himself, Confirms He's "Not Very Good At Basketball"
The folks in r/nba got to talking about the Gasols a couple of days ago—prompted by this great picture of Marc Gasol in high school—and one of the Gasols got to talking back. First, a little speculation from a non-Gasol, exactly the type of thing that might inspire a Gasol to get involved:...
Jim Mora Told His Assistants To Put Some Eyeblack On And They Went Way Overboard
Via SB Nation, Jim Mora asked UCLA's assistant football coaches to put on some war paint just before the game last night, and they…obliged. The Bruins tore Arizona a new one, so it worked....
Arizona's Three Losses Are The Worst Three Losses In College Football
Candidate for most crud-awful season in football this year: the Arizona Wildcats. Started 3-0, including handsome win over Oklahoma State team to get expectations buzzing. The Associated Press ranked the Cats for the first time since 2010. Next came a 56-0 paste job of South Carolina State. Oats wer...
Jim Mora Is An Asshole
When UCLA football coach Jim Mora kicked the media out of Wednesday's practice, he explained his actions by saying he had "some issues" with the school's sports information office after a couple of camera crews set up in what was supposed to be a restricted area....
The Rice Marching Band Took Some Halftime Shots At "U$C"
Thanks to Logan who sent in this photo of the Rice MOB (Marching Owl Band)'s performance at halftime of last night's season opener against UCLA. It seems, judging from Twitter, that the entire show was USC-themed—maybe some common ground with their Bruin opponents, or maybe just taking advantage of ...
Freshman UCLA Quarterback Brett Hundley Rushed For A 72-Yard Touchdown On His First Career Snap
When new UCLA head coach Jim Mora named redshirt freshman Brett Hundley starting quarterback for this season, it raised a few eyebrows. After all, the Bruins had two returning senior quarterbacks. To Mora's credit, it appears he may be on to something—the 6'4" 225 quarterback from Chandler, Arizon...
Student-Athletes To Be Slightly Less Exploited, At Least In California
We learned, from Taylor Branch's history, that the term "student-athlete" only arose as a (successful) attempt by the NCAA to avoid having to pay workman's comp to injured players. A Colorado football player, killed by a head injury in the '50s, wasn't entitled to a thing from the NCAA—no health car...
Minor League Football Organization Bans Two Players For Life After On-Field Brawl
The Northern Elite Football League (not to be confused with minor league football competitor New England Football League) banned two players for life after a nasty brawl broke out in Eau Claire, Wisconsin between the Lake Superior Rage and Eau Claire Crush....
Reeves Nelson Files Defamation Suit Over <i>Sports Illustrated</i>'s UCLA Story
SI's big UCLA expose came...and went. George Dohrmann (who won a Pulitzer for his coverage of academic fraud at Minnesota, a real scandal) painted a picture of a dysfunctional Bruins program, but there wasn't any there there. It didn't slow UCLA: they completed their recruitment of the best prep pla...
How A Career Ends: John Wooden's Pyramid Of Success Led Me From Belgium To Real Estate
Tell Me When It's Over is an interview series in which we ask former athletes about the moment they knew their playing days were over. Today: guard John Vallely, who won national titles with and without Lew Alcindor at UCLA. ...
Before He Became Kareem, Lew Had Trouble Finding Pants That Fit
As a sophomore at UCLA in 1967, young Lew Alcindor already had one of the highest verticals in the game, and an inseam to match. (Fifty-one inches, to be precise.) Tailored clothes were the solution to that, but the rest of college basketball had no answer for Alcindor's and UCLA's dominance. The ne...
UCLA Basketball Players Fought Each Other Long Before Ben Howland
The year was 1945, and John Wooden was still in the Navy. It would be three more years before he took over in Westwood, but the UCLA Bruins under coach Wilbur Johns were already using revolutionary training methods....