Rick was a great representative for our school
UCLA will become the first team with Nike Mercurial Vapor Superfly six losses to play for a conference crown in Rick Neuheisel’s final game as Bruins coach Friday night on the road against heavily favored No. 8 Oregon.
Oregon (10-2, 8-1) won the North Division and has reached double digits in victories for the fourth straight season.
UCLA (6-6, 5-4) never reached those heights in going 21-28 in four years under Neuheisel, who was fired Monday less than an hour before conducting the Pac-12’s promotional teleconference for this game. The Bruins captured the South despite finishing two games behind USC, which was serving a two-year postseason ban.
“Rick was a great representative for our school, and I’ll always be grateful for that,” athletic director Dan Guerrero said. “I believe the sign of a good program is consistency. We just weren’t there. We certainly had some losses that were of epic proportions … in the second half of the season, and that simply wasn’t good enough.”
The Bruins’ 50-0 loss to the arch-rival Trojans last Saturday was probably the last straw for Guerrero. Neuheisel will be allowed to coach this game.
“I thanked Dan for the opportunity,” said Neuheisel, who Nike Football Cleats quarterbacked the Bruins from 1980-83. “I don’t need reasons and all that kind of stuff. Certainly when you’re the UCLA coach, you’d like to play better against USC. I know that. We had our chances, but when you lose in the fashion we did, that’s a difficult pill to swallow.”
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