UCLA Football: Facilities, Facilities, Facilities.

UCLA's Spaulding Field. Photo courtesy of Sprinturf.com

Scott Robinson

Just days after the ex-UCLA coach’s hot seat was pulled out from under from him, Rick Neuheisel sat in with CBS’s “Inside College Football.” In the spotlight, Neuheisel was reminded of a few words he had shared in retrospect of his years in Westwood:

“[UCLA] needs to learn to finance its expectations.”

In hindsight, athletic facilities are an easy target for blame for UCLA’s lowly seasons under Coach Rick. Neuheisel’s replacement, Jim L. Mora, begs to differ. While recognizing the fact facilities can always be upgraded, Mora stated on KLAC 570’s “Loose Cannons” the following:

“A field’s a field. Grass is grass. If you’re a good football team and a good football coach we should be able to go down to some park in LA and practice and be ready to play on Saturday.”

I think UCLA has a practice field, right? Albeit, rubber.

It must be rough playing football for UCLA. Ranked 13th in the 2011 ARWU, or “Shanghai Rankings," UCLA is one of the most internationally recognizable universities. Its campus sits in the very heart of Los Angeles. With a 400+ acre plot of highly-coveted downtown property, a $1.8 billion endowment, 40,000 students and 30,000 staff, UCLA certainly is no city college. Since 1998, UCLA has received the highest number of undergraduate applications, on an annual basis, for freshmen in all of the country.

UCLA’s setting is hard to match. First off, Los Angeles County averages 330 days of sunshine. Secondly, the campus is flanked, within ten miles of each direction, by two of the largest tourist attractions in Southern California: 3rd Street Promenade, with its sun-laden Santa Monica beach, and the bustling Hollywood showcase of the Sunset Strip. Unlike Watts, Westwood’s environment does not require iron-wrought fences circumscribing its campus…

And yes, the Bruins have competitive athletic facilities. UCLA's Acosta Center, remodeled in 2006, is comprised of 24,000 square feet for use by student-athletes. Additionally, the team’s home venue of Pasadena’s Rose Bowl, the unparalleled “Grand-daddy-of-them-all,” is currently undergoing millions of dollars of upgrades. Futhermore, Pauley Pavilion (home to Bruin basketball, volleyball and varying intramural sports) is also currently undergoing massive renovations readying for next year’s 2012 season.

UCLA's alumni, and their respective legacies, should also point to the fact that success is very attainable when equipped with a Bruin degree.The likes of MLB Hall-of-Famer Jackie Robinson, current Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Doors lead-man Van Morrison (RIP), Business Mogul Henry Samueli, Film Score Composer John Williams, Soccer star Carlos Bocanegra (and countless other figures) strolled down the hallowed Bruin Walk. But with all this being said, it seems UCLA’s facilities are still inadequate?

UCLA: “Basketball School”

A sect of the Bruin following now pins the UCLA football program’s success on the future of the team’s facilities. Sure, there’s no on-campus stadium. “And, they have an 80-yard practice field” they’ll say. The old chicken-and-egg conundrum: Build the facilities and the talent will come, right? But wait a minute… There should be some talent (if you trust the recruiting agencies and their ranking systems):



Something tells me Mora doesn’t buy the facilities excuse. Coach on the 80-yard practice field:

“Whether or not we can make an 80 yard field a 100 yard field, I don’t know, but I don’t know that that’s going to matter on Saturday. Unless we start on the 1 yard line and we get a 99 yard drive. So that’s our attitude.”

Is it possible to be successful with the hardships of a shorter field? We could ask Gary Beban, UCLA’s lone Heisman Trophy winner (1967). Was synthetic turf available to complain about back then? Maybe it was before UCLA adorned Adidas equipment? More than fifty years later and the Bruins still have not seen the likes of another stiff-arming bronze statue.

So how did Beban do it? He beat Southern California and their own competing Heisman candidate, O.J. Simpson. I’m pretty sure Beban wasn’t drinking Gatorade and shoveling down Muscle Milk. They must have had an indoor practice facility that maintains humidity and temperature control to impart such a level of success, right?

Some will place blame on the lack of dedication, “UCLA is a basketball school.” Not anymore (at least recently). Others will point towards the lack of coaching leadership. $12 Million should shore up that problem. What about those tough academic standards? See Stanford University. Hell, Baylor now has the same number of Heisman’s as does UCLA. They must have something UCLA doesn’t? Yep. They’re called winners.

Facilities: Necessary for Success?

When I was in high school I was lucky enough to experience a summer in the Dominican Republic playing baseball in Jarabacoa and Santa Domingo. There I saw Sammy Sosa’s childhood home, played on beaten, uneven fields without grass and hit rocks (literally, rocks) to 12-year-olds who threw baseballs in the 80’s.

If there ever was a single example of the utter lack of importance facilities play in the role of athletic success, this is the one. You see, these kids played without mitts, gloves, bats, and they were lucky if there was grass on the field. You stick any one of these kids on any US campus and the first thing they’d say is “thank you.”

In fact, the MLB is currently composed of a vast number of DR-born players including: Miguel Batista, Jose Bautista, Adrian Beltre, Melky Cabrera, Francisco Liriano, Bartolo Colon, Juan Cruz, Vladimir Guerrero, Jose guillen, Guillermo Mota, David Ortize, Placido Polanco, Albert Pujols, Aramis Ramirez, Jose Reyes, Alfonso Soriano, Juan Uribe, and Ubaldo Jimenez. All-Star teams could easily be comprised from the above.

But how does a country produce a consistent level of talent and stardom without top-of-the-line facilities? Yes, there are schools of baseball now heavily influenced by MLB organizations, but that wasn’t always the case. I can, however, guarantee you they sure don’t have Phil Knight and a new set of draws for every game. For them, practice meant jumping in the bed of a pick-up truck and bumping along the rocky dirt roads to the capital for a pick-up game come every Saturday morning. And that was every Saturday morning. If you ask me, their success is merely a product of having the correct attitude. They play for the love of the sport.

Success Without Excuses.

When asked about what sort of support Coach Mora should expect for improved facilities he responded:

“There’s a real commitment to the betterment of everything that we do. First of all the facilities are not bad. I’ve been to [just about every] campus in the country and these facilities are not bad. Can they get better? Absolutely. And they will get better but they’re not bad at all.”

If you were to ask me, at the core of UCLA’s problem is their mindset: any excuse is currently easier to justify the Bruins’ shortfalls than the dedication and work required to remove such a mentality.

Maybe a little reminder from Coach Mora detailing such a privilege could help:

“…this is an unbelievable environment to go to school at.”