Rick Neuheisel quickly broke the ice at Pac-12 Media Day by showing he could take the heat.
“Excited to be here,” Neuheisel said. “As a coach on the proverbial hot seat, I guess you’re excited to be invited to any of these things.”
The spotlight was brighter than ever on Neuheisel at Fox Studios Lot on Tuesday. The former Bruin, entering his fourth season as coach, knows how much scrutiny there will be throughout the year. He was even asked a question about turning the yet-to-begin season around. Neuheisel took that, like all the other questions about his job security, in stride.
Neuheisel brought one thing to the podium no other coach did: news of a recent injury. He announced that freshman Brett Hundley will be out for three to four weeks after knee surgery scheduled for Wednesday.
The highly touted quarterback recruit hurt his right meniscus in June playing basketball. Neuheisel termed the injury “nonsignificant.”
Neuheisel has maintained since spring that there will be a competition for the starting quarterback spot, and with Hundley not expected to return until shortly before the Bruins’ Sept. 3 opener at Houston, the field just got one player smaller.
Now, redshirt junior Kevin Prince and junior Richard Brehaut will fight for the first-team reps. Neuheisel is giving the edge to Prince, who is coming off knee surgery, when UCLA’s fall practices start Aug. 8.
“He was the starter when he got hurt, and he’ll get the first snap, and he needs more work because he didn’t get spring football,” Neuheisel said. “But Richard will be right there. It will be a battle.”
Redshirt junior running back Johnathan Franklin, who accompanied his coach to the media day festivities, was also in the dark about the future of the quarterback position.
“I don’t have a clue who’s going to be the guy,” Franklin said. “Kevin Prince, he didn’t practice all spring, so we don’t know where he’s going to be at. I just want the best guy out there.”
The annual gathering marked the first event of the Pac-12 era, a conference rebranded after the additions of Utah and Colorado. With the shuffling came a new location for Media Day, symbolic of the Pac-12’s landmark TV rights deal that includes the Fox network.
Commissioner Larry Scott insisted Tuesday that the change was necessary and should open the door for the West Coast to have a greater impact in the college football world.
“This is a new era for the conference as we embrace the future, and the addition of Colorado and Utah very much helped us secure a landmark media agreement that’s going to provide for unprecedented exposure nationally for the conference,” Scott said. “So this wonderful story of this academic and athletic excellence is going to be better told and more broadly told than it’s been before.”