What kind of sports section would have the nerve to print on
Sunday without coverage of the UCLA football game against No. 1
Oklahoma?
Well, that brilliant idea is courtesy of the Daily Bruin
Registration Issue.
How so, do you ask?
How can a newspaper that prides itself in balanced coverage of
breaking news and in-depth stories affecting our readers not have
anything about the biggest non-USC football game of the year?
Well, if you didn’t realize, this newspaper has more pages
than a textbook. The Registration Issue is not exactly a normal
issue.
It’s freaking huge!!!
As the sports editor, it hurt when I learned that this issue had
to go to our printer on Thursday, but because of its size, it
wouldn’t appear on newsstands until Sunday.
So, what else can possibly happen in the UCLA sports world
between Thursday and Sunday?
Including the football team, three (maybe four) UCLA teams play
the No. 1 team in the country, including women’s soccer at
North Carolina, women’s volleyball hosting USC, and
men’s water polo possibly meeting Stanford at the So Cal
tournament.
To top it off, our men’s soccer team hosts Portland, an
interesting story because Clive Charles, Portland’s coach
died last month (very sad, but a heartbreaking, emotional story we
would’ve given you), and our women’s golf team kicks
off their fall season with a No. 2 ranking.
So, what exactly is the Registration Issue?
Traditionally, it’s the Daily Bruin’s first issue of
the year, and The Bruin always tries to do something special, other
than being big and bulky.
The Registration Issue isn’t supposed to focus on news,
disregarding what the first four letters of “newspaper”
are, I guess.
Instead, it’s usually an issue devoted to feature stories
and stories really affecting students more than most of our
stories.
For example, it’s not often sports has a special color
center insert, or a truk, in journalistic language (yes, without
the “c”), not devoted to football or basketball.
It’s rare the other sections of the newspaper (which you all
read after sports, right?) have truks at all.
Every section now gets a chance to be creative. I’m not
overly excited about this one since truks do happen for sports on
other occasions: the football season preview, USC rivalry week,
March Madness and bowl games.
So, I agreed to try something different with a “for the
rest of us” theme, which is different. I think you’ll
like what you see.
On top of the truk, we have many other stories in this issue
which wouldn’t normally appear.
We have six columns ““ much more than our usual one or two
per day.
We have good stories about every fall sport that aren’t
related to the big weekend games.
We have 1,000,000 AP wire stories, normally reserved for big
events, like the Super Bowl, or the World Series, or even the
Detroit Shock winning the WNBA title. Yeah.
We have taglines after every story explaining why we don’t
have the results of the weekend games. This is so our faithful
readers don’t blitz us with e-mails demanding the
results.
So (yes, I say “so” a lot. So?), before I get into
my predictions of what happened in the Oklahoma game you all
watched yesterday but isn’t covered in this issue, I want to
make a promise to you.
I, as the sports editor, promise that the Daily Bruin sports
section will provide you with daily in-depth and great coverage of
all of UCLA’s sports, and provide you with stories affecting
college sports daily.
And we’ll entertain you too, and give you something
amusing to read during class. I promise.
Now, let the silliness begin!!!
I see no realistic way that our Bruins can beat No. 1 Oklahoma.
You can’t win if you can’t score.
So, instead of telling you how badly the Bruins lost, I’m
going to tell you what it would’ve taken for UCLA to win.
“¢bull; USC’s plot of ensuring UCLA is bad by spending
billions of dollars developing human-like robots, is exposed.
They’re good enough to be recruited by the Bruins, but
trained to drop balls, especially touchdown passes. Amazingly, the
real players show up and are better than everyone knew.
As it turns out, Karl Dorrell is also a robot, but not one
trained by USC ““ hey, his lack of emotion has to be due to
something, right?
“¢bull; Bob Stoops, having won a championship in Oklahoma
already, decides he’s done all he can at Oklahoma and wants a
challenge. Dan “the ax man” Guerrero quickly fires
Dorrell and hires Stoops.
Stoops leads the Bruins to victory (barely).
“¢bull; A tornado blows through Norman as Oklahoma is in the red
zone, and sends a pass from the quarterback into the hands of the
Ball twins, who lateral back to each other all the way to the
endzone.
“¢bull; The defense plays well and inherits the luck of Ohio
State and Notre Dame combined, and wins 7-6.
By the way, what would happen if Ohio State played Notre
Dame?
If he’s wrong, feel free to e-mail Quiñonez with
your comments at gquinonez@media.ucla.edu.