USC Supporters Not Shut Out This Week

Pregame beer: $12

Ticket to game: $40

Postgame cocktails: $42

Beating UCLA, 27-0, USC’s first shutout against UCLA since 1947, and enabling USC to go to a bowl game after a 2-5 start (which I know is nothing to write home about but at this point, ‘SC fans will take what we can get): priceless.

Paul Brady

Hermosa Beach

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While trying to figure out the BCS formula, the Bruins and their fans lost sight of another formula far more important to their long-term success:

Bob Toledo minus Cade McNown equals Paul Hackett.

Richard A. Fond

Los Angeles

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With 41 seconds remaining in the 27-0 demolition of UCLA, the Bruins called a timeout. Not understanding the rationale, I yelled, “The game is over, what are you doing?”

From somewhere in the crowd I got an answer: “Toledo is trying to prolong his career.”

Chris Gagliano

Redondo Beach

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Certainly this game was “all about the coaches,” and it has now become clear Bob Toledo has lost his team, and that some of his players have become increasingly aware of his tendency to criticize their play while deflecting blame from himself.

But the notion that this latest fiasco raises the first serious questions involving Toledo’s competence is absurd. Questions started after the first Wisconsin fiasco, which followed the Miami fiasco, and have continued for the last three years.

UCLA has one chance of stopping the hemorrhaging, and that’s the firing of Toledo after the Arizona State game. Because Bob has become his own worst recruiting liability, dumping him immediately is the only rational response, unless UCLA wants to risk being destroyed in the recruiting wars by the head cheerleader across town.

In Westwood, all the chickens have come home to roost and there’s nobody left to blame. The “Buzz Bruin Fringe Element” was right all along. Will UCLA’s famously complacent athletic bureaucracy have the brains and stomach to do the right thing? Of course not.

Charles Chiccoa

Reseda

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DeShaun Foster drives around in a car that doesn’t belong to him. He’s suspended. Cory Paus pleads no contest to DUI. He plays.

Better a student-athlete put people’s lives in danger than associate with an agent.

Thank you, NCAA and your member schools, for making sure we keep sports in its improper perspective.

Marc Isenberg

Los Angeles

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I’d rather have the gutty little Bruins of old who fight from an underdog position than these coaches and players of new who are more talented but just roll over and die.

Francis Pan

Monterey Park

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It has been obvious over the last few years that many Bruin players have not used their heads (handicapped parking scandal, Foster’s “borrowing” a car, the Paus escapades, etc.), but what is entirely more troubling is their continued lack of heart year after year when times get tough.

1999: lost six of last eight.

2000: lost five of last seven.

2001: lost four in a row and counting.

Perhaps Pete Dalis should do all Bruin fans a favor before he retires and send Bob to Toledo. It’s time for someone who will bring some heart (and common sense) to this team.

James Dyckes

Los Angeles

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If Bob Toledo were athletic director and if either Nick Aliotti or Bob Field were the current UCLA football coach, one wonders what moves the AD might make at season’s end.

Wes Wellman

Santa Monica

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In the Nov. 17 sports section, Bob Toledo seemingly philosophizes about Cory Paus’ drunk-driving record. He states, “He didn’t hurt anyone.” Since when is this a criterion for condoning drunk driving?

Nate Rubin

Los Angeles

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UCLA football seemed to follow an alphabetical path this season.

It started out A-OK but then warning signs flashed: BCS, SUV, NCAA, DUI and, finally, USC. By then, it was too late: The Bruins were MIA.

There is nothing wrong with the Bruin football coaches or players that a shorter season wouldn’t solve, say, one that starts around Sept. 1 and ends around Oct. 20.

John Nisley

El Segundo

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The Bruins have proven once again that drinking (Paus) and driving (Foster) don’t mix.

Nick Rose

Newport Beach

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At first I was upset that by letting Cory Paus play against the Trojans, Bob Toledo was not going to punish him. Afterward, I realized he did both.

Jack Dietz

Los Angeles

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Three Philadelphia Eagle players are arrested for marijuana and they are immediately suspended from their team’s next game.

The Ohio State quarterback is arrested for drunk driving and is immediately suspended from the Buckeyes’ next game.

The UCLA quarterback is convicted on two alcohol-related driving cases and is not suspended. That’s some example Bob Toledo is setting.

This obvious lack of leadership and direction from the top, coming on the heels of the handicapped parking scandal and the DeShaun Foster car case, should be enough for any clear-thinking Bruin supporter to hope that Peter Dalis mercifully takes Toledo with him when Dalis retires in a few months.

Jim Bendat

Los Angeles

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After O.J.’s Ford Bronco chase and DeShaun’s Ford Expedition fiasco, one has to wonder if the Ford Motor Co. is considering a Pac-10 sponsorship.

Nikos Triantafilou

Newport Coast

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I never thought a sportswriter could be so influential, but since Bill Plaschke’s article, in which you declared “L.A. is a Bruin football town,” the Bruins are 0-4 and the Trojans are 4-0!

Could you do us a favor and declare this every year?

Chris Wing

Arcadia

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Bill Plaschke’s proclamation that Los Angeles is a UCLA town is analogous to the major news networks calling Florida for Al Gore. The retraction was equally lame.

Mike Klein

La Crescenta

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Bill PlaSChke: Times man of the year.

Howard Mationg

Gardena

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Dear Coach Toledo:

This may seem unusual, getting advice from a former Trojan coach, but I can really relate to what you must be going through right now. Like your first few teams with Cade McNown, I inherited a very talented football team with a great quarterback (remember Rodney Peete?). Later, when my own recruits became upperclassmen, I lost control of their behavior, while trying to please alumni with increasing expectations after getting so close to the “big prize” in previous years. I finally found myself in a bottom-tier bowl wondering what had happened with no one left to blame. My advice to you, do everything in your power to avoid playing Fresno State in a bowl.

Regards, Larry Smith

Joe Kiley

Sherman Oaks