Letters: Don’t mess with Bruins

After watching UCLA’s dominant performance in Austin and remembering that the so-called “experts” picked the Bruins no better than eighth in the conference, it’s obvious why Texas declined an offer to join the Pac-10.

Heck, Texas would have a hard time competing in the WAC.

Martin Mangione

Brea

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I’m not sure if the Longhorns were overrated or UCLA is actually better than everyone thinks, but I do know one thing: Texas is going to think twice before inviting the Bruins back to Austin for another rematch.

Don Geller

Irvine

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UCLA goes to Texas as a huge underdog and soundly beats the Longhorns in front of 100,000 fans.

Makes one glad that football games are played on the field, and not in the fertile mind of sportswriters. Makes one wonder if those so critical of Coach Neuheisel and his team would like mustard or ketchup with their crow this week.

Maybe this calls for people to have a better perspective on why and how teams play. A new system, with a quarterback who was injured, and I would venture not at 100% in the first two games, is showing what can be done when he is healthier. An emotional game, played by those exhibiting a great deal of emotion, shows what can be done when talented young men start believing in the system and themselves.

Barry Levy

Hawthorne

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Statistics tell the story of UCLA’s upset over Texas. The Bruins passed for 27 yards and had possession of the ball for 35 minutes, 29 seconds. So the passing game racked up an average of 27.4 inches per minute.

Wes Wellman

Santa Monica

Daddy’s boy?

You don’t have to hate Lane Kiffin to recognize that the Daddy’s boy doesn’t have the class, the character, the brains or the temperament to be head coaching a program with the prestige and tradition of USC. After a couple of mediocre seasons that will further prove Kiffin’s shortcomings as a coach and as a man, I, a lifelong Alabama fan, only hope that Nick Saban is not looking for a new challenge then. To rescue USC and return it to football prominence might prove too great an opportunity for Saban to pass up.

Thereafter, Kiffin, if he’s lucky, and we all know he’s lucky, will be coaching at an FCS school, if he hasn’t been run out of coaching altogether. To mix a couple of metaphors, you are on a short leash, Kiff, with the clock ticking.

David McGarity

Palm Springs

Bucking the Broncos

Please, please, it hurts, please just make it stop.

In a paper that has shrunk drastically, every weekend the same column, Chris Dufresne whining on about poor misunderstood, disrespected Boise State. Every week, the same ridiculous contortions to try to justify the No. 1 ranking he gives Boise State — well, Oregon State was pretty good three years ago, and Virginia Tech beat Boston College (!!), and Oklahoma struggled against Cincinnati, which Fresno State beat, ergo, Boise State is No. 1!

Saturday there were terrific games between Alabama and Arkansas and UCLA and Texas, but Dufresne only mentions them for their potential impact on Boise State. We live in L.A., for goodness’ sake. Please, enough with Boise State.

David New

Manhattan Beach

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The hype on Chris Dufresne’s “love child” Boise State is way over the top. Forgotten in the Cinderella hoopla: four bowl losses to the likes of East Carolina, Louisville, Boston College and TCU bracketing the miracle Fiesta Bowl victory over Oklahoma.

Boise State as a top-five team is a fairy tale.

Don Troy

Pacific Palisades

Trial separation

Neither Frank nor Jamie McCourt has ever been accused by me of being anything but a self-absorbed hedonistic egomaniac, but they could finally do something honorable by selling the Dodgers to the city of Los Angeles. It might require a special bond issue, which would easily pass, and the city could negotiate a purchase price that would bail the McCourts out of their heavy indebtedness and allow them to keep a mansion for every day of the fortnight.

Barring municipal ownership, a group of tens of thousands of private investors might be formed, with each individual holding stock in the team and its assets. A long-established, and successful, precedent for this sort of community ownership already exists. Who do you think owns the Green Bay Packers? About 120,000 individual investors, that’s who. Maybe we could even buy all the McCourts’ mansions and two one-way tickets back to Beantown. Or maybe Jamie would rather have Jeff drive her back.

Allen E. Kahn

Playa del Rey

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It’s revolting that these two are squabbling over the Dodgers while Vin Scully tries to end his career on a high note and the team looks to be losers for a long time.

After Fox ownership it seems that Major League Baseball owes the fans in L.A. a chance to recover their dignity. They should demand a sale to decent local ownership.

The McCourts have already looted the team, they should at least have the decency to leave the corpse behind as they fight into the sunset.

William Bergmann

Hollywood

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After absorbing the testimony during the divorce trial, one question kept popping in my head. How did the McCourts ever get approved by Major League Baseball to buy the Dodgers? They apparently didn’t contribute one dollar of their own money to the purchase. Isn’t there a vetting process to buy an MLB team that is quite detailed to make sure a potential buyer has the assets to buy and run a team? Did Bud Selig, knowing the McCourts’ plans on lowering salaries, give them preferential treatment in an attempt to have an owner in a large-market team pay lower salaries?

As you know, the McCourts attempted to buy the Red Sox, but didn’t get them. At this time the Dodgers were owned by Fox. Fox also pays MLB for the TV rights. Did Fox somehow convince, persuade, threaten MLB that if the McCourt sale wasn’t approved, it might affect future TV broadcast rights and fees?

Steve Owen

San Diego

Minor details

As a longtime Angels season-ticket holder, I resent paying major league prices to watch spring training games the last month of the season. The cards were stacked against Jered Weaver on Sunday when Mike Scioscia started five rookies with batting averages under .158.

Jerry Mazenko

Garden Grove

Horse sense

It’s nice that T.J. Simers has written a full column about his infatuation with actress Diane Lane, who stars in the upcoming film “Secretariat,” but it would have been nicer if he had saved his most pithy comments for the film’s real star: Secretariat, a feat that would have been tough to pull off, considering Simers’ own words: “The horse wins in the end and everyone seems very happy. Don’t know what more needs to be said.”

Simers should at the very least act as if he gives half a wit about that noble horse of yesteryear. I certainly do.

David Tulanian

Los Angeles

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Note to Josh Brolin, your marriage is safe. T.J. had two days to prepare for his big moment and all he could do was “whiff.”

Michael Solomon

Canoga Park

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Time to play

One can only wonder if Andrew Bynum would have pulled this off-season surgery stunt if this was Magic Johnson’s team. I seriously doubt it.

Brian Haueter

Ventura

Right down Broadway

Either pitchers and catchers are conspiring to allow Alex Rodriguez to break the career home run record, or they are incredibly stupid because of the way they pitch to him. He is thrown a steady diet of fastballs, which is batting practice for him.

If Barry Bonds had been pitched to in the same way, Bonds would have hit more than 800 home runs.

Al Delay

Riverside

Bad calls

Will someone please tell Victor Rojas and Mark Gubicza, the Angels’ television broadcasters, that it’s way past time to bury the terms, “[X]-run jimmy-jack,” and “oppo-taco.” If we wanted schmaltz, we could presumably always find an appropriate Chris Berman clip on YouTube.

Randy Hipke

La Canada Flintridge

Don’t bother asking

What do Colin Montgomerie, Corey Pavin, Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy have in common? Who cares?

Kevin H. Park

Encino

Hot rivalry

This week’s headline:

USC Beats UCLA, 113 to 108 (in degrees Fahrenheit)

John J. Kuiper

Los Angeles

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