Investing in the future

UCLA's first football opponent this season should have a pretty good recruiting class.

You'd think so, considering that Tennessee spends more on recruiting athletes than any other school in the nation. In 2006-07, it dropped more than $2 million. Notre Dame was second at about $1.75 million.

With most of the costs going to travel, the median Division 1 program spent $632,600 on all sports recruiting in 2006-07. Twenty-one schools each spent more than $1 million. The findings are published in a report from the Chronicle of Higher Education dated Aug. 1, 2008.

UCLA was close to the median at $641,500. It also had one of the highest percentages spent on recruiting women. About $238,000, or 37% of the recruiting budget, went toward finding female athletes to become Bruins.

Some familiar basketball programs made the top-20 in spending, including Duke, Florida, Ohio State, Syracuse, Texas, Michigan State and Kentucky.

Of the six BCS conferences, the Pac-10 spent the fifth most on recruiting, $8,347,000 — an increase of 80% from 10 years before. Oregon led the league at $1,077,300, the 19th highest in the country.

Bell is back

Kahlil Bell, UCLA's leading rusher last season, is back from an ACL injury. Tailback is probably the Bruins' deepest position, as Bell is joined by redshirt freshman Raymond Carter and true freshmen Andre Dean and Milton Knox. Another freshman, Jonathan Franklin, will be tried at tailback first but may end up in the secondary.

UCLA's full news release is after the jump.

Wednesday hot links

Adding another twist, the best articles in today's hot links have been highlighted in bold (again, we're putting all the links after the jump).

Find out why the big Vegas hoops tournament is a waste of time, what to expect (and laugh about) this football season and hear why UCLA's legendary two-sport athletes are a dying breed.

Preview programming note

FSN has its football preview shows lined up for this weekend. The news release is after the jump ...

Donovan Edwards stays close to home

UCLA lost a lineman that it never had Tuesday as tackle Donovan Edwards announced that he will attend California. Edwards (6 feet 5, 285 pounds), who played the last two seasons at Pleasant Hill (Calif.) Diablo Valley Community College, committed to the Bruins in June. He needed to complete academic work this summer, however, before he could enroll at UCLA.

—Chris  Foster

Sing the national anthem at a UCLA game

UPDATE: The sign-up period is closed. Good luck to everybody trying out this weekend!

Just a reminder, there's still a chance to sing the national anthem at a Bruin football game this year at the Rose Bowl.

The first round of auditions will take place Saturday at UCLA, and you have to sign up in advance. Space is limited, but there were still signs promoting the audition on campus last week. Click here to get the skinny.

The winner will get to perform Oct. 4 before kickoff at the Washington State game and also will receive eight tickets so their friends and family can share in the moment.

Flickr photo used with permission from Coyote Prophet Images

Red fades to blue

Since we're on the topic of uniforms, here's a classic piece of trivia from Uni Watch:

Two interesting tidbits from Jim Parker, beginning with a UCLA tale: “In the mid- to late 1950s, UCLA’s legendary head football coach Henry ‘Red’ Sanders would purchase the team’s home powder blue jerseys in a lighter shade of blue each successive season, until they were almost as pale as the visiting teams white jerseys (although the jerseys were still blue enough for players and fans to tell the two teams apart). Several years later, UCLA’s longtime equipment manager revealed why: Players and fans could tell the two teams apart, but it was virtually impossible to make the same distinction on the black-and-white game or ’scout’ films. In these films of the UCLA games, the offense and defense immediately blended into one indistinguishable group after every hike of the ball.”

H/T to jlegs on Bruins Nation.

Just do it!

I was surprised to see notes in several local newspaper blogs about the (un)likelihood of UCLA and USC both wearing their home jerseys in football games (bringing back a tradition from when the teams shared the Coliseum). At the Pac-10 officials' meeting, the league apparently made it clear that it was a no-no, and that the visiting team could be penalized a timeout in each half.

Which brings us back to the point this blog has been making for months ... the schools just need to ask the NCAA for an exemption. I already asked spokespeople at the NCAA and the Pac-10. Really — it's not that hard!

Rick Neuheisel and Pete Carroll were both asked about the issue point-blank on local radio, and both were explicitly clear that they would like to return to the tradition. Oh, and we also have more than 1,100 fans who have signed this petition.

As Duke basketball Coach Mike Krzyzewski once said, "Too many rules get in the way of leadership. They just put you in a box ... People set rules to keep from making decisions." An administrator in either athletic department needs to show about 15 minutes of leadership and we'll have some happy fans.

While on this topic, Bruins Nation just had an excellent post about the history of home-and-away uniform colors.

—Adam Rose

Photo courtesy USC athletics

Pac-10 media day: last call

The dust has settled from Pac-10 media day. After the jump, make sure you didn't miss any of the best coverage.

Monday hot links

We had hot links on hiatus (the last week was pretty busy), but we're back this morning. From here on out, we'll keep the list of links after the jump to make it easier to scan the main page. But we'll make sure to give you a heads up. Today, look for hoops recruiting pieces, a love letter to Pauley Pavilion, nude UCLA athletes and more. In a moment, we'll have a separate "last call" look at Pac-10 media day.