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Jim was an interesting, unusual and risky pick for the Bruins as their head coach. On the one hand (the bad hand) he never coached at the college level, was a few years away from coaching at all and was a pretty unknown quantity. On the other hand (the good hand) he made the right moves in assistant coaching, seemed to do a fine job at recruiting and was working to bring a good attitude to the team.
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And then the year came. He did a great job. Moving a mediocre UCLA team into a contender status from day 1. And, to quote Crazy Lips Zellwiger, "You had me at Hello.. UCLA 38 - USC 28 - you big lug!"
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He did a great job with a young team, a red-shirt freshman quarterback and well... who cares. He beat USC and most other teams (Stanford, on the other hand - not so much). So we are going to a good bowl and life is cool.
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Over at Wisconsin, I was always a little envious of their coaching transition from Alverez to Bret Beliema. It was easy and Beliema seemed to do a great job. They are going to their 3rd straight Rose Bowl. But with big wins comes big pressure, and Beliema wasn't doing as good as the Badgers expected.
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Then, last week, he skedaddled to Arkansas. Well Barry Alverez, he of legendary fame, decided today to come back and coach the Rose Bowl as they search for a new Badger head coach. If they win, it will be a great ride-to-the-rescue, if they lose it will be that RazorBack Beliema's fault. Kind of a no lose proposition. But they play Stanford. Watch out, I say. Those are some shifty trees.
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