Chow signs two-year extension as offensive coordinator at UCLA
Those who consider themselves NCAA football betting analysts are aware that the Pac-10 is going to be a crowded and cluttered race in 2010. If the UCLA Bruins are to make any noise this fall and get the attention of online betting experts, they’ll need to score big. That’s why they inked their current offensive coordinator, Norm Chow, to a two-year extension.
Chow has his work cut out for him in Westwood, for a number of reasons. First, UCLA just hasn’t attracted the top-flight skill-position people in the city of Los Angeles and, for that matter, in Southern California. Cross-town rival USC has snapped up the area’s best talent, leaving UCLA with scraps under head coach Rick Neuheisel.
Combined with a dearth of talent, UCLA has also been hit by the injury bug at quarterback. Over the past five seasons, only one (2008) has witnessed a relatively clean start-to-finish progression by one man under center (Kevin Craft). In the other seasons, the starting quarterback got injured or was so markedly ineffective that he had to get pulled. Whether it was Ben Olson in 2005, Ossar Rasshan in 2006, Patrick Cowan in 2007, or Craft and Kevin Prince in 2009, no Bruin quarterback has been able to stick for very long, robbing this program and its offenses of the continuity needed to succeed at a high level. The problems that plagued the UCLA program in the Karl Dorrell era have continued under the reign of Neuheisel, a smart and able X-and-O man who – because of his sketchy reputation plus the USC goliath in the same metropolitan area – has failed to gain traction as the coach of his alma mater’s football team.
What obviously makes Norm Chow that much more intriguing for UCLA, not to mention sports betting junkies, is that he served as the offensive coordinator for USC during the zenith of its power under Pete Carroll, who is now the coach of the NFL’s Seattle Seahawks. Chow led USC to the Associated Press national title in 2003 and the BCS national championship in 2004 (never mind the attempts to formally strip it; coordinators really couldn’t care less if it was) by deftly deploying a dazzling array of talent. Chow knows how to move the pieces on a chessboard and put his players in position to succeed. The main question of course – before betting gurus being to elevate UCLA football far more than is warranted – is if the Bruins can stockpile talent and get an offensive line that can protect a quarterback for a full season.
In 2009, UCLA scored more than 24 points only four times. One of those games was against lowly San Diego State, which resided at the bottom of the Mountain West Conference. UCLA scored 26 points against Cal, but the Bears dropped 45 on the Bruins, so that day’s output meant very little. The Bruins hung 43 points on an opponent in one game, but that foe was 1-11 Washington State, one of the 15 worst teams in the United States. It was only against Temple in the EagleBank Bowl that the UCLA offense produced meaningfully under pressure.
Norm Chow faces an uphill battle; the good news for UCLA fans is that the right coordinator exists in the midst of a very daunting situation.
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