There are some traditions we just can’t afford

I understand tradition. I like tradition. If tradition were a girl, I would go through an extremely long courtship until I was sure of our love, and then I would propose marriage to tradition and hope against hope that tradition said “yes.”

However, some traditions are stupid. (Who said I would be marrying tradition for its intelligence?)

Case in point: Yesterday, the UCLA football team decided to ditch practice.

This is called “going over the wall,” which implies that the players actually jumped over the brick wall on the east side of Spaulding Field to escape practice. In reality, they took care of their stretches and then left through the main gate. It’s generally done with the implicit approval of the coaching staff, and the practice is not made up.

The issue, of course, is that UCLA is breaking in a new coaching staff, a new offense and an almost entirely new offensive line, and could really use all the practices it can get.

The mantra with this coaching staff since the start of spring practice has been, “We have only X number of practices until Tennessee (the first game of the season in September).” This ditch day does not conform to the sense of urgency that coach Rick Neuheisel et al have instilled in the program.

The offensive line is currently a cobbled-together mess of essentially spare parts: a converted defensive tackle, a converted tight end and a walk-on figure prominently in the current two-deep, and that’s just what I came up with from two seconds of thought. To put it bluntly, the unit needs work if it’s going to be able to keep quarterback Pat Cowan from truly becoming a modern day marvel of scar tissue.

It all reeks of an uncaring attitude. I can understand that football practice is hard, but that’s why I don’t play football (along with the fact that I have no discernible athletic talent, although I did once coach a group of second-graders to a youth basketball championship). In normal years, ditching one practice in the spring is probably not going to have too significant an impact.

If you’ve got the same offense and the same defense year after year, then one missed practice is probably not going to do that much harm. But this team lost most of its experience and all but three coaches from last year.

Every team in Division I gets a limited number of formal practices before the season starts. Yeah, there are informal sessions that the players are “encouraged” to attend, but spring practice and August practice are the only two times that the team practices in pads and in actual game situations.

Given all the new players, all the new coaches, the new offense and the general feel that every starting spot on the team save the defensive tackle spots and the middle linebacker spot is up for grabs ““ I don’t know, I guess it would seem prudent for the players to not ditch practice and actually focus on becoming better at football. That is, for the most part, why they have scholarships.

E-mail Woods at [email protected] if you think that, regardless of how many practices this team ditches, high-end expectations should be around five wins.