Just a few notes after getting home from the game.
Semaj Morgan was good. Michigan fans got on him for bad hands but he looks good catching the ball, even on punts. He catches punts overhand like a baseball player, though.
Special teams overall were again stellar. Our guys cover all kicks quite well. The kicks out bounds, though, should not happen. I think there were 2 of them.
SDSU had a decent amount of fans there, but they were quiet. They never seemed to believe they could win.
They really need to rehabilitate the sunny side, because no one sits over there anymore. And the few people that were there migrated to the shady side once they saw which seats were not being used. This was only my second game back at the Rose Bowl after a long hiatus, but the sunny side used to have a lot more people.
Nico was not great but to be fair, he could use some better receivers. Our TE are not a threat, Matthews got hurt, Rowe got hurt for a bit, Ellis didn't play, Mizell came in but I think got injured again. The fact that Shane Rosenthal and Jalen St. Paul were actually expected to catch the ball is not good.
Nico again had a bad red zone INT that was really deflating. He had the same issues as last week and he carries the ball pretty haphazardly sometimes when he runs. He's going to lose some more fumbles this year. Two games in, we have zero passing TD's.
Knight just has a nose for the end zone. Really a RB you can trust. Woods and Thomas were good but Knight is easily the best of them.
The north end zone had a lot of people, I assume from some kind of ticket giveaway.
The club thing on the south side looked pretty cool, but it seemed like those people wanted to hang around the bar more than watch the game.
The crowd was a lot more subdued than I remember. I sat on the shady side, which has always been kind of a lame older crowd. Lots of people don't cheer, don't stand for kickoffs, don't stand for third downs. Someone needs to direct the crowd a little more and reinforce some traditions. People used to laugh at Geoff Strand but at least he tried. They need something.
The crowd has a geriatric feel the closer you get to the 50 yard line on the shady side. Not sure what anyone can do about it, and we need all the fans we can get. But we just haven't been growing enough new UCLA fans the past 25 years, and it shows. The white hairs aren't quite at Stanford Stadium level, but it's close.
Truk and Rubik will appreciate this. The food options weren't that bad. My daughter had an acai bowl she liked. Some people had some asian chicken bowls that looked pretty good. I saw some other items that didn't look bad. It seemed like it wasn't just hot dogs and junk food.
Not having been there in a while, I took a bunch of cash, and no one there would take it. Not even for parking.