UCLA head football coach Jim Mora dropped by Roger Lodge’s KLAA program Wednesday morning and when the host quizzed him about his sales pitch to recruits, Mora replied, “it’s a safe, beautiful campus in a great area of town. I mean, we don’t have murders one block off our campus.” If that sounds like Mora was referring to the April double murder of two USC students from China during an attempted carjacking near campus, rest assured that Mora HAS NO IDEA WHAT YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT. Or at least that’s what he tells the LA Times’ Chris Foster :
“I just said our campus is safe,” Mora said. “I didn’t say anything about anyone else’s campus. I just said it about our campus. I didn’t mention another campus. We don’t have anybody getting murdered a block off of our campus.
“If anybody, whether USC or Cal State San Bernardino, is offended by the statement, then that’s their insecurity, not mine.”
UCLA is holding training camp at Cal State San Bernardino, but is not in football recruiting tussles with that university.
When told that two students had been murdered near USC in April, Mora said, “They were? I don’t read the paper, I don’t watch the news. So I don’t know that stuff.”
Well, except for Mora’s fuck-you-if-I’m-too-ignorant-to-know-what-town-I-live-in-response, I cut him some slack. Making off hand jokes about USC student murders the second they walk out from under Tommy Trogan’s codpiece is kind of old news, certainly pre-dating the tragedy of those two kids getting killed. Last time I was down there my car got scratched by an SUV and the other driver took off. I started to go after him, and everyone was like, “Let it go! Let it go! Don’t get out of the car for this!” Then again, as a UCLA alum, I guess I’d point out to Coach Mora that fear is apparently a huge motivating factor in WINNERS. He might want to have the Bruins run laps down Figueroa at 11 PM to get some adrenaline in their game.