How many people get to move their office between two of college sports’ most intense rivals? Why would anyone want to?

After two seasons covering the happenings at USC, I’m moving west through the gridlock to cover the Bruins. I’ve done it before. Five years ago, I (below, right) switched from covering the Oakland A’s to covering the Angels when both teams fought for AL West supremacy and sometimes just fought. blog-photo-me.jpg

Moving between hostile camps goes back even further for me. I attended Cal’s Graduate School of Journalism then found myself covering Stanford (Chad Hutchinson “era”) a few years later.

Starting today, right here in this blog space, you can expect to find the latest news in UCLA sports along with some of the stranger developments that lap against the shores of Westwood. Once we’re up and running, it should be a one-stop, Middle Eastern bazaar where UCLA fans can load up on morsels of knowledge.

For those looking for USC wisdom, surf over to my Web- and football-savvy colleague Michael Lev’s blog.

Oh, and drop a line any time to msaxon@ocregister.com. Meanwhile, here are some of the other Register regulars who will help me out:

MARCIA C. SMITH

Well, if Rick Neuheisel can return to UCLA, so can I. Covering UCLA athletics was my first beat at The Register when I arrived in 1999 while still defrosting from four years of Northeast winters at The Philadelphia Inquirer. Now, three football and two basketball coaches later, I’m back following the Bruins, this time as a columnist. I grew up in Miami, lettered in five sports in high school and studied a lot at Princeton University, where I earned an economics degree — and a huge college loan. In 1996, the year after I graduated college, I picked Coach Pete Carril and the Princeton Tigers to upset UCLA in the first round of the NCAA Tournament … but wound up losing my first March Madness office pool anyway. (E-mail Marcia at masmith@ocregister.com)

ADAM MAYA

I grew up a USC kid by virtue of my grandfather being a former season ticket holder and working at the Coliseum for 20 years. I was devastated by Rob Johnson’s interception in the UCLA game in 1993, but Keyshawn Johnson helped make for a happy childhood. … I arrived at USC when Pete Carroll did and graduated in time to see three Heisman winners, two national championships and one dunk by Mike Williams after he threw an alley-oop to himself off a wall behind the backboard in an on-campus gym. I also lobbed an alley-oop to Erick Craven in a pickup game. Or was it Derrick? … When I met Carroll for the first time I was wearing a Keyshawn Jets jersey, only to be told later it was a bad idea since Carroll had been fired by that team. Carroll laughed. If I ruled the world I’d wear just a plain white T-shirt every day. (E-mail Adam at amaya@ocregister.com)

MARK WHICKER

I have been a columnist at The Register for 21 years and have written extensively about USC and UCLA during that span, including columns on UCLA’s 1995 NCAA men’s basketball championship and on Rose Bowl victories by USC teams coached by Larry Smith and Pete Carroll alike. I also have written columns on Olympic athletes from those schools and have dealt with such coaching characters as Jim Harrick, George Raveling, Al Scates, Mike Gillespie, Ron Allice, John Robinson, Bob Toledo and now Rick Neuheisel. (E-mail Mark at mwhicker@ocregister.com)

SCOTT M. REID

I had been covering the University of Georgia for the Atlanta Journal Constitution for only a few weeks in the spring of 1990 when UGA IV, the school’s bulldog mascot, died. “We’ll probably need two stories,” my editor told me when I called him with the news. “One for the sports cover and one for A1.” Forget the Yankees and Red Sox — college football and basketball are the closest thing we have in this country to the passion soccer stirs in the rest of the world. I have covered that passion on and off for 20 years in the SEC, Big 12 and Pac-10, long enough to know that Cameron Indoor Stadium, Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge and Bob Stoops are overrated; that there is no better place to see a college basketball game than Allen Fieldhouse; that the best setting for college football is Husky Stadium in late Saturday (although Boulder’s Folsom Field comes close); that “Texas Fight” is the best fight song, period; and that Touchdown Jesus ought to be renamed Scheduling Jesus (as in weak scheduling). In my reporting here, I will examine college football and basketball’s big (and little) issues on and off the field, their brightest stars and their dark side. (E-mail Scott at sreid@ocregister.com)

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