CLASS DISMISSED

A sad day on Stevenson Ranch.

Football 101 at UCLA will now be taught by someone else, as Karl Dorrell’s axing is the final injury in a tenure derailed by injuries;  Luckily for the rabid and impatient fans, cleaning up the Program, competing with dignity, and going to a Bowl every year wasn’t enough

The Karl Dorrell Era at UCLA is over, with Sherrif Dorrell, having cleaned up the town, riding off into the sunset.  The town is indeed clean, but it never GOT ON THE MAP.  So with fan patience running thin, Athletic Director Dan Guerrero had no choice but to pull the trigger.  In this Information Age, negative public opinion goes a lot further than it used to, especially with impressionable recruits, so Guerrero HAD to act. 

A Coach that is EXPECTED to be fired has his hands tied.  He can’t recruit, and it’s hard to command respect from his team.  And even if Guerrero had given Dorrell a public vote of confidence, the suspicious fans would have still created an envorionment of uncertainty, with every game that didn’t go as well as expected.  There was so much hatred and negativity, that being on the bubble wasn’t good enough.  And neither was the excuse of having almost every good player on the team go down with an injury.  To immediately change the National public perception of UCLA, a change had to be made.

That’s why it would be surprising if Guerrero hires DeWayne Walker to replace Dorrell.  It appears that Guerrero wants DW to stay as Defensive Coordinator, but there’s no telling if that will be feasible, based on the Head Coach that is hired.  Some Coaches may have their own guy whom they want as Coordinator.  Also, Walker might opt for the Head Coaching offer he might have coming from Washington State.

As you probably already know, the most talked about candidates for the Head Coaching vacancy right now are former NFL Head Coach Steve Mariucci, Texas Tech’s Rick Leach, and former Bruin QB and current Offensive Coordinator of the Baltimore Ravens Rick Neuheisel.  Chris Petersen of Bosie State took himself out of consideration when he told the Media that he had no interest in Coaching in “that place.”  That sounds like disrespect to us, but let’s give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that the quote is taken out of context.  REAL disrespect is what the TEXAS LONGHORNS did at the conclusion of their upset of the Bruins at Pauley on Sunday.  As soon as the game ended, they ran at the Bruin student section and yelled at them, and pulled their jerseys out at them.  It was totally LOW CLASS, and hopefully the Bruin players will remember it come Tournament time.  Speaking of that depressing completion of a lost weekend doubleheader, you’ll notice that we didn’t race to the keyboard to report on it.  In fact, there was no article at all.  Well, for the umpteenth time — We are not the L.A. Times, and we report on what we want, when we want.  In the wake of that horrible Saturday, we just didn’t have the energy to lament about a blown Basketball game.  Just like the Football loss, the game was the Bruins’ for the taking, but NOT saving a time out, NOT being able to have Keven Love in at the end, and not being able to run a well-designed play on the final possession cost the Bruins the game.  Of course, the fact that Darren Collison and Michael Roll are far from 100% doesn’t help, but Texas had the best player in the Arena on Sunday, in D.J. Augustin, who made some Kobe-like moves that no Bruin could contain, thus ending a thoroughly-enjoyable 25-game Home Winning Streak.

Getting back to Karl Dorrell — We want to say THANK YOU to Karl, for 5 years of hard work and dedication.  Karl did a tremendous job of representing UCLA with CLASS, and never gave in to all the Racism and hatred that was thrust at him.  Obviously, he had his inexperience-related deficiencies as a Coach, but the Bruins certainly got their money’s worth (based on his reasonable salary demands).  Now that, according to Guerrero, they can afford to move to a higher echelon of Coach, even Karl should understand the desire to make a move.  Even in the midst of Dorrell’s tenure, when Steve Spurrier became abailable, we were all for a change, and thought that Dorrell, as a huge Bruin fan, could hardly complain.  Well, if the Bruins can really acquire a top-flight NAME like Mariucci, then all Bruin fans, even huge Dorrellistas, should be happy.

ATTENTION READERS:  DUE TO A TECHNICAL GLITCH OR A TROJAN VIRUS, THE NEXT 15 PARAGRAPHS AND 7 PHOTOS HAVE BEEN DELETED.  WE ARE TRYING TO RESTORE EVERYTHING.  PLEASE CHECK BACK LATER.

Comments

8 responses to “CLASS DISMISSED”

  1. UCLADal Avatar
    UCLADal

    I don’t think it was all fan impatience. I think DG got very impatient too. It’s always sad to see any coach leave his job not by choice but that’s part of the profession. CKD didn’t get the job done after 5 seasons and it’s time to move on. We won some big games during his tenure but also lost quite a few, ones UCLA should not have. Hopefully the new coach can at least get a winning record against WSU, not to mention sc. Here’s to better times ahead!

    “I feel all I’ve done is awoken a sleeping giant and filled it with a terrible resolve.” Isoruku Yamamoto

  2. Chuck Findley Avatar
    Chuck Findley

    Trojan Hater,

    It’s been a rough week. Good guy Dorrell gone, basketball winning streak ended, my beloved Bruins losing to USC and USC trying to get the Rose Bowl as their home game venue??!? We’d have to share the stadium with those USC thugs?
    On the bright side, cheer photos are on the way. Las Vegas is a great place to go bowling. Mariucchi and Neuheisel have their winning ways.
    Hang tough Bruins!
    Fin

  3. UCLADavid Avatar
    UCLADavid

    T-H,

    Now that Dorrell has been fired, would you consider spending some energy and posts on urging dumpdorrell.com to close down his low-class site and let him go back to whatever hole he lives in so that real True Blue Bruins can go back to rooting for our alma mater without being embarrassed by him? I think placing his site on your list of honorary Trojans would be a nice start. Even though I wanted Dorrell to be let go at the end of this season, everything about the way dumpdorrell.com handled itself was disgraceful, and not worthy of affiliation with any True Blue Bruin.

    I have a donation to UCLA UniCamp, UCLA’s official charity, ready to be mailed out the moment you list dumpdorrell.com as an honorary Trojan. I wonder if dumpdorrell.com ever thought about supporting UCLA in any positive way instead of wasting time and energy on his juvenile website.

  4. t-h Avatar

    Dear David —

    We agree with everything you say. We hope that you send your donation, but here is why we can’t add them to the list: The owner is a buddy of the guy who helped set up THIS new website, and as a courtesy to him, we haven’t attacked those guys the way we might have otherwise.

    But we’ve got some good news: That site is going to be discontinued in the very near future, even if DeWayne Walker is the new Coach.

    Thanks for your feedback,

    T-H

  5. Steve T Avatar
    Steve T

    Still can’t believe how many people actually donated money to dumpdorrell.com. Of course that website will be discontinued soon…but only so those guys can starting pimping dump[thenextuclacoach].com. What a joke. Now where are the cheer pix?

  6. UCLADavid Avatar
    UCLADavid

    I was bluffing about the UniCamp donation — I’ve already sent the darned thing in. I would never hold out giving money to a good cause for any reason. Enough about this unpleasantness. As Steve T wrote . . . let’s see those pix!

  7. Josh Avatar
    Josh

    I heard Norm Chou was a candidate for replacing Dorrell. I think chou would be a great coach to the Bruins… I been studying his stratagy and he would turn the program around…. I don’t think he’d take the job though, but it would cool if he did end up at UCLA

  8. Nice article….