CLASS DISMISSED

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.

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