Editor’s Update: Tom Deinhart and Sporting News has taken down the text in his column referring to the Dan Guerrero meeting with DeWayne Walker. Nice bit of editing after the fact without any notice to the public. That’s sure to have broken at least one rule of journalism ethics. Anyhow, the text we quote here is verbatim the way it originally appeared. We noted that we didn’t believe the story when we read it but obviously something is amiss. Surely Marc Dellins, UCLA SID is on this.(HT to BrinsNation for the pickup)

Update 2: Tom Deinhart in the comment section explains the deletion: “Note to readers: There was an item on UCLA’s Karl Dorrell that was pulled. UCLA admits that its A.D. met with a Bruin assistant last week for “personal development” reasons.” So obviously a meeting with an assistant did occur. This ads more intrigue.

Update 3: Morgan Center uses LAT What’s Bruin Blog and Rich Perelman as it’s mouthpiece to deny the Deinhart report: “UCLA sports information director Marc Dellins said this afternoon, “This story is categorically untrue. We have asked that it be removed from the SportingNews.com Web site.” As of 1:35 p.m. Pacific time, the segment of Dienhart’s blog entry concerning UCLA had, in fact, been removed.” And yet, Deinhart added that Guerrero met with an assistant about “personal development” and Morgan Center admitted the meeting did occur. Interesting.

Update 4: Brian Dohn provides the most clear and rational reason behind Guerrero’s meeting with whom Dohn clarifies was in fact DeWayne Walker: “The meeting with Walker and Guerrero was scheduled weeks ago, and it was decided the end of last week was best because Guerrero was out of town early in the week, and football was having a bye. Trying to draw some sort of significance out of the fact that a meeting took place between the two of them at an eatery in Westwood is irresponsible. It’s like trying to connect dots that do not deserve to be connected. If the meeting was so significant to the future of Karl Dorrell, why isn’t the other number of meetings between Guerrero and Walker under the same could of suspicion. Quite frankly, it was an irresponsible report that was quickly pulled. Trying to read further into it, and to suggest it had to have some validity because the two met, is irresponsible. Is there anything more damning about the validity of a report than it being pulled off the internet?

Sporting News’ Tom Deinhart is quickly becoming the top reporter on UCLA football, at least in our view, with his inside source at UCLA. You might remember a couple of weeks ago Deinhart wrote a piece on how Dorrell is being watched closely and basically must win out to keep his job. This time his source goes one step, or maybe a few steps, further:

The next few games are critical to Karl Dorrell’s future at UCLA. A source told me that UCLA AD Dan Guerrero met with Bruin defensive coordinator DeWayne Walker last week during the team’s off week to discuss the possibility of Walker taking over as interim coach this season if Dorrell is let go early.

Presumably, if Walker does well, he would be given strong consideration to become the head coach. Walker’s defense has been strong since he arrived in Westwood before the 2006 season. He long has been considered a strong head coaching candidate, with his extensive background in the NFL. The guy is good.

Hard to believe this has any validity for many reasons and because obviously DG would have shown his cards and that doesn’t make any sense, but you never know. What Deinhart describes here is The Mason Plan. Got to give credit to Steve Mason of The Big Show on AM 570 for coming up with it, not that it was any stroke of genius but it was his idea. We came up with a variation and called it The Caretaker Plan. We have a well-known position of not wanting Walker as a head coach … he’s got 0 head coaching experience (and he has not impressed even as DC). We don’t mind him taking over as interim so long as a there is a real coaching search! So we support either plan, with that caveat, and we support Dan Guerrero’s moves to bring back excellence to our football program by firing Dorrell at any point in the season, especially if we start going downhill fast in the tough games we have coming up. Nice job Tom!! (HT to puffdaddy at Bruinzone)

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