December 4, 2007
Hitting All The Right Notes: Karl Dorrell & Dan Guerrero
The post-Dorrell era got started the way we all had hoped. Karl Dorrell gave a classy, welcomed, public statement. Thank you Karl! It already has gone a long way towards bringing the UCLA community back together. The inevitability and acceptance and gratitude he displayed are showing up brightly across the Bruin internet. That is a tribute to Dorrell. Thank you again Karl!
Dan Guerrero followed up with a great press conference that echoed some of the main talking points we have long pushed here at DD. Here is what he says about UCLA football and the constraints of winning here (we are borrowing heavily from Nestor and bruinhoo at BruinsNation):
I believe we can be a national player and you can define that however you want. I believe UCLA could be a program that is in the national rankings every year, that can knock on a BCS door, that can win the Pac-10 Conference. If you win the Pac-10 Conference, you have a chance to play in the Rose Bowl and you maybe have a chance to play in a national championship game. Is it hard here? Yeah, there are some constraints, there's no question about that. But, this is a great institution, a great place to be. And I believe that all of those things are possible; you cannot concede that they are not.
Excellent!! DG's standards ARE our standards. And yes, we CAN win despite what the excuse-loving beat press (*cough* Brian Dohn *cough*) keep saying. DG could have stopped right there and we would have been crazy happy. But he goes on to deliver more nuggets:
"I think if you were to talk about a prerequisite that's pretty important, it certainly would be [prior head coaching experience]. We will look at a broad array of candidates for this position and obviously someone who has had successful head coaching experience would be an ideal candidate. That being said, you never say never … We need to get the best coach that is the right fit for us, that understands our culture, that understands we want things done with integrity, that's just a great fit for our university. UCLA ties are not an absolute.
Did he just take the words out of our Daily Bruin ad?? We are absolutely fine with what DG says here. Never say never is an out that he needs. Ok. But more importantly, he states several times, "successful" and "experienced" head coach. He is on the money. And to echo a theme we have been following here on DD, The Money Is There (Perelman, LAT Whats Bruin, Dec. 3):
One of the positives during our tenure here in the last five years is we've really been able to build the resource base in our [athletic] program in a general sense. We raised a budget from $42 million when I first came in here to $60 million and we're still in the black. That tells you that we've done some things that are very positive and will allow us the opportunity to be more competitive in the marketplace as we move forward.
Our assistant coaching pool is not wanting. Many of you believe that we're on the bottom of the barrel on the assistant coaching pool. We receive salary surveys from various sources; our assistant coaching pool may be second in the conference and I say that only because we don't know what one of the private schools pays their coaches. We built that assistant coaching pool over the course of the last three years to be very, very competitive in the marketplace. Many of you kind of missed that as we did that.
The money is there! Let's just focus on getting the right coach … money is not a problem, excellence is our goal, so successful experience is what we are looking for. Merry Xmas Bruins!! And to top it off, DG speaks directly to the race-baiting tabloid hit piece by hot-headed nutter Kurt Streeter:
I can't speak for Karl in terms of what he feels and what he believes [about racial factors]. But I will tell you this: the issue of his particular situation has nothing to do with race. It really is about performance and it's really about my expectation for this program as we move forward.
Nicely done! Wrap it up!! Just incredible. Dan Guerrero touched every single sore spot and made it better. Just awesome. But now he has an important job to do … and a lot is riding on him doing it right. We will be there to cover it all the way.
Incidentally, we don't want to focus on this much anymore, but Chris Dufresne wrote up a great piece on the fair shake Dorrell got at UCLA … it is a great read!! It also shows again that Streeter's hit piece on the UCLA community is viewed very poorly by most of his media colleagues as well as UCLA. Thank you Chris! Go Bruins!!!
4 Comments on Hitting All The Right Notes: Karl Dorrell & Dan Guerrero
December 4, 2007
Bluebruin (Aka Diego) @ 8:47 am:
thanks for posting this, DD. I have contended that Dan Guerrero is going to do the right things, now that he’s in a position of power at the University. He wasn’t when he had to hire a football coach the first time,but this time he is a more dominant position. This time around, it is his hire.
Is there any way that you guys can find the words from DG’s conference when he was originally hired? I have always thrown those words back at him in my emails and letters. I have always said that he promised to make ucla a top five progrma, but hiring KD wasn’t a reconciling statement.
I want to merge the quotes from his hiring press conference with the quotes from THIS press conference and write him a letter, send it via Fed Ex, and point out that he has now promised TWICE to make UCLA into a power. The hiring of this coach better reconcile his twice made statement.
BruinPilot @ 10:01 am:
I read this article in the LA times this morning about how Dan G. is going to hire some firm to search for a replacement coach. He says he needs to weigh many options carefully. He should have already been thinking about this! He is wasting valuable time that our new coach will need to secure recruits, many of whom are uncertain about the future! Dan G. is who we originally have to blame for getting an inexperienced coach who had no business coaching UCLA football, and he is hurting our chances to compete at recruiting for next year by dragging his feet. Now that Dorell is gone, we need to start a dump Dan G. website before he can do more damage to our program!
J @ 11:30 am:
To become a national power one needs an HC that has an ethical, strong, enthusiastic and confident leadership presence with BOTH a short and long term vision for championship success. His hopes and expectations must be nothing less than a solid belief that the Bruins will win the national championship. Forget about JUST winning the Pac-10 or beating USC. Those are mandatory steps in the process and he must communicate that they are as the ONLY goal is to compete for and win the national championship every year.
The goal will realistically not be realized every year. But without such a goal, one might as well jsut admit that one is not really serious about the program and its’ success.
The new coach must be able to communicate those goals and attributes to everyone, stating emphatically that nothing less is acceptable. This starts by selecting powerful and knowledgable “co-leaders” for his coaching staff that will likewise demand the same vision and success from themselves and all they communicate with, recruits, fans, alumni etc.
It starts with the belief that we can. Hiring only a coach that possesses this belief ensures that the right OC and DC and their assemblage of assistants are hired.
tony krogius @ 1:06 pm:
Please tell me D.G. mispoke on allowing K.D. to coach in Vegas….You fired him let’s move on…….NOW!!!!!!