Hope everyone had a great and safe New Year celebration! Welcome to 2007. Bruin fans should be mad happy because this is the last year Karl Dorrell will coach a game as UCLA Football head coach! That’s right. Our long suffering fans will be able to celebrate the next New Year knowing that UCLA Football will be done with Dorrell!
By now you know read more
As we mentioned in our last post, the brilliant evil plan to dominate the football universe next year has fallen apart. Here was the plan in a nutshell: read more
We have been chasing some rumors today about Karl Dorrell … have no backup sources so we will not report until we do. That has taken up some of our time.
We have found ourselves dumbfounded by what to say. Hard to believe yes. Karl Dorrell let us here at DD down! That’s kind of funny. Here we were read more
Yep, you read that right. We cannot believe we are the ones saying it either. You do not need to get your eyes checked. We are not jumping on any bandwagon, drinking the kool-aid, or changing our minds about Karl Dorrell’s coaching abilities however. Not at all. In fact, we are piggybacking off many of our analyses and predictions of the program that so far are coming true. Let us explain.
DeWayne Walker’s one year contract extension publicly confirms read more
Well you can book it now. DC DeWayne Walker will not be on the Bruins sideline in ‘08. Brian Dohn of the LA Daily News confirms what we have long suspected, Walker signed a 1-year deal to remain as DC for the Bruins. The good news of this report is that he will be with us next year. Not surprising obviously with nearly his entire starting team back, with most of them being seniors, and an easier schedule. He is practically guaranteed to outperform even this year’s turn around. His stock is almost guaranteed to go up.
The bad news is read more
So apparently the rumors have proven true, DC DeWayne Walker was approached about the Stanford head coaching position. Brian Dohn, of The Daily News, is reporting that Walker was invited to interview for the position and he turned down the interview. Even though Walker wants to be a head coach, it’s an obvious decision to turn down the Stanford job.
Next year UCLA returns nearly every starter on a vastly improved defense, along with nearly every starter on offense (the big question mark). Walker would be crazy read more
To piggyback on our last post, ESPN.com’s college football section has a picture of Ben Olson on the front page with a story on how good the Pac-10 will be next year. ESPN is apparently predicting that UCLA could win the Pac-10 and go to a BCS game next year and it will hinge on a deciding Dec. 6 game at Southern Cal because we come back next year with experience and an easier schedule. No surprise there to DD readers as we have been saying as much for a while now. Karl Dorrell has 14 returning senior starters and 20 seniors total returning to next year’s squad. The schedule next year is set up nicely too, with Notre Dame, Cal and Oregon at home. Our only tough game is at the Coliseum. And our game at BYU, good this year, will be easier because BYU is losing most of their starters to graduation.
This just adds to the argument and to read more
We are hearing from people claiming to have “inside connections” to Morgan Center that it has already been decided that Karl Dorrell will get 1 more year. We don’t want to beat a dead horse here on DD, especially during rivalry week, but we will. While we don’t believe these accounts, and while Dan Guerrero is continuing to be non-commital publicly (great news on this below) we felt this idea of “1 more year” needed to be addressed head on. You have to be completely out of touch, a Dorrell apologist in denial, or a Dorrell lackey (trying to influence us here at DD?!) if you think giving KD “1 more year” means only 1 more year.
Anyone who follows UCLA football knows that giving KD “1 more year” really means giving KD 2 more years, at least. Next year read more
Editors note: We have been working on the programming for a shopping cart to get you tshirts. It’s run into a some coding problems. We want to make sure it works properly, hopefully we will get it done later today. Be sure and sign the Dump Dorrell petition and email it to everyone you know. We are at 400 signatures in just a few days!
The fate of the football program for many years to come may depend on what Dan Guerrero does at the end of this year. If DG does not fire Karl Dorrell this year then we may get stuck in a cycle of mediocrity for many years to come because it will be far more difficult to fire him later. Next year this team will be better no matter the coach. Even KD will be able to manage an 8-4 season. DG won’t be able to fire him then. You cannot fire an 8-4 coach at UCLA. Think about it. Even if we go 4-8 this year, apologists will be saying “how can you fire a coach that last year went 10-2?” That is their biggest argument now. If that works for DG this year, then next year it’s an impossibility to fire KD if he goes 8-4.
It’s not only the apologists. It is the national media too. At times we have seen it this year, “grumbling from UCLA fans about Karl Dorrell, but he took them 10-2 last year …” they have said. If we go 8-4 next year and fire him then imagine what they will say; they will be much more aggressive and ugly. Also, imagine the message of firing an 8-4 coach would send to coaches around the nation: 8-4 is not good enough for UCLA. That would be acceptable if we were Miami, ND, Florida St. But we are not, and that pains us to say. It’s another reason why we need to make a commitment to win now, during an awful year.
What’s worse is an 8-4 season next year buys KD another 2 years as it will give ammunition to the apologists, “he is making progress, turning the program around, great season.” He can have a mediocre season the following year (2008) and the apologists will say what they are saying now, “he had an 8-4 season last year (2007), you can’t fire him” … and the vicious cycle of mediocrity continues. It would be years of mediocrity sandwiched around almost good years of 8-4, and it would be years before we could finally get rid of Karl Dorrell with that type of thinking. Then mediocrity becomes institutionalized (if it isn’t already); we would hire another coach-in-training and a new experiment would start all over again.
The least painful time for Dan Guerrero to dump Dorrell is at the end of this year. Take the PR hit when the results of this season buffer the criticism. If we fire KD this year, we say to the football world that when UCLA goes 4-8, 5-7, or 6-6 in the 4th year of a coach’s tenure we let him go. That is a message coaches around the league can accept, especially give the entirety of Dorrell’s abysmal record. In 4 years, Karl Dorrell has established his ability to coach. His record is consistent. The verdict is clear: He cannot coach at this level, and he is not the right coach for UCLA. Dan Guerrero needs to take this time, at the absolute low point in the program, to fire Dorrell … to make a change! It’s going to be much much harder to fire him in years to come.
1And1 for cheap domain registration
 |
Hot Tickets! |