We're still not ready to talk Washington yet … we are still in WTF mode. Anyhow, great comments and ideas are coming into the site from new posters. Keep 'em coming. We will have a more definitive Replacement list, adding your suggestions, and as we said we will also launch a broad campaign to Dump Dorrell once the 1st Pac-10 conference loss happens. Our first offensive was to get the word out, and so many of you did … the MSM picked up on the anger right away and Dorrell and our football program is taking more hits. The good news is that the MSM is reporting in so many words how Dorrell is on the hot seat (here, here, here, here, here, here and here). Also, UCLA is now in ESPN's bottom 10, coming in at #5 worst in the country, behind powerhouse Stanford. We particularly like this quote from Charles Chiccoa of Scout: read more
Editors Note: Ryebreadraz of BruinsNation started a good list of potential new head coaches. We cross-post it below: read more
We hear you … we are reading your emails. We are getting active here at DD and we know you want to get active too. Here is where we at DD think all Bruin fans should start (if you have any other ideas let us know):
- Get The Word Out. Contact any or all of the important people you see at the bottom of this email and let them know, politely, that Dorrell has got to go. Send 1 simple email, we provide the email list for you below. The contact list below includes Dan Guerrero, administrators and importantly media contacts, including Pac-10 media. Help build momentum!! Tell them Dorrell has embarrassed the program and has not come close to achieving any of the goals Guerrero and he himself set out for him when he was hired (win Pac-10, compete in BCS bowl, beat SuC - 1 win 3 losses) 5 years ago. Sign up for our daily email to get updates (sign up at the top right hand corner of site) or get our RSS feed on your My Yahoo, My Google, other feed reader.
- Get on the radio call-in shows. Yeah, its just call-in radio but we talk to these guys off the air and they have an impact, trust us. When they start saying "fans want Dorrell gone" it becomes fact in the eyes of Morgan Center. We hopefully will be on 1 or 2 of these shows sometime this week. We will keep you posted so that you can call in at that time to bring a show of force. We will also be on the Bruin Show this Wednesday evening at 6 pm. You can listen in and call in live.
- Dump Dorrell t-shirts. If you are lucky read more
Could this blowout loss to Utah be worse than Michigan's home loss to Appalachian State? Yes!! Michigan at least had a shot at the end to win it, actually multiple shots. They at least moved the ball and scored touchdowns. They at least played a championship team, albeit of a division lower. App St. was even ranked #13 in the AP by one pollster. Utah … Utah would get blown out by App St. Utah had all of 19 points and 73 yards total rushing in their 0-2 season … playing in the MWC. They didn't even have their key starters, and played with their backup QB, RB, WR, TE and one backup OL.
Lloyd Carr is most certainly gone at Michigan at the end of this year because of the historic Appalachian State loss. The talk of replacements is conventional wisdom. This for a guy who won a national championship! He's won the Big 10 title 5 times in 12 years. He's been named National Coach of the Year. He's 3rd all-time in victories at the winningest football program in the country, closely behind legends Schembeckler and Yost. He has had Michigan in the top 25 for all but 6 games during his 12 years up to this season. He's taken Michigan to 5 BCS bowls, including 4 Rose Bowls. He's never lost more than 5 games in a season, and he's done that only 1 time in 12 years. He has a .750 winning pct.
Dorrell … what can Dorrell claim? 3 out of 4 seasons with 6 or more losses. Highest placing in the conference is 3rd, and he's accomplished that feat all of once. Dorrell's winning pct is still a meager .585 … still good for worst since WW2 among UCLA coaches who've coached 3 and 4 years. What more needs to be said?! Carr is gone, how can Dorrell NOT be fired? Utah is Dorrell's Appalachian State. There is no getting over this loss. We know that Dorrell can still win the conference and go to the Rose Bowl. But this is a defining and demoralizing loss … it's over. Now all that remains is how badly will this go down.
We have been hearing a lot from the coaches and from chatter on the boards about this often used phrase "a win is a win" in relation to the near loss against BYU at home last week. DC DeWayne Walker used this argument to explain away the poor performance of his "we accept nothing less than total domination" defense. Walker went so far as to say that he didn't care about any statistics other than the final score!! Ok. Right. What happened to the desire to be "the best defense in the nation?" It's not even mid-September and Walker has already ditched that goal. You see this again and again on the boards … the blindos and Dorrell cultists professing that they never cared about stats to begin with, that it was always about the W. Yep.
It would be too easy, but wasted time, to read more
Brian Price's father, Frank Price, told Brian Dohn of the Daily News that his son should be cleared this week by the NCAA:
Frank Price said he spoke with members of the UCLA football coaching staff and was told all of his son's information was in order.
"I would be really surprised if they didn't make a decision by Wednesday, and I'd be shocked if he wasn't cleared," Frank Price said. "(The NCAA) is supposed to do something this week. It's a matter of reviewing the information and clearing him. I don't see a problem with it."
Well you can't blame a father for wishing for the best, and we are with him on that count. It is the NCAA however and bureaucracies are notoriously slow. But if read more
At the rate Dorrell is pissing people off and stretching the definition of integrity and character to murky levels he might leave himself with the slimmest margin for error possible for this season. Today we are finding out that not only did Dorrell screw up the handling of star recruit Brian Price’s paperwork to the NCAA, making Price ineligible to even be on Spaulding Field, but apparently someone in CEO Dorrell’s tight run ship leaked the details of Price’s legally protected private information to a website (we don’t know which site) to explain the hold-up. And that has Brian Price’s father steaming mad and he’s going public with it (Brian Dohn, Daily News):
“I told Coach Dorrell that it’s not my place to deal with the leak. That’s his responsibility,” Frank Price said. “I didn’t really want to deal with the leak. But I did express my displeasure in the fact that, first of all, you dropped the ball with your No. 1 dude, and then you leak information that’s not totally accurate.”
This can’t be good for anybody, especially Dorrell and the team. To face such vocal parental discontent and accusations of a breach of trust and negligence at the start of a special season has to be read more
UPDATE 2: Jim Svoboda has now confirmed via email that he was NOT fired via text as his mother-in-law stated. Thanks to Menalaus at BruinsNation for the confirmation. Svoboda did not answer why his mother-in-law emailed us with a different story.
UPDATE: One of our editors just got off the phone with Marc Dellins, UCLA Sports Information Director. We asked Marc if what Jim Svoboda’s mother-in-law said was true. He denied the story and said Svoboda was informed of his dismissal in an face to face meeting with Dorrell. We have not heard back from Svoboda’s mother-in-law. We also asked about Eric Scott, if he was ever asked about his past record. Marc said he could not tell us do to privacy laws. Marc also said Eric Scott did not fill out any application as no coaches do at UCLA. He also could not tell us what the results of the background check by the UCLA PD were due to privacy laws. A big thanks to Marc for answering our questions.
Jim Svoboda is our son-in-law and we are proud of him. Seems like he should have been given a chance but - chances are not what Dump Dorrell hands out.Jim is hard working dedicated and reliable and gives 100% of himself even when he is not appreciated. Too bad he wasted his time at UCLA because he certainly will make a come back - and he hasnt fallen - he was pushed! Too bad for Dorrell because it seems that he is a racist - Jim is not black - and evidently that is a no no where Dorrell is concerned. Thank goodness he is somewhere where he is valued - eventually I guess Dorrell has done him a favor - although he did not intend to. Jim deserved more than a TEXT MESSAGE TO let him know he was out. We have more guts than that in Texas - we can look a man in the eye. Fairness is not something Dorrell is long on - this coming season I hope the team does well - at least they dont have to worry about job security. Good luck UCLA you are going to need it. Elizabeth
This comment was left this morning on our site by someone posting as Elizabeth Merworth on our Dec. 8 post last year that discussed the expected firing of Jim Svoboda. We did not edit this comment, except to add bold highlights. The one point about this comment that we would like to comment on is the way “Elizabeth Merworth” says Svoboda was told he was fired … by text message. We obviously have to question the comments of someone who claims Dorrell is racist which we will take as absurd, but the firing by text message seems to us to be a simple case of being either factually correct or not.
If this is the way read more
WTF?! Seriously, WTF? Karl Dorrell is in his 5th year and has 23 seniors, 20 returning starters, and he is saying that the team is still “learning how to practice well.” Can he really be serious?! What happened last year, did they not learn how to practice well then? If not, isn’t that your fault Karl?! In the SEC, the Big 10, the Big 12, the ACC, Dorrell would have been ridiculed out of town for his constant “learning” and “growing” and “taking the next step” though he would have never got the job in the first place and would have never kept it as long as he has. Is there not a single reporter that has gotten tired of this .. that will finally take Dorrell to task for his meaningless feeble-minded non-speak? This has to end … at SOME point. It’s nauseating. When does the “learning” become “ready to win” or even easier, “ready to play”? Will this team EVER know how to win? With this coach?
After seeing Dorrell at Training Camp and after reading these tiresome words for the 5th straight year, we cannot see any possible way that Dorrell can sustain a winning program. Its just not possible with someone like this. We are praying for read more
Brian Dohn, Daily News, reports on his blog that the confusion over what Dorrell knew about Eric Scott's prior arrests and convictions is misplaced. According to Dohn, Karl Dorrell did not know anything about Scott's record. When Dorrell was referring to knowing something about Scott's past Dorrell was apparently referring to Scott's hard life. That clears up some obvious serious questions, but we would still like to hear Dorrell clear that up himself. After all, if running a clean program is so important he would want to be make sure we all knew what he knew and when he knew it. The confusion comes from Dorrell's own public statements made to and reported by the press. If what Dohn says is true we will still like to see it as a matter of record. Dohn:
Did Guerrero and Dorrell know about Scott's prior arrests? Their statements seem to be conflicting? I'm so glad you asked this because it is a chance for me to state what happened. No, they did not know about them. In fact, the athletic department didn't know about it until they were told by reporters, according to folks I deal with regularly and never (and I mean never) steer me wrong. There are no conflicting statements. Dorrell's statements were about knowing Scott had a difficult background with gang violence and Scott's family. He never said he knew about the arrests, but many people seem to be reading into his comments and believe he knew. He did not know.
