Football fallout

As expected, the 2-1 Bruins fell from No. 11 in the Associated Press and USA Today polls to outside the top 25. But the Bruins did get some votes, enough to be 30th on the AP list and 29th in the USA Today coaches poll.

>> The loss of 18 or 19 places in the poll is a Bruin record, but if we limit the loss to 15 places (11th to outside of the top 25), it ties the 1986 team that was ranked fourth to start the season, but dropped to 19th after a 38-3 loss in the season opener at Oklahoma. That team ended up 8-3-1 on the season.

Other Bruin teams that have fallen about as far include the 1989 team under Terry Donahue, which was ranked sixth going into the season, then lost 24-6 to Tennessee and dropped to 20th the following week. In 1968 under Tommy Prothro, UCLA was ranked ninth after a 2-0 start, then dropped out of the top 20 after a 20-7 loss at unranked Syracuse. And in 1961, the Bill Barnes-coached Bruins were ranked ninth in the nation, but dropped out of the top 20 after a 29-6 loss at unranked Michigan.

>> The last time UCLA went without a touchdown in a game was in Karl Dorrell’s first season in 2003, when UCLA defeated Illinois, 6-3, at the Rose Bowl.

>> Dorrell now has a 12-5 record in September games with two left this season. In his five seasons, his September record has been 2-2, 2-1, 3-0, 3-1 and now 2-1.

>> Believe it or not, it is possible that the Bruins could see Utah, or even BYU, again. The fifth-place team in the Pac-10 will play the Mountain West Conference champion in the Pioneer Las Vegas Bowl in December and the No. 6 Pac-10 team will play a Mountain West opponent in the Bell Helicopter Armed Forces Bowl on December 31 in Ft. Worth, Texas.

In games involving UCLA’s prior opponents: 1-2 BYU lost to Tulsa, 55-47, yesterday (55 points against BYU? Say what?) while 1-1 Stanford beat San Jose State, 27-0.

And former Bruin coach Bob Toledo is now 0-2 at Tulane as the Green Wave lost at home to Houston, 34-10.

>> One group that appeared to have about as bad a game as the Bruins was Versus, which had continuous transmission problems throughout its broadcast.

Comments

[SD Bruin Rita]

Alright, you know what. I am still f***ing PISSED at this loss!! UCLA football is a JOKE. Where is the Ben Howland of UCLA football?? What that guy did for UCLA Basketball is AMAZING and he only needed 3 years to do it!! Dorrell is still making excuses after 5 years!! I am sick of it!! Why is he still being given a chance??

Top football schools would can his ass after 1-2 poor performing seasons and it seems like at UCLA that is acceptable!! I am tired of being 2nd rate to USC. I am tired of not being considered a powerhouse football school. I WANT to be a powerhouse football school!! Where is the Pete Carroll of UCLA football?

I am wondering why year after year we end up with MEDIOCRE at best football coaches?? What we need is to find an EXPERIENCED coach that wants to bring an era of football dominance to the UCLA football program that has never been brought before. We also need some BIG DONORS with plenty of money stepping up and offering money to pay to replace Dorrell. Where are our Donor’s?? You know, the big boys who don’t mess around, the Phil Night of UCLA football??

USC may cost $40k a year to attend school there, but if that means they can afford to properly pay their football coach and get a GOOD COACH like Pete Carroll who has turned $C’s football program around, then it is worth every penny. We may be a state school but why can’t we pay what every other powerhouse football school pays? There are lots of public universities that pay WAY MORE than UCLA does, so why does our football program keep getting assed out by the UCLA athletic funding department? If they have the money to build top of the line locker rooms and practice facilities why don’t they fork out the money to pay for a coach that will actually take advantage of our state of the art training facilities instead of giving us poor performances year after year. What good is a top of the line training facility when we don’t use it on the field? What good is renovating the Rose Bowl when nobody’s coming to the games because our team sucks ass and can’t consistently win games with 25 returning starters, 20 seniors, and top recruiting classes?

Football should be a TOP PRIORITY for UCLA Athletics!! It can bring in the most money from season tickets holders, BCS Bowl games and the better UCLA is the more season ticket holders there are going to be. People say Southern California fans are fair weather fans but I say who the hell wants to support a school year in and year out who doesn’t play like they give a squat about our support!! Who the hell wants to be a UCLA season ticket holder when at like every other game I end up with a heart attack!!

There is NO CONSISTENCY with UCLA football, except KD’s job and I am sick of it! I LOVE UCLA but it is embarrassing to go to the games and watch UCLA either bring it or leave it at home! I am sick of watching unpassioned players play a joke of a football game against mediocre schools and get their ass kicked.

I think KD is a nice guy, but football coaches NEED passion! They also need someone to kick them in the ass when they don’t perform! I don’t see KD doing that at all, I see him making excuses or saying things like “Well after I saw the video I didn’t think we played that bad, we just made a few mistakes”. GIMME A BREAK! That is what KD said after the BYU game which I thought was gonna be the worst game of our season (until I watched the Utah game)! Other coaches, when their team sucks, straight up say, ” We were abominable, we couldn’t play football today.” You don’t ever see Dorrell keeping it real like that. He always sugar coats everything and always “stays positive” for his players. But the problem with that is that sometimes they need a good kick in the ass like after the BYU and Utah game and they don’t get that from KD! He is not passioned enough to give it to them the way they need it to get their heads out of their asses! He is too nice, too PC, too mellow. We need a coach who will rip the team a new a**hole if they don’t perform or play with mediocrity. We need to see a coach who is screaming at his players on the sideline to get them fired up if they are lagging in performance during the game. KD is always quiet on the sideline. The only game I have ever seen him express emotion over was the UCLA-USC game we barely won last year. We need a coach who takes passion and exuberance to the NEXT LEVEL! We need a coach who demands only excellence ALL THE TIME, is in the players faces when they dont play good, who puts in the best players at all times, no matter whos feelings or egos get hurt, because it should be all about doing what is right for UCLA football not about giving certain players playing time because they are seniors, etc etc. It is not KD’s job to prepare his players for the NFL or whatever, it is his job to WIN UCLA FOOTBALL GAMES and he is way too PC when it comes to playing his players. I don’t care if guys want to whine and complain that they aren’t in, perform and your in, don’t perform and you get canned. (Ben Olson should have been replaced with Cowan after the BYU game). It is as simple as that and other football programs do JUST THAT. They make the adjustments week after week to make sure the best players are always playing and KD does NOT do that. The coach is not in his football players faces when it comes to his expectations, performing, game antics. That is the problem with KD! A football coach needs passion ALL THE TIME! He needs to make every game seem like the season is on the line. He needs to be tough every game, in practices, ALL THE TIME. KD is not tough enough to handle a college football team. Those kids all have big egos and their heads up their asses because they think they are bigtime playing for UCLA football and they need a coach who will put them in line and KD is not the man for that because he doesn’t have the passion, toughness, or energy to be able to put them in their places. Of course UCLA sucked against Utah, you never saw any re-grouping on the sideline, you never saw Dorrell getting in their face about how they were playing. You never saw KD take a timeout and get his players empassioned in the middle of the mess that was the Utah game. What you saw was the players sulking on the sidelines and KD quiet watching and hoping that somehow without guidance or passion that the team would somehow mysteriously start playing up to its potential, and that never happened and never will happen.

I think what we need is a football coach who takes football way too seriously, makes football his life, is full of passion, a bit of an a**hole, who always does what is in the best interest of the team, and who keeps his players on their toes because he will be damned if they make a fool out of him or the UCLA football program. KD is not this man. He never will be. KD is a nice guy, nothing against him personally I am sure he is a good husband and father, but I will be damned if he is ever a good football coach for UCLA Football. Hell will freeze over and pigs will fly before that happens.

[Phil]

Whoah, excellent post Rita. You should print that out and send it to the AD, Dan Guerrero. He needs to acknowledge his mistake in hiring Dorrell and start looking for his successor immediately.

[azeee]

I watched the game on Versus in HD on Dish Network Satellite, and there were no transmission problems

[Quang87]

I graduated from UCLA the same year as Karl. The last meaningful bowl game UCLA has won was in 1986, a Rose Bowl blowout of Iowa. It will be 22 years since I attended that game. The program is mediocre at best, with two peaks over the past two decades with Bob Toledo's Bruins in 1998 and 2001. Both of those teams managed to underachieve, petering in the second half of each season. Karl, it's your ship and it's your watch. That was the most pathetic performance I have witnessed since I first attended the UCLA-BYU game in 1983. Our guys gave up.

[Paqo Gomez]

Rita - I agree with you 100% about coaches needing to teach passion and discipline. I am a long time Utah fan, and much of the same banter about ousting our coaches has been flying across our message boards. Back when we could afford Urban Meyer, we saw that passion every single week. We saw the discipline, and it showed with a 22-2 record his teams posted over two seasons. Since then, we have seen a sharp drop off - in fact, Whittingham (our HC) called us spoiled fans last year because we were expecting them to win every game (well, duh. I don't buy season tickets to watch y'all lose) - and I think that the drop off can be entirely attributed to that lack of passion and discipline.

When Ohio State was thinking that they were a shoe in for the national championship in January, I guarantee that there was nobody acquainted with Urban Meyer who was surprised that Florida dominated Ohio State in that game. The Gators are ranked number 3 in the polls released today, and I will not be surprised if we see them playing for the national championship again in January. So yeah - just wanted to post to let you know that you are completely right. Good luck finding such a coach!

[MarcoTheBruin]

Restore pride to the football program. Replace Karl Dorrell with an interim coach. The precedent for this action is Florida, a program we compete with in basketball, which replaced Ron Zook mid-season under similar circumstances to what we are facing at UCLA.

Email Dan Guerrero: dguerrero@athletics.ucla.edu

[Romo]

I can't even think of the words to express my disgust with KD and this team. Ben Olson is way over-rated; and Karl makes me long for the days of Bob Toledo! At least when UCLA gave up on Toledo in 98, they did it with flair, they did it against a national title contender, they did it against Miami...not freakin' UTAH! And by the way, Cade still showed up and played the game of his life that day; where was Ben Olson's leadership this past Saturday, where was his passion?!

[howseriousarewe.com]

Dorrell has to go bye bye soon . I'm tired of his excuses and his offensive phliosophy that doesn't produce much against legitimate teams, much less UTAH and lowly teams. WHAT A FLOPP it's turning out to be !!!

[John E. McCue]

It may be a good idea for the Los Angels Times to prepare a sports reporter to cover the University of California, Irvine football team. At an alumni meeting some time back the subject was "When will we get a law school?" A voice from the back of the room said, "After we get a football team, turkey."
Now that we are going to get a law school, we may well be on our way to a football team.. So we need to warn UCLA and USC to improve or they may disappear into the sands of time.