All in the family

If UCLA hires Rick Neuheisel or interim coach DeWayne Walker as its next head football coach, it will continue a "tradition" of hiring from within the program that stretches back to 1949.

That’s when Red Sanders was hired by then-athletic director Wilbur Johns to come from Vanderbilt to UCLA. Every head coach since Sanders’ death in August 1958 has been a legacy:

• George Dickerson (1958 for three games) was a Sanders assistant;
• Bill Barnes (1958-64) was a Sanders assistant;
• Tommy Prothro (1965-70) was a Sanders assistant;
• Pepper Rodgers (1971-73) was a Prothro assistant;
• Dick Vermeil (1974-75) was a Prothro assistant;
• Terry Donahue (1976-95) was a Vermeil assistant and played for Prothro;
• Bob Toledo (1996-2002) was a Donahue assistant;
• Karl Dorrell (2003-07) played for Donahue.

Neuheisel, of course, was a UCLA quarterback and assistant under Donahue, and Walker has been the UCLA defensive coordinator for the last two seasons.

Even the search firm that current athletic director Dan Guerrero selected to assist in finding a new coach was a legacy. Reilly Partners of Chicago, formed in 2005, is the firm of record, and Guerrero is working with former UCLA assistant and recruiting coordinator (1979-93) Bill Rees, who is listed as a managing director and partner of the firm. Rees left the Cleveland Browns in May after spending two-plus seasons in the player personnel department. He previously had been with the San Francisco 49ers (under Donahue, who was the general manager), Chicago Bears, and Kansas City Chiefs as a scout and player personnel director. Rees’s son Danny is the Bruins’ back-up punter.

One more legacy note: Guerrero’s replacement as athletic director at UC Irvine will be another Bruin: Mike Izzi. He comes to UCI from Stanford, where he worked for 16 years and rose to associate athletic director for sports administration and development, and will take over in Irvine on Jan. 1. He graduated from UCLA in 1984, and was a javelin thrower on the track team, ranking fifth on the all-time UCLA list with the "old" javelin at 251-11.

Comments

[Hiero]

Rich,

Didn't Dickerson and Barnes play football at UCLA? Wasn't Karl Dorrell an assistant under Donahue. (He's credited his introduction to coaching to Donahue -- I seem to recall him saying that Donahue gave him his first job in coaching.)

[Rich Perelman]

Dorrell was a grad assistant for Donahue, not the same to me as a full-time assistant (paid) coach. Dickerson played for Bill Spaulding in '34-36, but Barnes did not play for UCLA (at least he didn't letter).

[DumpDorrell]

This is just shameful. We haven't made a big hire in over 40 years and when we have a prime opportunity what do we do? Do we continue doing what we have done and expect different results? Do we try something different, or something that worked in our distant past?? Like maybe ditch the whole Fields/Donahue connection. Like maybe hire outside our program (Sanders, Wooden, Harrick, Howland). Why did Dan Guerrero hire one of Donahue's guys?? How is he going to get independent advice now? What a joke.