Ah, spring!
The flowers are blooming, the birds are singing, and the stench
of the UCLA football team is in the air as the Bruins kick off
spring practices Wednesday afternoon.
Yes, that is blood you smell following a forgettable season in
which rookie coach Karl Dorrell lost his last five games. Just to
jog your masochistic memory, these included public humiliations at
the hands of those co-national champions from South Los Angeles and
some no-namers from Fresno in the Silicon Valley Classic.
But maybe something worthwhile did come out of the slop in San
Jose some three months ago for Dorrell. After all, All-American
defensive end Dave Ball actually started to make some sense.
As most of the embarrassed Bruins hurried out of the locker
room, Ball sat back, sacked up, and said something, well, ballsy.
Sans the whoopee cushion.
“If anyone can do it, it’s Dorrell, I’m
telling you,” said Ball, who had just played in the final
game of his college career. “He was dealt a bad hand to begin
with, but he knows how stuff is done. It’s not the coaching
staff. It’s not him.”
So just who was at fault? Overbearing Dan Guerrero? Cheap Albert
Carnesale? (Coach) Steve Lavin?
Nope. It’s the players.
“Fire us,” Ball pleaded. “Fire me.”
Not Dorrell, apparently. And if a senior who will be selected in
the NFL draft later this month was willing to point the finger at
himself and his teammates, fans must listen.
Dorrell has been roundly criticized for inheriting an eight-win
team and leading it to a losing season. He has been blasted for
allowing the prestige of the program to suffer, leading to a
“weak” incoming recruiting class.
But maybe it’s not his fault entirely. Perhaps the old
guard from the Bob Toledo era still maintains a foothold on this
team.
A lesson can actually be learned from Dorrell’s
predecessor, who was portrayed as a coach who had lost the respect
of his players, judging from the numerous high-profile off-field
incidents that brought down the program.
Toledo bemoaned the impossible task of monitoring the
players’ vociferous appetites for alcohol, handicapped
parking placards and sport utility vehicles. Too many players to
keep tabs on, he claimed.
He was right. Dorrell, whose “son of a strict Navy
father” demeanor was believed to be a deterrent in itself,
ended up having to deal with numerous arrests and suspensions of
Toledo’s players.
Also, Toledo claimed his players spent too much time during
late-season collapses worrying about their draft statuses, while
Dorrell had to deal with me-first parasites Matt Moore and Tyler
Ebell skipping out of the bowl game to plot their transfer
destinations.
Does anyone else see a pattern here? Maybe it’s not always
the coaches, who can only do so much. At some point, the
responsibility must fall on the shoulders of the players.
And these players weren’t even recruited by Dorrell, whose
first class won’t make much of an impact for another year or
two.
So give it time. Given the choice between Toledo’s
“talent” and Dorrell’s dreamers, I’ll go
with the latter. It’s not like the underachieving talent of
the past ever got UCLA much further.
Interestingly enough, a classy Dorrell told members of the media
last month to lay off the players and instead to focus the
obligatory bashing on him.
Karl, you’re literally too kind. Ball would think so.
“I think Coach Dorrell needs to look at the personnel he
has honestly and evaluate each player because some people are
letting this program down,” Ball said. “I’m
telling you that now, and people need to be dealt with.”
So hopefully this spring, right along with the crack of the bat,
you’ll be hearing the crack of the whip.
Leung was a football beat writer in 2002. He can be reached
at dleung@media.ucla.edu.