It’s been over three years, and there’s been little
more than a sniff of a Pac-10 championship. It’s the fourth
year, and there’s been just one season when there was an
objectively good offense. It’s halfway to the fifth year, and
there is once again the talk of making positive steps for the
future.
Karl Dorrell has been the football coach at UCLA for
three-and-a-half seasons. In that time, his record is 26-17. He has
coached the team to three bowl games, none of which were played in
January. His UCLA teams have finished no higher than third in the
Pac-10.
When Dorrell was hired, the priorities were threefold. First,
clean up the program, which was mired in scandal during the last
few years of Bob Toledo’s time as coach. Second, be
competitive with USC year in and year out. And third, compete for
the Pac-10 championship.
So far, only one of those priorities has been met. The program
is cleaner. Whenever there has been even the slightest taint of
wrongdoing on the part of a player, Dorrell has been swift in his
punishment.
But the larger issues of winning in the Pac-10 have not been
solved. UCLA has been a middle-of-the-Pac-10 school over the last
three years, and the trend thus far this year is a continuation of
that.
However, in the eyes of the program’s leaders, UCLA
football is on the right heading. Athletic Director Dan Guerrero,
who hired Dorrell in December of 2002, cautions fans that even
three years into Dorrell’s tenure at UCLA, a quick turn to
consistent dominance is not to be expected.
“We still have a lot of things to do to be the kind of
program that we ultimately want to be,” Guerrero said.
“Ultimately you want to get your program where you can
continue to reload and have that kind of consistency (that we had
last year) from a year-to-year basis. Our program’s not there
yet. And it will take a little bit of time for that to occur; it
doesn’t just happen overnight.”
Dorrell’s Bruins improved in each of his first three
years, going from 6-7, to 6-6, to 10-2. But in only one of those
seasons was UCLA competitive with USC, in 2004 when the Bruins lost
29-25. When Guerrero hired Dorrell, one of his statements was that
Dorrell “understands the importances of the crosstown
rivalry.” It is perhaps just unlucky for Dorrell that he came
in during a period of historic dominance for the Trojans. But to a
large extent UCLA coaches are judged by their ability to beat USC,
and so far Dorrell has been unable to do so.
“It’s hard (starting out when USC is
dominant,)” Dorrell said. “It definitely gives you
motivation, like “˜Wow, we’ve got a lot of work to
do.’ When that game becomes a competitive game, then
it’s one of the best in college football. It’s my job
to get it back to that level.”
This year, with Pac-10 losses to Washington and Oregon, the
Bruins are already in a tremendous hole in the Pac-10 race. They
will have to hope for losses among the top-tier teams in the
conferences to even have a shot of winning the championship. This
team, according to most involved with the program, is not quite
where it needs to be in order to be a consistent player in the
conference race.
“We’re close to being where we need to be (as a
program),” Dorrell said. “I know that we’ve
gotten better each year. I know that this year there was an
expectation for us to be a mid-range team and I think we’re
better than a mid-range team.
“I know that in years to come we will be better and better
because of the stability and youth in this football team, with only
losing nine seniors.”
Last year, the Bruins had what could be called a year of
culmination. With starting seniors as their leading passer, leading
rusher and leading receiver, the Bruins were an offensive force,
showing the nation how good a well-run West Coast offense could
look. It was the third year under Dorrell and the first year when
the Bruins’ offense was legitimately good. It has been a
common criticism that the West Coast offense is difficult to learn
for college students who cannot focus full time on learning the
offense, and the evidence of that seemed to be there considering
the UCLA offense improved from year to year under Drew Olson as he
increased his knowledge of the offense. But Guerrero believes this
system does not hinder consistent year-in and year-out offensive
production.
“There’s nothing wrong with this offensive
system,” Guerrero said. “I think in time it can
manifest itself into a productive offense even this year. What you
would hope every year is that you can have the perfect storm (like
last season.) But it doesn’t always work that way.”
Still, the expectations are there for it to eventually work that
way. Guerrero wants this program to break into the upper tier of
the Pac-10 and be one of those consistently dominant teams like USC
that can reload year after year.
“In our particular conference, we have a few programs that
are national contenders on a regular basis,” Guerrero said.
“At some point in time you have to break through to that in
order to be consistently good.
“Obviously, you need to see how things play out over the
course of time, and then you assess and you evaluate based on
that.”