Pete Carroll, the gray-haired maestro of the current USC dynasty, is, seemingly, the definition of energetic. He bounces with every word, is exuberant in his press conferences, and flashes his emotions like a neon sign on the sidelines.
He has also led his team to five consecutive Pac-10 championships.
Karl Dorrell is different. The UCLA coach arrived in Los Angeles two years after Carroll, and ever since, the comparisons have been drawn.
Dorrell is stoic where Carroll is effervescent. Dorrell does not display the same comfort with the media that Carroll must have learned at his father’s knee.
He also has had nowhere near the success of Carroll on the football field.
Because Carroll has those five Pac-10 championships, Dorrell has seen his own attitude and demeanor come into question, as though the nature of the personality affects the quality of the team.
“I don’t understand why people think personalities matter in why your teams are good or not,” Dorrell said. “In this profession, you see guys who are all different kinds of personalities. You have jubilant guys, and then you see guys like Tom Landry, and Bill Belichick and Tony Dungy. (My quality as a coach) has nothing to do with whether I’m jumping up and down on the sideline.
“People say, “˜Look at this guy, look at how he is. He’s jumping up and down, why don’t you do that?'”
The problem for Dorrell, and one of the reasons his personality is criticized rather than praised, is that he did not start coaching at UCLA at what could be considered an opportune time. Just as he arrived in 2003, USC was set to embark on an almost unprecedented run behind the arm of Matt Leinart, the brains of Norm Chow, and, of course, the energy of Carroll.
You cannot coach in a vacuum, and Dorrell was stuck in the position of having to recruit and coach against what has become one of the more historically dominant college dynasties.
“I don’t think there’s ever been another head coaching time here when that school has been that dominant,” Dorrell said.
Last year, after three straight losses to the Trojans in the rivalry, Dorrell was finally able to break through and get his first victory in the series. And it is fitting that that victory is what has propelled this year’s UCLA team into the national consciousness, because finally, in the comparison between the two men, Dorrell came out on top.
UCLA enters the season ranked No. 14 in the initial Associated Press poll, and that ranking is based partially on that victory over the Trojans, but also on a number of other factors.
This team has 20 returning starters.
The Bruins play a much easier schedule than a year ago, not having to travel to Notre Dame, Oregon or Cal.
And the defense will have another year to gel under their aggressive coordinator, DeWayne Walker.
Expectations are, in a word, high.
Still, they do not match Dorrell’s.
“Inside and out, this is the best team I’ve had,” Dorrell said. “Inside as people, and outside as performance. Our expectations are so high. The pressure we put on ourselves is greater than any outside pressure.”
The Bruins are feeling more of that internal pressure because of the way they finished last season. Not the regular season, with the victory over USC, but the postseason, where the Bruins trudged their way through a dismal loss to Florida State in the Emerald Bowl.
For Dorrell, that is the game that stands out from last year.
“Granted we’re an experienced team, and we have the national recognition, but who knows where we would be right now (if we had won that game)?” Dorrell said. “It was disappointing. Everyone points out the game against USC, but the game that sticks out in my mind is the bowl game ““ that’s the last game we played. What’s going to erase that is what we do this first game.”
Stanford will be just the first step in what could be termed Dorrell’s year. This is his fifth year in the program, and these players all have played their entire college careers for him. This year could make him as a coaching commodity, or it could prove to be his undoing.
The man who came in here as a self-described “strict, high-standard football coach rather than an individual who cared about young people” has turned himself into a coach who can be both mentor and adviser, both father figure and friend to the players on his team.
He still doesn’t jump up and down on the sidelines. He probably won’t ever let out much more than the fist pump he showed during the latter stages of the USC game. And he’s probably always going to be a stoic sort.
But if he has UCLA on the brink of a conference championship heading into the USC game, well, maybe stoic will be the new energetic.
“If the season orchestrates like that, (with UCLA heading into the USC game with the conference on the line), that’s exactly what we want,” Dorrell said. “They’ve been a part of the conference championships since I’ve been here.
“That’s exactly what we want.”