After a 26-day coaching search that Athletic Director Dan Guerrero referred to as “exhaustive,” UCLA announced that Rick Neuheisel has been hired as the 16th head football coach in UCLA history.
Neuheisel, a former head coach at both Washington and Colorado, is also a former UCLA quarterback, having played during the 1980s under coach Terry Donahue.
His return is, in his eyes, a homecoming.
“I’ve been waiting a long time,” Neuheisel said on Saturday during a teleconference. “So to get involved in a search, especially one with your alma mater, if you knew me, you’d know it was a place I always wanted to be.”
Neuheisel replaces former teammate Karl Dorrell, who coached UCLA for five seasons.
Also in the running for the coaching spot was defensive coordinator DeWayne Walker. Walker, the linchpin in retaining a recruiting class for next year that has been projected to be a top-10 class, will be a key point in Neuheisel’s early tenure as coach.
“I told (Guerrero) that DeWayne Walker is my No. 1 recruit,” Neuheisel said. “I’m very, very impressed with the defense he played over the last couple of years. It’s important that we do everything we can to make him feel welcome and let him know that we’d love for him to stay at UCLA.”
Neuheisel’s tentative contract terms are 5 years at $1.25 million per year. He can earn up to another $500,000 in incentives.
“It’s not all worked out, but basically those are the fundamental, core elements of the contract,” Guerrero said.
Neuheisel has had a history of NCAA transgressions. At Colorado and Washington, he committed numerous NCAA violations in relation to recruiting, and at Washington he was part of a betting pool that ultimately was one of the main reasons cited for his being fired from that post.
He says that he has learned from his mistakes, and that he was up-front about them in the interviewing process.
“I wanted to set the record straight and make sure they understood exactly what had taken place and where I had made mistakes and where I had made errors in judgment and what I had learned from that,” Neuheisel said. “While I’m not proud of it, I certainly learned from it and I was anxious to prove it would never happen again.”
Neuheisel has to take an NCAA clearance test before he is allowed to contact any recruits, but Guerrero said that the timetable for that would be soon.