Is there anybody out there who can make sense out of this college football season? If you feel like you’ve got a pretty good beat on things, then, by all means, please share that wealth of knowledge with the rest of us.
Seriously, it would be nice to know what is going on.
That’s because UCLA ““ you know, that 6-5, perfectly mediocre and painfully disappointing team that looked like it was primed to finish the season on a five-game losing streak that would have cost coach Karl Dorrell his job ““ somehow beat Oregon, 16-0, in a pedestrian battle of the third-string quarterbacks.
But UCLA still beat Oregon. You know, that same Oregon team that was cruising to the national title game before Dennis Dixon ripped up his knee and left his teammates to fend for themselves, only to have them show that they are nothing but a bunch of frauds without Dixon running the offense with his marvelous speed and efficiency.
So, really, we have two observations to take away from UCLA’s win over Oregon last week.
First, that Dixon, with or without the Heisman, is the most valuable player in the country. Second, that Dorrell’s job is still very much in jeopardy, yet the decision to keep him or release him will largely depend upon what happens against No. 8 USC this week and in the bowl game.
The eternal optimist, otherwise known as a Dorrell supporter, will say that the Bruins’ win over the Ducks proves that Dorrell motivated his players even though they were taking a verbal pounding in the press and rumors were swirling about their coach’s job security. However, the truth is the Bruins might have played hard, but they didn’t play all that well, and they were lucky to be facing the Ducks’ third-string quarterback. In fact, the Bruins’ close loss to the Sun Devils a couple of weeks ago was actually a more impressive performance.
One cannot judge Dorrell based on this last game. It is essential to look at his entire body of work, which is not good.
Dorrell’s five-year record at UCLA is 35-26, which is decent. But the obvious outlier is the 2005 season, in which the Bruins received one fortuitous bounce after the next and finished 10-2.
Take away that year and Dorrell’s record is 25-24, which is not decent ““ not even for NFL standards, let alone college football. What’s worse, Dorrell’s teams are 1-3 in bowl games, despite being favored in all four.
So will Dorrell keep his job? That obviously depends on the feelings of Athletic Director Dan Guerrero. If he is able to go either way and it comes down to such feelings, Dorrell will remain coach, because he is a great guy who is universally liked in the department.
But whether Dorrell should actually keep his job is another question entirely, one that has cast a shadow over the entire season for the Bruins, at least since their embarrassing 44-6 loss at Utah when they were ranked No. 11 in the polls.
So, should he? Well, if UCLA beats USC and Arizona upsets Arizona State, then Dorrell will have gotten his team to the Rose Bowl for the Bowl Championship Series, which is the goal of his program every year.
It’s hard to believe he will get fired if that happens. But considering that it’s highly unlikely that either UCLA or Arizona wins this weekend, that’s not a scenario we should be entertaining.
It seems more plausible that UCLA will lose to its crosstown rival and end up at another low-level bowl game, such as the Las Vegas Bowl.
Either way, it is completely unfair to keep a coach based on one game, for better or worse. For instance, it was most certainly worse for Arkansas coach Houston Nutt, who resigned Monday after beating LSU, the No. 1 team in the country, on Friday.
Keep in mind, though, that Nutt was under fire for recruiting shenanigans and turmoil within the program.
That’s not Dorrell’s problem. His program is clean. But it’s just not any good.
Guerrero should watch how the rest of the Bruin season plays out, already having made a decision about the direction of his football program, and stick with it, regardless of how the USC game plays out.
E-mail de Jong at adejong@media.ucla.edu.